Streaming Tight Ends: Week 12 Fantasy Football Targets

Nov 21, 2017

We’ve reached crunch time in the fantasy season, and by now you’re either streaming the TE position weekly, happy with a TE1 that you initially drafted or have picked up a guy along the way who puts up enough points to satisfy each week. No matter where your roster sits on the TE spectrum, you should always be reevaluating to gauge if your current TE is worthy of starting this week, or if you’re better off hitting the waiver wire in search of a better option. As a strategy, streaming aims to find players with above-average matchups, which can hopefully translate to TE1 production for your fantasy squad.

The main focus of our research when looking at a TE’s matchup is 4for4’s schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed (aFPA) metric. As the season continues to progress and more data is available, aFPA becomes more and more reliable, using rolling 10-week data. Targets and efficiency metrics are also considered when coming up with weekly TE streamers.

The goal in streaming is to roster a player that is going to return TE1 fantasy points and this week I was able to sneak a few up there. Week 11’s No.1 TE was Ricky Seals-Jones with 20.4 PPR points, who was not on my streamer list, but I did recommend his teammate Jermaine Gresham so I’m taking mild credit for recognizing the Cardinals’ weak opponent. Marcedes Lewis came in as TE11 with 10.6 PPR points, followed by Tyler Kroft’s 9.2 as TE13. After 11 weeks of football, 4for4 streaming candidates are averaging 9.1 PPR fantasy points per game, which currently ranks as TE16. The optimal TE streamer has 195.7 PPR fantasy points, enough for TE1 on the season thus far. On to Week 12 and the players who can bail you out of a bad draft choice, or simply provide the weekly streaming points you crave.

In order to provide advice that you can actually implement, candidates for streaming must be available in at least 40% of Yahoo fantasy leagues.

Tyler Kroft (CIN) vs. CLE

Over the past five weeks, Kroft ranks 12^th in both targets and PPR points among TEs, on a team whose offense has struggled to put points on the board. He’s averaging 8.5 points per contest in that time frame and has been a quality streamer for us this season.

Week 12 brings the Browns, a defense ranked 30th in the league in aFPA, allowing 17.6 schedule-adjusted PPR points to opposing TEs weekly. Kroft should continue to put up points for you on Sunday as you hopefully move closer to a fantasy playoff berth. He’s still stream-able at 45% ownership in Yahoo leagues so grab him while you still can.

Continue reading for three more Tight End streaming options and three deep league candidates...