5 Tight End SOS Beneficiaries & 3 Ideal Late-Round Pairings for Fantasy Football

Jul 20, 2022

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Once you bypass the top two tiers of tight ends in your fantasy draft, you are already in an area to be fighting upstream at the position for the rest of the season. You’re likely going to be looking towards the waiver wire for streaming options at some point throughout the season. As such, it’s helpful to look ahead at individual players’ strength of schedule to project which tight ends have the most favorable path in front of them.

Useful Tools and Analysis: Most Predictable Tight End Stats | aFPA | Hot Spot Tool | TE Multi-Site ADP

By looking ahead and evaluating each team’s schedule, you can increase your chances of drafting a mid-to-low-tier player who could hit it big, therefore potentially eliminating the need for the waiver wire or streaming. No matter which strategy you choose to implement this season, walking into your draft knowing which tight ends will benefit from the softest schedules gives you a leg up on your competition.

So, let’s dig into those breezy schedules with an extra-attentive eye towards early-season exploitable stretches.

SOS Beneficiaries

Albert Okwuegbunam/Greg Dulcich, Broncos

Coming right out of the gate, the Broncos have one of the easiest projected strengths of schedule in the NFL, including Week 1’s opponent, the Seattle Seahawks. Amongst the Broncos' first eight opponents, seven finished 2021 in the back half of the league in schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to the tight end position, with five finishing in the bottom-six. It’s truly set up to be a remarkable start for Denver tight ends, even if some of these teams improve how they cover the position. The offensive environment and possible hot-start would equate to an easy selection of Albert Okwuegbunam as a fringe top-12 fantasy TE if it weren’t for a certain NFL Draft selection coming in and mucking it all up.

SB Nation’s Denver Broncos scribe AJ Schulte (@AJDraftScout) believes Greg Dulcich has a lot of potential in this offense for 2022, citing how the rookie’s downfield prowess “meshes with the style of tight end Russell Wilson has targeted most often in his career.”.

Even our own Jennifer Eakins would like us to have confidence that “Dulcich should be more than great hair”, pointing out that Okwuegbunam is a holdover from the prior regime, while Dulcich was a Day 2 selection under GM George Paton and new head coach Nathaniel Hackett.

I would strongly suggest giving both articles a read, as they both make numerous great points, but I’m still under the impression that the Broncos traded Noah Fant away with full intentions of making Albert O the unquestioned TE1 for Denver. If Dulcich begins to wrest away time, it will likely be later in the season, when the string of softer scheduling will be dried up, leaving the rookie to fend off some of the better TE defenses the league has to offer. If we have to drop Albert O during the Week 9 bye, so be it; eight weeks of solid TE production for a 12th-round pick is worth it.