Cutting Through the Noise, Week 16

Each week in Cutting Through the Noise, we will take an objective look at one of the most polarizing players in Dynasty Fantasy Football as decided by the Footballguys Dynasty Discord. We will use the Footballguys consensus rankings to gauge where the player is currently valued.

Kyle Pitts

TE3 and Overall No. 33

Before this season, arguments were being had that Kyle Pitts may just deserve to be the top overall pick in Dynasty drafts. Now, with 16 games in the books, we’re wondering if he’s even the top overall Tight end.

Pitts kicked off his college career with the Florida Gators in 2018. As a true freshman, he struggled to get involved. In his defense, he was playing alongside four future NFL receivers in Van Jefferson, Kadarius Toney, Freddie Swain, and Tyrie Cleveland. He finished the season with just three catches.

Pitts’ incredible college career kicked off as a sophomore when he earned the starting Tight end role. It didn’t hurt that Florida upgraded its starting Quarterback by handing the reins to Kyle Trask in relief of Feleipe Franks. Pitts caught 54 passes for 649 yards and 5 touchdowns. He led all Gators in receptions and was third amongst all tight ends across FBS. At this point, he’s a fantastic athlete and a solid tight end, but the true legend doesn’t begin until Pitts’ junior year.

In 2020 Pitts caught 43 passes for 770 yards and 12 touchdowns. Against Ole Miss, he tied a school record for most touchdowns in a single game (4). This record came in addition to 8 catches for 170 yards and that game. This was one of three games where he accounted for multiple touchdowns. If the level of competition was a concern, insert the SEC Championship game against Alabama, where he caught seven passes for 129 yards and a touchdown.

Pitts finished declared for the 2020 NFL Draft as the Mackey Award winner, earned unanimous first-team All-American, and was a Heisman finalist. By the way, he’s 6-foot-6 and 245 pounds and runs a 4.44 40-yard dash.

Pitts was as close to a perfect Tight end prospect as one could get, so it came as no surprise that he was drafted higher than any Tight end in NFL history. In rookie drafts, he was selected anywhere from first overall to seventh overall.

The Good

As a rookie, Pitts ranked fourth among tight ends in team target share. He was 30th in the league when including wide receivers. He finished the season second in air yards and first in yards per reception. These feats are more meaningful when considering the Falcons were league average in passing attempts and passing yards with Matt Ryan at quarterback.

Pitts’ 1026 receiving yards were the most by a rookie in team history. He fell just 50 yards short of breaking Mike Ditka’s rookie tight end receiving record of 1076. He was just one of three tight ends to pass the 1,000 yards threshold. He also made the Pro Bowl as a rookie.

There were some questions about his usage in year one is given that his only target competition was Russell Gage and Olamide Zacchaeus for much of the season. Since the Tight end landscape is a barren wasteland, Dynasty managers were able to look past this minor blemish. Especially given everything else Pitts managed to accomplish with a less-than-ideal workload.

After 2021 people had seen enough. Some had Pitts ranked in the first round of single quarterback drafts. Some even had him ranked first overall because they believed in positional value. Theoretically, if we can get a top wide receiver in our Tight end slot, we’d have a huge advantage over the other managers who were deciding between Mike Gesicki or Hayden Hurst. This is a great idea, except it appears as though the 2022 Atlanta Falcons don’t care about our fantasy teams.

The Bad

Due to the nature of tight end, we’re not asking for much. This is the theory behind Pitts, whom many consider in a different category than any other tight ends. He’s widely considered more comparable to Calvin Johnson than Tony Gonzalez, and it would be a reasonable assessment if only Arthur Smith agreed.

Through 11 starts in 2022, Pitts has been targeted just 59 times. He has 28 receptions for 356 yards and 2 touchdowns. The Falcons moved on from Matt Ryan and replaced him with Marcus Mariota, which was widely considered a wash. That has not been the case. The Falcons are last in the league in terms of pass rate.

Not only has volume gone down across the board, but Drake London was added just one pick later than Pitts in the 2021 Draft. Typically, we’d be fine with high-level receiving talent around a promising young tight end, but when the team barely passes and is widely inefficient when doing so, it’s difficult to weather that storm.

At his current pace, he’s going to produce just over half his yardage total from last year, and he still hasn’t gotten going in the touchdown category.

Conclusion

Pitts entered the season as Dynasty’s consensus top overall tight end. In redraft, most agreed he was, at worst, the third-best option. He’s currently the tght end 21 in terms of average PPR points. Simply put: we can’t have that.

The thesis around drafting Pitts so early in rookie drafts was that his price couldn’t possibly go down. The great Twitter debate has raged on over his entire career as another crowd of people insisted there was no reason to draft Pitts at all. They believed he would be far easier to trade for in the future as the shine wore off his “Unicorn” moniker. I fear both sides got this wrong.

This season has been nothing short of a catastrophic letdown for anyone who rostered Pitts. In that sense, one could say the trade-later side of the argument prevailed. That is not the case. See, anyone who was in favor of Pitts at his incredibly high valuation because of what he could do in terms of positional value already rosters him. The people who thought they could trade for him later didn’t consider who their trade partners may be.

The Falcons currently have the seventh overall pick and are in a decent position to draft a quarterback. They also have a high enough pick to take a swing on a veteran via trade. Under the assumption that most options are an improvement over Mariota and Desmond Ridder, Pitts would be a fantastic trade target as we can all agree that most of his misfortune is due to his environment, but good luck prying him away from the managers who have been by his side since draft day. The Sunk Cost Fallacy is never more prevalent than in dynasty fantasy football.