Streaming Tight Ends: Week 5 Targets

Oct 02, 2018

We’ve reached Week 5 already. Slow down NFL season! Now’s the perfect time to evaluate your roster choices and gauge if the tight end you drafted is worthy of starting or if you need to hit the waiver wire in search of a better option. If you purposely approached drafting the tight end position with the intention of streaming weekly, I’ve got you covered there, too. As a strategy, streaming aims to find players with above-average matchups, which can hopefully translate to TE1 production for your fantasy squad.

For streaming purposes, 4for4’s Schedule-Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed (aFPA) is a metric we rely heavily on to determine weekly matchup strength. 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 choosing weekly streamers.

4for4 rankings also come into play here and should always be considered when making league-specific roster decisions.

The goal is to roster a player who will return TE1 fantasy points. Week 4 was a mediocre one in that department. Geoff Swaim at TE8 was my high point with 12.9 PPR points, followed by Ricky Seals-Jones posting an ok 7.2 PPR points. The optimal TE streamer has 60.8 PPR fantasy points—good enough for TE2 on the season thus far. On to Week 5, and the players who can fill in on a bye week, bail you out of a bad draft choice or simply provide the weekly streaming points you crave.

In order to provide advice you can actually implement, candidates for tight end streaming consideration must be owned in no more than 40 percent of Yahoo fantasy leagues.

Top Streaming Picks

Ricky Seals-Jones, (Cardinals) at 49ers

With the tight end landscape so incredibly barren this season, Ricky Seals-Jones (RSJ) is one of the more consistent point scorers eligible for streaming. He’s only seen the end zone once thus far, but has 10 catches for 123 yards through the first four weeks. Rookie Josh Rosen tossed a perfect ball to him for 31 yards on Sunday. If the duo can continue to develop chemistry beyond his first real NFL start we’ll see an uptick in Seals-Jones' fantasy output.

Week 5 has Arizona heading west to face a 49ers DST ranked 27th in TE aFPA, surrendering 16.2 PPR points to the position weekly so far in 2018. At an ownership of 22 percent in Yahoo leagues, RSJ is a guy with TE1 potential this week.