Streaming Tight Ends: Week 5 Fantasy Football Targets

Oct 03, 2017

Week 5 is upon us, and it’s time to evaluate your roster choices and gauge if the TE you drafted is worthy of starting this week, or if you’re better off hitting the waiver wire in search of a better option. If you purposely approached drafting the TE position with the intention of streaming weekly, I’ve got you covered there, as well. 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 Week 4 was pat-on-the-back worthy. My best streamer was Tyler Kroft, as TE1 on the week with 24.8 PPR points, followed by Cameron Brate with 18, and Charles Clay with 16.2.

After four weeks of football, 4for4 streaming candidates are averaging 9.7 PPR fantasy points per game, which currently ranks as TE10. The optimal TE streamer has 76.1 PPR fantasy points, enough for TE1 on the season thus far. On to Week 5 and the players who can bail you out of a bad draft choice, fill in for a player on bye, 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.

Cameron Brate (TBB) vs. NEP

Brate has been targeted 13 times this season, to O.J. Howard’s eight, and has double the target rate per snap (13.1%) as the rookie TE (6.6%) heading into Week 5. Both guys should produce against New England on Thursday night, but barring an injury, Brate should continue to put up more fantasy points weekly.

The Patriots are the third-worst DST at defending the TE position with an aFPA of 19.2 PPR points so far this season, making this a solid matchup for the Bucs’ TE. This may be the last week of the season for Brate to be streamer eligible, but at 49% ownership, he’s a great option at home against a porous Patriots secondary.

Continue reading for three more streaming tight end options, plus four deep league candidates...