Streaming Tight Ends: Week 9 Fantasy Football Targets

Oct 31, 2017

Six more teams are on the couch with a bye in Week 9, 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 three of my streamers from last week did just that. My pride and joy was Jack Doyle as TE1 on the week with 30.1 PPR points, followed by TE11 Tyler Kroft with 9.6 and Ben Watson’s 8.6 as TE13. After eight weeks of football, 4for4 streaming candidates are averaging 9.33 PPR fantasy points per game, which currently ranks as TE14. The optimal TE streamer has 154.1 PPR fantasy points, enough for TE1 on the season thus far. On to Week 9 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.

Jack Doyle (IND) @ HOU

The fact that Doyle is only 52% owned is pretty baffling, but he qualifies as a streamer this week. In a devastating one-point loss to the Bengals, Doyle managed a whopping 30.1 PPR points as the highest-scoring TE on the week. Doyle was the highest targeted player on the Colts’ offense in Week 8, doubling those of star wideout T.Y. Hilton.

Week 9 brings a trip to Houston to face the division rival Texans, who are coming off a tough loss themselves. Normally in the middle of the pack in terms of aFPA, the Texans allowed Jimmy Graham 19.9 PPR points in the form of 39 receiving yards with two touchdowns on Sunday. Indy QB Jacoby Brissett has had success with Doyle, (who seems to have cured himself of the dropsies), and should look to him often in Week 9. It’s doubtful the TE will be streamer eligible moving forward, so grab him this week if you can.