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Every year we get burned by fantasy football players we expect to produce for us at a high level. Whether it be from injury, COVID list inactives, suspensions or simply underperforming and losing playing time, it’s important we review each season from a bird’s eye view in addition to our granular approach. Some players just […]

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On behalf of all of us at Razzball, let me start by wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving. Hopefully you enjoyed the day filled with family, food, and football. As it has been since 2006, we got 6 games on Thanksgiving including the traditional Cowboys and Lions games. The NFL laid these games out perfectly for us as we got a boring bread and butter appetizer game between Detroit and Chicago to kick off the day. After that, we were treated to the main course which was a Dallas and Las Vegas game that had an exciting second half and even went into overtime. The Thanksgiving slate finished with a sloppy pie a la mode game between Buffalo and New Orleans. Let’s recap the appetizer, main course, and dessert games.

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The night was May 14, 2003. A night I was greatly anticipating because of two big events. First the series finale of my favorite tween television series, Dawson’s Creek or The Creek to the cool kids, was airing and at midnight. Then I was going to see the sequel to The Matrix, which was easily one of the best science fiction films of the previous ten years. It turned out to be the most disappointing night of my twenty-something pop culture obsessed life.

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Before you go any further if you haven’t read the previous articles from this series, we recommend you do so. You can find some of those articles here:

Points Per Rush Attempt Analysis for 2021 Fantasy Football

Fantasy Points Per Reception – Running Back Edition Part 2

 Fantasy Points Per Reception – Wide Receiver Edition Part 2

In this article we break down Fantasy Points Per Reception or FPPR regression candidates from 2020 at the tight end position. The goal of this article is to help you identify players who you should potentially fade at their ADP in 2021.

A couple things you might want to know first. The league average FPPR for tight ends over the past 10 seasons is 1.93. For a tight end to see one point less per game they need to average three receptions per game and see an increase in FPPR of .35.

 

2021 FPPR Regression Candidates

 

Player: Travis Kelce

2020 FPPR: 2.48

Career avg. FPPR: 2.26

FPPR Variance: 10%

 

2020 PPG
2021 Projected PPG
17.315.8

 

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What is up everybody? It’s EverywhereBlair, coming to you from the UP region — no not the Pixar movie, that area near the talon of Michigan — where I’m currently surrounded by a thousand acres of forest and eagles. I’m taking advantage of a rainy morning to bring you — yes you! — a recap of my DataForce Charity League best ball draft, which will help illustrate draft tactics that will be useful for all of you as we enter the main fantasy football draft season. 

Meet me after the jump and I’ll show you Konami Code I used to help my draft strategy against a draft room filled with touts and, well, me.

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Enter Best Ball Drafts. A format growing closer to my heart by the year. No lineups to set. No waivers to run. You draft your team and the best possible lineup of your starters is automatically entered each week. A true paradise for those who love the draft room experience and are looking for buy-in. I have also found the auto-drafters, early exiting participants, and obscure first round picks aren’t as prevalent. Since making the switch, the largest difference I have seen is the percentage of my teams making the playoffs. More teams in the playoffs equates to more championships. A winner is you!

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The third and final feature of this draft capital trilogy is the tight ends. If you missed the running back article, click here and if you missed the wide receiver article, click here! What we did was look back over the last 10 years (2011-2020) to see how many consistent fantasy contributors came out of each round of the NFL draft. We aren’t going to be talking about one hit wonders. Instead, we are highlighting the players who were able to sustain some level of fantasy success over their careers.

In this article we are reviewing the tight end position. The benchmark used was 6.5 points per game (PPG) in half point per reception (PPR) for their career. Even with the extremely low point total of 6.5 you will see very few tight ends ever become consistent fantasy contributors. Another key factor why the benchmark is a lot lower for tight ends is how poorly they perform as rookies. For example, notable tight ends George Kittle (5.7) and Mark Andrews (5.6) and T.J. Hockenson (5.4) all failed to hit 6 PPG in their rookie seasons.

Below you will find a chart breaking out draft capital by round for tight end. The chart is broken out into four columns:

  1. Round Drafted – Identifies the round in the NFL draft that the tight end were drafted
  2. Total tight end drafted – This is the total number of tight end drafted in that round over the past 10 years
  3. Career 6.5 PPG in .5 PPR – This column represents how many tight end drafted in that round hit the benchmark of 6.5 PPG for their careers in .5 PPR
  4. % Hit Rate – The final column shows what percentage of the tight end drafted in that round hit that benchmark

Feel free to just review the chart only and take what you want from it. If you want some additional insight on how we feel about 2021 prospects based on this data, it will be included later in the article!

