Fantasy Football Debate: Mark Andrews vs. T.J. Hockenson

Mark Andrews and T.J. Hockenson are being drafted five picks apart, both as top-three tight ends in current Yahoo! ADP. In this debate, Neil Dutton will explain why he prefers Hockenson while Pranav Rajaram argues for the Ravens star tight end.

Read other player-specific analysis from the 4for4 staff: Player Profiles | TE Rankings

The Case for T.J. Hockenson

Neil: I should immediately stress that I am a massive supporter of Mark Andrews. I loved him in college, I loved him coming into the draft, and I've loved everything he has done in the NFL. The guy is a bona fide beast at fantasy sport's most volatile position. I love him.

But I'm happy to take T.J. Hockenson over Andrews in 2023.

After joining the Vikings ahead of Week 9 last season, Hockenson saw an elite-level workload as the clear second chair in the offense behind Justin Jefferson. Hockenson drew 21.8% of the Vikings' targets, earning 8.6 looks per game. He converted these into 5.9 catches for 50.2 yards per outing and averaged 10.0 half-PPR points per game. The Vikings waved goodbye to Adam Thielen this offseason, taking with him the bulk of the 143 vacated targets from a year ago, and replaced him with a rookie in Jordan Addison. Addison is a good prospect and should be able to carve out a role for himself in the Vikings' passing game almost immediately. But I don't think he's going to cannibalize all the Thielen targets himself. Even if he did, Hockenson's workload last season, if repeated in 2023, is more than enough to keep him in the conversation as the tight end to have on your roster if you don't roster Travis Kelce.

Andrews didn't exactly have a bad year last year, I should point out. His target share was better than Hockenson's, with Andrews commanding a 28.5% share of the Ravens' looks. But the Ravens' pass attempts were not as high as the Vikings, and Andrews's raw numbers came out as 7.6 targets, 4.9 receptions, and 56.5 yards per game. Andrews has the edge when it comes to efficiency, but volume is what the fantasy manager of today is seeking.

Andrews may well struggle to put up better numbers than he did last year due to the changes made by the Ravens this offseason. They replaced Greg Roman as offensive coordinator with Todd Monken, a slightly more forward-thinking coach than his predecessor. Monken is likely to make the Ravens slightly more pass-happy than they have been in the past, which in theory is good news for Andrews. But while Hockenson only really has Jefferson for serious competition, the Ravens' pass-catching corps looks a little more robust than in previous years. Odell Beckham and Zay Flowers will join Rashod Batemon in looking to catch Lamar Jackson's eye, not to mention his passes. This competition for targets may leave Andrews, while not exactly starved of targets, some way short of his previously high target shares.

The Vikings will also probably take to the air more often than the Ravens, even with Monken calling the offense. Last season, the Vikings' neutral game pass rate was 63%. The Ravens were at 49%. I expect them to pass more often, but in Monken's last two stops as offensive coordinator (Tampa Bay in 2018 and Cleveland in 2019), his neutral pass rate was only 59%.

Andrews is still likely to be a great addition to any fantasy roster in 2023, don't get it twisted. But in my eyes, the obstacles he faces are significant, and unless things go drastically wrong are likely to keep him behind Hockenson in fantasy football in the new season.

The Case for Mark Andrews

Pranav: Travis Kelce has had a vice grip on the tight end position for the better part of the last decade, finishing as the overall TE1 in seven of the last eight seasons. However, today, I’ll be talking about the one guy who has had a better season than Kelce in recent years—Mark Andrews, who finished as the TE1 and earned first-team All-Pro honors back in 2021. Here’s a look at why I prefer Andrews to T.J. Hockenson, another challenger for Kelce’s throne in fantasy football this year.

Andrews burst onto the fantasy football scene in 2019, when he was the TE3 in points per game and was a bona fide league winner. Since then, Andrews has remained one of the best tight ends in the NFL, finishing top four at the position in each of the last four seasons. With this being said, while Andrews’ counting stats have generally been great, he hasn’t always delivered from an opportunity cost point of view. Last year, for example, his TE4 finish wasn’t bad by any means, but it was a bit of a disappointment after he was taken in the second round of most drafts. However, that isn’t all his fault—quarterback Lamar Jackson missed the last six weeks of the regular season due to injury, which severely diminished the value of Andrews and the Ravens' offense as a whole. For comparison, Andrews averaged 11.9 fantasy points before Jackson’s injury, and just 7.0 afterwards.

I believe that the most important quality of an elite fantasy football tight end is that they are the top receiving option in their offense. Andrews is exactly that—he has led the Ravens in targets in three of the last four seasons. While the Ravens made some solid additions to their receiver room—namely drafting Zay Flowers and signing Odell Beckham—it feels like those two, along with third-year receiver Rashod Bateman, will eat into each others' volume while Andrews’ remains the same. After all, Andrews is the only one that has an established connection with Jackson, which will especially come into play in the red zone.

Taking a look at the other side, Hockenson is a great player but I’m a little more hesitant about drafting him. While he did finish as the overall TE2 last season, the bulk of his production came from just two weeks—a 179-yard, two-touchdown performance in Week 4 and a 109-yard, two-touchdown performance in Week 16. In fact, if we remove those two performances, Hockenson goes from averaging 10.6 fantasy points per game to just 7.1. That level of inconsistency isn’t something I want if I’m selecting a tight end in the first four rounds of a fantasy draft.

Hockenson is also clearly not the No. 1 option on his team, as Justin Jefferson, arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL, will see an immense amount of volume in the passing game. Hockenson will probably be the No. 2 unless first-round pick Jordan Addison is incredible from day one, but the lack of undisputed volume will hinder his ceiling. The way I see it, if you want to take a tight end early in your draft, the difference between the third and the fourth round isn’t that drastic. So, you might as well take the more proven option with a clearer path to volume in a better offense, even if it is a round earlier.