Bully Tight End Drafting In Best Ball

This article is taken from the 2023 Footballguys Best Ball Guide. To download the full 60+ page guide for free, click here.

Bully tight end is bulling your league at tight end, leaning into the scarcity of the position, selecting two elite options, depleting the player pool, and locking in elite production from the position weekly. As the name implies, simplicity in concept.

But can it work?

2022 is not the ideal test case. Travis Kelce's 15.4 half PPR points per game put him four points above second-place George Kittle. This positional dominance, combined with the disappointment of other high ADP options like Kyle Pitts and Mark Andrews, capped the overall effectiveness.

But as proof of concept, 2020 is an interesting case. Kelce at 17.4 points per game and Darren Waller at 14.1 were the clear top two options, with George Kittle third at 12.6. With Best Ball, we want the weekly ceiling. That year, the pairing of Kelce and Waller would have delivered eight overall TE1 weeks and 17 other top-10 finishes. The weekly highest scorer between the two would have averaged 19.85 points per game, beating Kelce's TE1 overall finish by two points. Meanwhile, the score not used in the tight end slot still exceeded ten points on seven occasions, averaging 15.8 in those games, a number good for WR4 on the season per game.

In one of the best-case scenarios, You beat the weekly TE1 production by two points while still having an elite producer in the flex position for half of your weeks.

What is the landscape for the 2023 bully tight-end strategy?

Kelce is still the king, but with an early ADP inside the top five, he requires one of the most significant investments of his career. Mark Andrews is next, at 32, while T.J. Hockenson, at 41, and Kittle, at 45, round out the top five. Already there is a problem. Early Best Ball rounds have a reputation for strict adherence to ADP, putting Andrews and Hockenson slightly out of reach. Kittle does line up well with an early selection of Kelce. But there are concerns.

Kittle delivered five weeks as a top-two scorer. That's good. But Kittle was under five points in seven games. That's bad. While Kittle has a nice upside as a compliment, the backup production to fill in flex weeks is lacking. The 49ers present a team with receiving options and questions surrounding the quarterback position. The tight end position is notorious for volatility. To illustrate further, Juwan Johnson had five weeks as a top-four tight end, essentially offering similar boom/bust potential at a TE24 ADP.

Given the impact of top-end quarterbacks working their way up the board and the sacrifice of top-end running back and wide receivers, this group could be better for a bully build. But there is a second path to accomplish a similar goal.

Tight ends two through six and scored between 9.2 and 11.4 half-point PPR points per game. T.J. Hockenson and Zach Ertz of that group represented the Moby Dick mythical white whales of the position. The breakout mid-to-late value. Ertz represented the bottom of the range and only played ten games. But Hockenson represents the path to explore on a bully tight end in 2023.

Hockenson's consensus Best Ball ADP was 89 in the summer of 2022—a mid-seventh-round pick. Tight ends in this range allow selecting an elite quarterback and building a solid base at running back and wide receiver before revisiting the position. He paired well with Kelce, raising the average points per game to 16.8 over Kelce's 15.4. The two combined for 13 top-five positional finishes and gave seven flex games close to ten points per game, averaging 12.4 over that spread, equaling Tee Higgins' WR15 points per game.

Tight ends who land in a similar ADP range as Hockenson: Darren Waller, Dalton Schultz, Evan Engram, and David Njoku. Waller is a past elite producer at the position, but he currently sits with a crowded target room and no quarterback. Schultz is a pending free agent who may leave the production-rich environment of the Cowboys' offense. Engram showed promise in his first year with Jacksonville but is another pending free agent. Njoku is coming off the best year of his career, and Deshaun Watson should continue to grow comfortable as the Browns' quarterback. Any of them can give the weekly upside to pair with Kelce and give aggregate performance above the weekly TE1 average.

The inherent benefit of this approach at tight end is roster flexibility. The early selection of Kelce is a bet he will maintain his health and production. Pairing him with a middle to back end top 12 tight end selection insulates his downside and supplements his ceiling. No other choices at the position are needed with this approach, allowing the ability to deepen the pool of selections at running back and wide receiver.

Bully tight end can work as a strategy to raise the production level to lead your league in production of the position while still giving slot flex production. But it is risky in the current landscape, requiring a high selection of Kelce and locking him in with a player expected to raise their ceiling or betting on players like Andrews and Pitts to recover from varying levels of disappointing 2022 campaigns while foregoing other elite positional production. Risk/reward is always the question, but this strategy lands on risk currently.

• Travis Kelce's ADP makes this strategy difficult in 2023
• In theory, cornering the TE market gives you an advantage over your leaguemates
• "Bully TE" is better in 2023 if you target mid-round TEs
• Because unexpected TEs pop off every year, this strategy is difficult to execute

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