Tight End Moves to Make This Month

Photo: USA Today Sports

One of the best parts about dynasty fantasy football leagues is the year-long commitment to the team. The ongoing nature of dynasty teams creates a lot of advantages for dynasty GMs who use good strategy and roster construction. Free agency, trades, the NFL Draft, and the different news cycles lead to different strategies for different positions. This series will focus on different moves to make this month.

Tight end move to make this month: Trade for Travis Kelce

The tight end position can be a frustration in dynasty fantasy football. The position has a slow development curve for young players and can have a really low payoff. Each year, there are debates about breakout tight ends, who, even if they outproduce their offseason cost, feel like a disappointment.

If you do not have an elite option at the tight end position, you should take a hard look at making an upgrade to an elite option like Travis Kelce. Yes, he'll be expensive. But here's why we think he'll be worth it.

Settling Your Tight End Position

One of the keys to the tight end position is understanding which tight ends have a significant ceiling. In 2022, 16 tight ends caught at least 50 passes. Similarly, 16 had at least 500 receiving yards. This creates a landscape where a lot of tight ends perform very closely in a very flat tier.

For example, the TE9 in points per game (PPG), Dalton Schultz, averaged 9.6 PPG. TE16 in points per game was a tie between Greg Dulcich and Gerald Everett, who each averaged 8.6 PPG. In other words, nine tight ends finished within a point of each other.

Once you go higher at the position, the scoring gaps open wider. The difference between TE3 (12.6) and TE9 (9.6) was 3 PPG. In fact, Travis Kelce, the TE1, was a full 6 PPG better than TE3. And 6 PPG is the difference between TE3 and TE25.

Who Can Be the Top TE?

Accomplishing a TE1 overall finish is very difficult. There are only two active tight ends to finish as TE1 season in a season: Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews. Only nine tight ends have finished as the TE1 since 2000, which is the fewest of any positions. This century, the tight end position has been dominated by a few Hall of Fame caliber players with a sprinkling of peak seasons by others. Whether Andrews is the former or the latter is an open question.

Outside of the top tight ends, there are a group of players who could be the TE1, then a tier break to everyone else. After the prior elite tier of Kelce and Andrews, you should only pay for tight ends you believe could be the TE1 overall. This tier of hopeful elites includes: Kyle Pitts, George Kittle, Darren Waller, Dallas Goedert, and T.J. Hockenson.

After those players, there is a lot of sameness.

This creates two approaches for the non-elite players at the position:

• Avoid paying to move up among the group of non-elites.
• Use the non-elite tight ends to trade for the elite or the hopeful elite.

To differentiate your team, an elite tight end performance can provide a major advantage, but the performance needs to be elite. Since depth options are plentiful and replaceable, the most important thing is to acquire tight ends with elite ceilings because of the production advantage they can offer.

Concept in Action

Travis Kelce is the best blend of an elite ceiling and cost for contending teams in existing leagues. Since 2016, there have been 16 tight ends with 1000-yard seasons. Kelce has SEVEN of those seasons. He is a dominant player at a position where such players can age well. Even if Kelce experiences a 20 to 30% drop in efficiency as he ages, he can still finish as a top 3 scorer in a specific season.

Kelce is a TE4 in our consensus dynasty rankings which considers the more long-term nature of dynasty but is acquirable for well less in the trade market in existing leagues.

Recent Trades Involving Kelce