Fantasy football, as a hobby, has been around a long enough time to see its beliefs challenged and its consensus moved. One such consensus was the idea that, at the turn of the millennium, tight ends simply were not to be taken high in fantasy drafts. Quality production at the position was a rarity at the time- typically there was Tony Gonzalez, a few second-tier options, and a cluster of replaceable journeymen. In 2000, for instance, Tony Gonzalez scored 174 fantasy points in standard scoring. There were five more TEs who finished with between 92 and 111 points (Shannon Sharpe, Freddie Jones, Frank Wycheck, Kyle Brady, and Chad Lewis). Then there were six more who finished between 63 and 74 points. Jackie Harris had 39/306/5 receiving that year… and he was the #12 fantasy TE. Marcus Pollard had 30/439/3 and finished 10th at the position. One would think that, given the massive advantage the Tony Gonzalez owner had on a weekly basis, he would go fairly high in fantasy drafts. Instead, the rule at the time was that if you wanted Gonzalez, you’d draft him in the 4th round, and a lot of owners would even make jokes about “wasting” a pick that high on a tight end. This led to Gonzalez accomplishing what I believe to be a fantasy record; he ranked higher in season-ending VBD than he did in preseason ADP for six consecutive seasons, as well as nine of ten. That record might never be broken; when a player outperforms his draft position for two or three years in a row, his draft position usually rises in response. But Gonzalez kept stubbornly sitting in the 4th round of fantasy drafts for years, just because that’s how it had always been done at the tight end position.
One reason why Gonzalez’s draft position remained so low is because, as good as he was, he simply did not score as many points as wide receivers. Tony Gonzalez first broke out in 1999. Over the next decade, if you had combined all tight ends and wide receivers into a single player pool, Gonzalez would have finished 17th, 12th, 30th, 33rd, 16th, 12th, 43rd, 31st, 19th, and 11th. At his very best, Tony Gonzalez scored on par with the receivers who were drafted in a similar range. At his worst, he scored on par with players such as Brian Finneran, Peter Warrick, and Baltimore's Mark Clayton. In the early 2000s, Tony Gonzalez was being drafted before a lot of wide receivers who would outscore him by a large amount, and was therefore seen by the majority of the fantasy community as a “bad pick”. Of course, thanks in large part to Joe Bryant’s writings on VBD and the rise of Footballguys, it is now universally accepted throughout the industry that it’s not how many points you score, it’s by how many points you outscore your peers. In 2014, for the first time in history, we have a tight end whose average draft position falls solidly within the first round of fantasy drafts. That’s progress.
VBD is a fantastic tool and one that gives us a much better lens from which to view relative fantasy production, but one big flaw is that it is only as good as the baselines used. Tony Gonzalez might outscore a TE12 baseline by more than a comparable running back outscored an RB24 baseline, but TE12 was drafted a lot later than RB24 was. Using MFL’s ADP data for the 2000 season, the 12th tight end was selected at the beginning of the 13th round. The 24th running back was selected at the end of the 5th. It’s not much use to us to say “Tony Gonzalez outscores 13th rounders by more than this typical running back will outscore 5th rounders”. If we want to compare Tony Gonzalez to a 13th round TE, we should compare running backs to a 13th round RB, too- which would work out to a baseline of RB46 instead of RB24. Suddenly those top running backs are looking a lot better again.
Joe Bryant and David Dodds combated this inefficiency by using “Joe’s Secret Formula”, which was never very “secret” at all. Rather than setting the baselines to the worst starter at each position, they selected an arbitrary point in the draft (in this case, the 100th pick), and they set the baselines to whatever player could be expected to be available after that many picks were off the board. If four tight ends were being drafted in the first 100 picks, for example, the baseline for the position would be TE5. If 32 running backs were going in the first 100 picks, the baseline for the position would be RB33. This method paired the descriptive power of VBD with the concept of “opportunity cost”. When factoring in opportunity cost, it meant that Tony Gonzalez was still a good pick in the 4th round, but not quite as good of a pick as traditional backwards-looking analysis might make it appear.
What does the concept of “opportunity cost” mean when spending a high draft pick on one of these new-era tight ends? In short… almost nothing. Remember that Tony Gonzalez was undervalued because he scored far fewer points than the top receivers. With Jimmy Graham and Rob Gronkowski, that is absolutely not the case. Over the last three years, if you had lumped together all tight ends and wide receivers, Jimmy Graham would have ranked 6th, 21st, and 4th in fantasy points per game in standard scoring leagues. Over that entire three-year span, Jimmy Graham ranks 3rd in fantasy points per game. Rob Gronkowski fares even better, ranking 2nd, 3rd, and 12th in fantasy points per game over the last three years. Over the entire span, only Calvin Johnson has scored more fantasy points per contest than Gronkowski. Where Tony Gonzalez scored fewer points than the receivers drafted in the same range, Graham and Gronkowski score MORE. This entirely changes the calculus at the position.
The only real opportunity cost to Graham and Gronkowski comes in leagues where an owner can only start one tight end a week. If an owner drafts Graham in the 1st round and then discovers a breakout talent later in the draft, that breakout talent will be relegated to the bench. If an owner had drafted Jimmy Graham in the 2nd and Julius Thomas in the 18th last year, Thomas would have been essentially useless unless a trade partner could be found. Still, owning both Jimmy Graham and Julius Thomas in a 1-TE league is something of a good problem to have; while the Graham owner would have been better off had he taken a top receiver in the 2nd round, it’s not like he’s not pretty well off with how things played out, anyway.
In leagues where owners can start two tight ends, such as where tight ends are eligible for a flex position, that opportunity cost diminishes substantially. If an owner drafts Jimmy Graham in the 1st and then finds a wealth of tight end value later in the draft, he can draft one of those undervalued tight ends secure in the knowledge that, if he breaks out, the owner can simply move one of his tight ends to the flex position. And in leagues where tight ends can be started in place of wide receivers, the concept of “opportunity cost” loses all meaning; in that instance, a tight end who scores as many points as a wide receiver will be at least as valuable as that wide receiver in all scenarios, (and possibly more valuable if the league also carries a TE-mandatory position requirement).
Just like those who once ignored the value of Tony Gonzalez in the 4th round of fantasy drafts, it’s easy for us to revert back to the old methods of analyzing tight ends and lose sight of the fact that the new tight ends are fundamentally different from the old. The old method provided valuable insight because tight ends did not score as many points as the wide receivers drafted around them. At the top of the draft, that is simply no longer the case. If you are dealing with 2nd or 3rd tier tight ends who are not projected to score as many points as the wide receivers being selected around them, then concepts such as “opportunity cost” become important tools for analysis. If your choice is between Keenan Allen and Julius Thomas, and you expect Allen to outscore Thomas by a decent amount, then you have to look at what you would give up by drafting the receiver vs. what you would give up by drafting the tight end. Which position offered better value later in the draft? Which position was likely to leave you with the strongest roster? When you are dealing with players who are basically A.J. Green or Dez Bryant with tight-end eligibility, though, the fact that they have tight-end eligibility is an asset, not a liability.
