Over the past few years, there have been two very popular articles written by our very own Chase Stuart that look at an interesting approach to building a fantasy team with late value picks. Based upon the theory of using both Strength of Schedule ("SOS") and taking two players as a combination to build one very good player, he has discussed both Team Defense by Committee ("TDBC") and Quarterback by Committee ("QBBC") as a general fantasy league strategy. In general I think that this is a wise move because very early on in fantasy drafts there are a ton of running back and wide receiver prospects to go after to build a great team. While there are a few studs at quarterback and also a few choice defenses, I do not see a huge need in leagues to pursue either too hard in the beginning stages of a fantasy draft.
So with this in mind, I started to think about what else can be done with the committee approach. Wide receiver? Perhaps, but not a WR1. Running back? Maybe. Tight end? Hmmm, that's really intriguing. What if you could grab tight ends later in the draft that could combine to perform on a TE1 level, based solely on their current projections and their schedule? Now we're talking. This really got my attention, so I went after this. Let's take a look at how I went about building this committee and then we can digest and discuss the results.
(TIGHT) END GAME
So how to begin? Defenses and quarterbacks are relatively easy to "committee" together. There's usually only one quarterback and certainly only one team defense per NFL club, so the approach is pretty simple as far as picking out which players / teams to try and pair up. When it comes to tight ends, the line is not quite so easy to draw, but I needed some basis to pick which players it made sense to try and combine for a decent committee. I decided that I would use the following criteria to decide which players to start with for evaluating:
CRITERIA #1 - TE13 AND BEYOND
This seems pretty simple. If we want to have a duo that puts up TE1 numbers, that means we want TE12 or better production - else we would just draft TE12 or higher and forget the whole idea. So here is the list of players with which I started, based on their Average Draft Position (ADP):
ADP | Player |
---|---|
TE13 | Eric Ebron |
TE14 | Charles Clay |
TE15 | Ladarius Green |
TE16 | Antonio Gates |
TE17 | Heath Miller |
TE18 | Tyler Eifert |
TE19 | Delanie Walker |
TE20 | Dwayne Allen |
TE21 | Jared Cook |
TE22 | Coby Fleener |
TE23 | Garrett Graham |
Table 1: Tight Ends TE13-TE23 Based on ADP
Now, you may be wondering why I only went to TE23, which only gives me 11 options. After TE23 comes a ton of uncertainty with two rookies (Jace Amaro of the Jets and Austin Seferian-Jenkins of Tampa Bay) and Jermichael Finley, so I decided that 11 should be enough. Usually I do not need any tight ends after TE23 anyway, so this should be just fine.
So now we have 11 guys to pair up and see how they do. That makes 55 potential committees, so there had better be a decent one (or several, we hope) out of all of those couplets. Now, before I go over the method of how to pair them up and the results, we need one more rule:
CRITERIA #2 - NO MORE THAN ONE TE FROM ROUND 10 AND ONE FROM ROUND 12
This could get tricky here, but understand the overall goal. The point of TEBC is to "free up" the first 9-10 rounds of your fantasy draft to pursue all of the other positions for your team. Grabbing 3-4 running backs and 4-5 receivers after grabbing a stud RB in Round 1 sounds like a good idea to me. This also gives you the flexibility of grabbing a stud QB, depending on your personal preference, or even to get TE1 if there's a huge value play available and have the "TEBC" be your TE2 (although I would only recommend this in very deep leagues with 20+ roster spots). Flexibility is the name of the game here. We all want value in our drafts, and having the ability to grab lots of RBs and WRs in the first 9-10 Rounds gives us that ability.
Here is the good news - all of the tight ends on the list above have ADPs that are Round 10 or higher (later). In fact, only Eric Ebron and Charles Clay are borderline Round 10 / Round 11 guys. We will have to keep that in mind when we look at the result because if we decide to wait unit Round 11 to get this pair to make up our TEBC we may be pushing it a little too far and may not get the combination that we want.
So what do we do now to figure out some TE pairs?
CRITERIA #3 - USE FOOTBALLGUYS' TE STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE
This sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Just take the TE Strength of Schedule to figure out when certain players are more likely to score well. What I did is similar to what the Projections Dominator and Draft Dominator do for you - take the projected fantasy points and slice them up over 16 weeks based on the strength of schedule. I call this result the "distributed fantasy points" for each receiver.
