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Finding bargains in a salary cap draft is how you take a good draft and turn it into a great one. It is how you turn a team that can make the playoffs into a team that can win a title. Targets aren’t limited to low-dollar players. Instead, they are players you anticipate your league being lower on than their value. Finding those deals isn’t always easy, but that’s why you’re here. Below are some tight-end targets at all price points.
Elite Targets
In salary cap drafts, you have the rare opportunity to shove your chips in on a player who hasn’t completely broken out yet. Pitts is young, had a dynamic rookie year, and is one of the top options in the Falcons’ offense. In PPR leagues last year, Pitts finished as the TE5, and had he scored five touchdowns from the 1,018 yards he gained, would’ve been TE3 behind Mark Andrews and Travis Kelce. It’s hard to overstate how impressive that is for a rookie. The advantage of a salary cap league over a serpentine draft is that you may not want to reach to grab Pitts in the third round in your snake draft this year, but you can attempt to budget to nab him in your salary cap draft for a price that should be markedly lower than the top guys. Betting on young players with historic rookie seasons is how you want to do salary cap drafting. While Pitts might not be cheap based on the strictest definition of the word, you could look back on his TE4-5 price and think it was a bargain.
Usually, Kittle is being overdrafted every summer. But that has changed for the first time in his career. Drafters have finally had enough of the uncertainty in the target distribution and the tendency for Kittle to get nicked up and miss time. He’s now been pushed out of the Top 4 players at the position, and therein lies your chance to score a deal on one of the best talents in the league. Kittle, like Pitts, won’t be cheap from a raw dollar perspective, but he’s likely to be the lowest price you’ve seen on him since his rookie year. That makes him a great target in salary cap drafts. Kittle is someone you should wait to nominate until some money has left the room because his name still carries weight. If people have a lot of money, they’ll use it on him. But if at all possible, you should try to get him out there before the top guys have been rostered because people will be saving their money for Kelce or Andrews.
Middle-Tier Targets
It’s fair to criticize Hockenson for failing to finish another season as he’s now played 12 or fewer games in two of his three seasons. On top of that, the Lions certainly have a huge increase in competition for targets from last summer to this summer. They added Jameson Williams and D.J. Chark, and Amon-Ra St. Brown emerged down the stretch. Yet, these reasons are precisely why Hockenson is a salary cap target this year. The general sentiment is down on him, so he should be fairly cheap compared to the top options. The talent is still there. and this year. grabbing him for around $10 seems entirely possible.
After the Zach Ertz trade to Arizona last year, Goedert was a Top 5 fantasy tight end in PPR leagues. His snap count significantly elevated the rest of the season, and he led the league in yards per route run at the position. With A.J. Brown in town demanding attention from defenses, if Jalen Hurts makes any advancement as a passer, then it seems like TE5 is the floor for Goedert in 2022. There aren’t many tight ends with that profile who can be had for $8-$11 in salary cap rooms. The Philadelphia tight end should be a target for drafters missing out on the top options.
Bargain Shopping
The temperature on him seems to be rising, so his salary cap price may end up being too high by peak draft season in mid to late August. But right now, he’s still being valued as the TE14. Kmet is another example of someone who, like Pitts, saw a smaller-than-expected touchdown total. Otherwise, the narrative on both players might be vastly different. The Bears’ tight end had 93 targets, 60 receptions, and over 600 yards but failed to record a single score. The Chicago offense might not be pretty in 2022, but the risk is more than accounted for in the price to get Kmet. Don’t pay more than $4-$5 for him, or it destroys the point of targeting him, but if you can get him in that range, then he’s a perfect start to your tight end room if you’re going cheap at the position.
While he doesn’t have a big fantasy season on his resume, he goes to a potent offense for 2022 and has the physical skills to take advantage. Unfortunately, the Chargers only threw to their top tight end option 83 times last year, but that was enough to produce over 500 yards and 4 touchdowns. While not awe-inspiring numbers, the name of the game at tight end late in a salary cap draft is to find good players in strong offenses that produce touchdown opportunities. Everett checks all the boxes and won’t cost more than $1-$2.
Since Hooper left Atlanta for Cleveland, his fantasy stock has fallen every year. Now, as a forgotten man, he’s moved on to Tennessee and suddenly has a fantasy pulse. There are already reports coming out of Titans offseason activities that he and quarterback Ryan Tannehill are developing a rapport. Taking a chance on Hooper resurrecting his career in a different offense isn’t a bad bet to make. After all, is it more likely that Hooper suddenly turned into a bad player in Cleveland or that he wasn’t used properly? Given more opportunities with the Titans, Hooper could easily rebound and provide a big return on his de minimis price tag.
With the news of Rob Gronkowski’s retirement, Brate becomes the beneficiary for fantasy purposes. Even with Gronkowski in the fold, Brate saw the 10th-most targets in the red zone last season, an impressive feat for someone routinely playing fewer than 50 percent of the snaps. While Brate’s position as the 27th tight end off the board is likely to rise the closer the season gets, salary cap drafters should continue to try to roster the Buccaneers tight end for $1 near the end of drafts for his connection with Brady alone.
Conclusion
Attacking the tight end spot in a salary cap draft requires a different strategy than the running back and wide receiver positions. A lot of teams in your drafts will roster only one tight end, so patience is usually all that is required to score some deals. Finding deals at running back or wide receiver requires more finesse and timing, but you can check out some targets at those positions in the last two parts of this series.
In general, finding targets in a salary cap draft requires you to be able to read the room, and the whole fantasy community, to figure out how to find value as you move through the draft. The main goal, however, is to remember that you win your leagues by getting deals on some of these targets while paying market value for the truly top-tier, sought-after players. If you pair both of those together, that is how you end up pushing your salary cap roster over the top to make a run at a championship.