Round
Drafted
Total Tight Ends
Drafted
Career
6.5 PPG in .5 PPR
% Hit Rate
18675%
218528%
324417%
42414%
51915%
62115%
72500%
Total1391813%
Total after Rd 38933.40%

 

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Current NFC players with the most to gain in the upcoming NFL draft!

In this article we are going to discuss which current NFC players have the most to gain in the upcoming NFL draft. What this means is if a team passes on a skill position player or quarterback in the first few round which players currently on those rosters today will have the most to gain.

Each section we will highlight the team, how many picks each team has overall, how many picks they have rounds 1-3 and the players who have the most to gain. This article isn’t a mock or predicting any picks. Most likely at least half of these players we talk about today will be impacted by draft picks, but just in case they aren’t here is why we think they can improve in 2021.

Arizona Cardinals

Total picks: 6

Round 1: No. 16 overall

Round 2: No. 49

Round 3: N/A

Impacted Player: Chase Edmonds

Edmonds has 9 career games where he received 10 touches. In those games he averaged 13.4 PPG with a .89 fantasy points per touch. Edmonds only saw 10 touches in a game 6 times in 2020 so if he can be the 1A in 2021, he should improve on his RB28 finish from last season.

Impacted Player: Christian Kirk

The signing of A.J. Green offers provides an opportunity for Christian Kirk to kick inside. This is a much better suited position for Kirk who has a .18 higher YPRR when playing inside including a career high 1.9 YPRR in 2018. If Fitzgerald isn’t re-signed, he is vacating 62 slot targets that could go Kirk’s way in 2021.

 

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Most who are educated on Viking lore are familiar with the legendary Lief Erikson, the first European to ever set foot on the North American continent. But generations before Lief raped and pillaged his way across the ocean, there was one even more historic Viking: Ragnar Thielen. You won’t read about Ragnar in any of those propagandized history books. He was the most peaceful of the Vikings. Instead of collecting skulls Ragnar spent his time knitting with the skin of pig. That’s right, old Ragnar Thielen created the first football back in the year 969. Fast forward 1,051 years and his great-greatX20-grandson Adam Thielen showed how the pigskin runs in his veins as he snatched 4 catches for 43 yards and his 8th and 9th touchdowns. Viking lore aside, I’ve been saying since summer that Thielen is a first half player. In the last two seasons he’s caught only two touchdowns in 12 games after the first week in November. This could be the year he bucks the trend, but I’m not betting on it. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday for fantasy football:

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This is a really, really bad week for Covid in the NFL. It’s been overshadowed as we await election results, over one third of teams have reported positive cases this week. All we can hope for is false positives and to keep things moving as we have reached the halfway point of the season. Part of the reason this is coming out on Friday instead of Thursday is because I didn’t think there was a chance San Francisco and Green Bay would play on Thursday Night. It’s probably for the best, because JaMycal Hasty would have been a start and I haven’t seen him touch the ball yet.

With the NFL sort of doing everything on the fly this season, I don’t understand why this game couldn’t have been pushed back to Sunday after Kendrick Bourne’s false positive. I would have thrown a fit if I were San Francisco. But instead of ranting and raving in here, let’s dig into the starts and sits for week 9.

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I hope for your sake that you were busy Monday night and unable to watch the Bears vs. Rams puke fest. Here’s how bad the game was: the undisputed player of the game was Rams’ punter Johnny Hekker. In all fairness to Hekker, the man can punt with the best of em. All five of his kicks pinned the aimless Bears offense inside the 10 yard line, and he booted a 63 yarder down there too. Needless to say, if you own Hekker in a punter league—I’m sure these actually exist—then you had a great fantasy night; unlike the rest of us. Fantasy Lord willing, this will be the last time I ever write an intro about a punter. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday for fantasy football:

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At Razzball, we pride ourselves in the quality of our readers, because it sure takes a wise fantasy manager to dodge some of the hot taeks that we dish out. Lamar Jackson as QB1? What the hell were you thinking, Blair? Certainly, what I meant to write in the preseason QB article was that JUSTIN HERBERT WOULD BE QB7 BY WEEK 6! Yes! That’s what I meant! 

And why does it matter that we have smart readers? Glad you asked! Some of you know that I, EverywhereBlair, was a Razzball originalist dating back to 2009. And look where I am now! In Grey’s basement with a Capri Sun and a bag of Cheetos writing fantasy football articles. From fan to fantasy analyst, you could do it too! 

Why am I hyping our fans’ intelligence so much? Because one of our fans, Curtis Jones, has taken the #1 spot on the Razzbowl leaderboard. Congrats, Curtis! 

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