After I had all 11 tight ends with distributed fantasy points on a weekly basis, I just compared all of the possible TE pairs to find the best duos for TEBC. So here we are - time for some results.
Rank | Tight End 1 | Tight End 2 | Value |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Antonio Gates | Delanie Walker | 97.8 |
2 | Eric Ebron | Antonio Gates | 96.8 |
3 | Charles Clay | Antonio Gates | 96.6 |
4 | Ladarius Green | Delanie Walker | 95.2 |
5 | Delanie Walker | Jared Cook | 95.1 |
6 | Charles Clay | Delanie Walker | 95.0 |
7 | Charles Clay | Jared Cook | 94.9 |
8 | Eric Ebron | Charles Clay | 94.4 |
9 | Antonio Gates | Jared Cook | 93.4 |
10 | Charles Clay | Heath Miller | 93.4 |
11 | Charles Clay | Tyler Eifert | 93.3 |
12 | Charles Clay | Ladarius Green | 92.9 |
13 | Heath Miller | Delanie Walker | 92.6 |
14 | Eric Ebron | Ladarius Green | 92.2 |
15 | Antonio Gates | Heath Miller | 92.1 |
16 | Antonio Gates | Tyler Eifert | 91.7 |
17 | Tyler Eifert | Delanie Walker | 91.6 |
18 | Eric Ebron | Jared Cook | 91.5 |
19 | Eric Ebron | Heath Miller | 91.5 |
20 | Charles Clay | Garrett Graham | 90.7 |
21 | Delanie Walker | Coby Fleener | 90.6 |
22 | Delanie Walker | Dwayne Allen | 90.4 |
23 | Eric Ebron | Tyler Eifert | 90.0 |
24 | Eric Ebron | Delanie Walker | 89.2 |
25 | Delanie Walker | Garrett Graham | 89.0 |
26 | Charles Clay | Coby Fleener | 88.8 |
27 | Charles Clay | Dwayne Allen | 88.6 |
28 | Eric Ebron | Garrett Graham | 88.0 |
29 | Ladarius Green | Jared Cook | 87.9 |
30 | Heath Miller | Jared Cook | 87.8 |
31 | Ladarius Green | Heath Miller | 87.4 |
32 | Heath Miller | Tyler Eifert | 87.2 |
33 | Ladarius Green | Tyler Eifert | 86.5 |
34 | Eric Ebron | Coby Fleener | 85.8 |
35 | Eric Ebron | Dwayne Allen | 85.5 |
36 | Antonio Gates | Coby Fleener | 84.8 |
37 | Antonio Gates | Dwayne Allen | 84.7 |
38 | Jared Cook | Garrett Graham | 84.7 |
39 | Heath Miller | Coby Fleener | 84.5 |
40 | Heath Miller | Dwayne Allen | 84.4 |
41 | Heath Miller | Garrett Graham | 84.3 |
42 | Tyler Eifert | Garrett Graham | 83.9 |
Charles Clay | 0 | 83.8 |
Table 2: Tight End Committee Pairs
As we can see from Table 2, we have some very good pairs to select from for TEBC. There are 42 pairs that are worth more than Charles Clay by his lonesome, who is projected to come in with 83.8 points. Let's also take a look at how often some of these guys show up on the table:
Tight End | Freq |
---|---|
Charles Clay | 10 |
Delanie Walker | 10 |
Eric Ebron | 10 |
Heath Miller | 10 |
Antonio Gates | 8 |
Jared Cook | 7 |
Tyler Eifert | 7 |
Garrett Graham | 6 |
Ladarius Green | 6 |
Coby Fleener | 5 |
Dwayne Allen | 5 |
Table 3: Tight End Committee Pair Appearances by Player
As we can see from Table 3, the results are dominated by four guys – Charles Clay, Delanie Walker, Eric Ebron and Heath Miller. That is a significant result as it gives us the key players to target for the TEBC approach to the draft. It is quite possible that putting two of these two guys together will form this year's best option for TEBC. It is also worth noting that every one of the names appears at least five times on the list, which screams out that there are a ton of choices this year to mix and match for a solid pair of tight ends.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Now that we have 42 possible pairs that are better than Charles Clay, what exactly does that mean? Should Clay be the basis of our comparison? Of course not. Remember our goal - find a pair of tight ends that can combine for TE1-type fantasy production. To figure that out we need a better metric, so here are the projections for the Top 12 TEs in standard scoring:
ADP | TE Rank | Player | Team/Bye | FPs | FP Rank |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
7 | 1 | Jimmy Graham | NO/6 | 166.5 | 1 |
30 | 3 | Rob Gronkowski | NE/10 | 134.8 | 2 |
29 | 2 | Julius Thomas | Den/4 | 111.4 | 3 |
57 | 5 | Jordan Cameron | Cle/4 | 109.0 | 4 |
