Streaming Tight Ends: Week 8 Fantasy Football Targets

Oct 24, 2017

Six teams are on the couch with a bye in Week 8, so it’s time to evaluate your roster 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 I’m using my mulligan on Week 7, which turned out to be a mess. My best streamer was Ben Watson as TE19 on the week with 8.8 PPR points, and it just gets uglier from there. After seven weeks of football, 4for4 streaming candidates are averaging 8.82 PPR fantasy points per game, which currently ranks as TE16. The optimal TE streamer has 124 PPR fantasy points, enough for TE1 on the season thus far. On to Week 8 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.

Tyler Kroft (CIN) vs. IND

Kroft put up an impressive 12.3 PPR points on a Steeler’s DST that ranked eighth in the league against opposing TEs heading into Week 7. The third-year Bengals’ TE is having himself a nice little season with Tyler Eifert on the shelf, as the overall TE8 in points since he became the starter in Week 4. Kroft was third in targets on Cincinnati’s offense on Sunday, and has become a legit weapon for Andy Dalton in 2017.

The Bengals get a home contest in Week 8 versus a Colts DST that allowed rookie George Kittle to score 21.3 PPR points in Week 5 and Marcedes Lewis to find the end zone plus 29 receiving yards on Sunday. Kroft has plenty of touchdown upside and could be called upon often this week, as Cincinnati looks to get back towards .500 in the AFC North. Kroft is sitting on 84% of Yahoo waiver wires so there’s a solid chance he’s there for you this week.

Continue reading for three more tight end streaming options, and three deep league candidiates.