81 | 7 | Greg Olsen | Car/12 | 102.8 | 5 |
67 | 6 | Jason Witten | Dal/11 | 96.0 | 6 |
56 | 4 | Vernon Davis | SF/8 | 94.9 | 7 |
87 | 9 | Dennis Pitta | Bal/11 | 94.0 | 8 |
84 | 8 | Jordan Reed | Was/10 | 89.6 | 9 |
93 | 10 | Kyle Rudolph | Min/10 | 87.0 | 10 |
119 | 12 | Martellus Bennett | Chi/9 | 83.9 | 11 |
116 | 11 | Zach Ertz | Phi/7 | 83.0 | 14 |
Table 4: Projected Fantasy Points for Top 12 ADP TEs
Based on Table 4, we see that TEs beyond the Top 3 are really jumbled all over the place thanks to a good number of people sleeping on both Greg Olsen and Jordan Cameron. Looking at our possible pairs, we have 5-7 duos that are about even or slightly higher than Jordan Reed (TE8) plus 3-5 points for a bye week filler. Those top pairs would be a reasonable target to strive for with a TEBC approach. This tells us that choosing the correct pair can give us the result we wanted - TE1 production on the cheap.
Considering all of the results, the committee recipe looks a bit unclear. To help simplify it, I am focusing on the four names from earlier - Clay, Ebron, Walker and Miller. Since I do not trust how Detroit will use Ebron, especially as a rookie, I am now down to three options. The Top 12 pairs are dominated by Clay with seven appearances, followed by Walker and Antonio Gates with four each. San Diego is in a tight end transition from Gates to Ladarius Green, so I am leery of selecting either one. I am also skeptical of Jared Cook in St. Louis, so after scratching off several names, it becomes much clearer – get Charles Clay. Nabbing Clay in Round 10 or 11 locks him into your lineup and then you can pick the next tight end that you like from the list of possible pairs with Clay, seven of which represent the majority of the Top 12 TEBC options. Based on the relative cost and value for the top candidates, the situation for both Clay and Delanie Walker are very appealing. Clay has put up respectable numbers in Miami even in a suspect passing attack, while Walker has started to come into his own as a big target in Tennessee. With this in mind, I am recommending Charles Clay and Delanie Walker as the TEBC for 2014. Take Clay late in Round 10 or early in Round 11 and follow up with Walker no later than Round 13 (just to be safe) to pair together for your TE committee. Yes, that is a round or two earlier than expected, so if you want to wait then there are many options near the top of Table 2 that will be there in Round 14 (like Tyler Eifert or Garrett Graham) if Walker is gone.
For thoroughness, Table 2 should be your guide on Fantasy Draft Day if you attempt to use TEBC.
Here is a final summary of the combined schedules for Charles Clay and Delanie Walker, and when the committee approach suggests starting each one:
Wk | Suggested Player | Opponent |
---|---|---|
1 | Charles Clay | New England |
2 | Delanie Walker | Dallas |
3 | Delanie Walker | at Cincinnati |
4 | Charles Clay | at Oakland |
5 | Delanie Walker | Cleveland |
6 | Delanie Walker | Jacksonville |
7 | Charles Clay | at Chicago |
8 | Charles Clay | at Jacksonville |
9 | Charles Clay | San Diego |
10 | Delanie Walker | at Baltimore |
11 | Delanie Walker | Pittsburgh |
12 | Charles Clay | at Denver |
13 | Delanie Walker | at Houston |
14 | Delanie Walker | NY Giants |
15 | Charles Clay | at New England |
16 | Charles Clay | Minnesota |
Table 5: Suggested TEBC Schedule Plan
The committee approach is not a perfect one, but having this knowledge prior to your fantasy draft can prove to be invaluable if you decide to adopt this approach. If all the players on your starter list are gone, goiong with a committee can save your team and help you deal with the loss of bigger names. The method is also a big help in "Best Ball" leagues, where lineup decisions are not necessary every week. That's exactly where a committee can do the best, as either player can count for you each week.
Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.