Dynasty Tight End Strategy

Building a Dynasty · Part 11 of 11

Dynasty Tight End Strategies using DMX

In the Dynasty MetriX database, which ranks prospects by DMX score going back to 2001, it is very clear that at the tight end position there are haves and have nots. While it's not unusual for a lower decile player to hit as we've defined it (in the top 20% of historical rookie production within first five seasons), clearly the hit rates of the top prospects are much better than the hit rates of lower prospects. To prove my point, here is the chart of 5 year production hit rates by decile for tight ends:

When we break out tight ends by decile and look at the first five year's fantasy scoring of each of them several things become obvious:

• Decile 1 & 2 prospects hit much more often than decile 3 through 10 prospects
• Decile 3 through 7 prospects at most have a 15% hit rate, that's equivalent to 1.5 out of every 10 prospects.
• Deciles 3 through 10 have a combined 6.4% hit rate, compared to the combined hit rate of deciles 1 & 2 of 67%

Bottom line, you want to draft decile 1 & 2 tight ends as your go to strategy. While deciles 3 and below do hit from time to time, it's much harder to pick those winners, so unless its a cheap waiver wire pick up or a flyer at the end of your draft, why even bother when if you stick to decile 1 & 2 prospects it brings your chances up to 67%? Digging deeper into the numbers, let's look at the scatter plot of TEs with DMX score on the vertical access and first 5 year production on the horizontal axis:

First, you'll notice that only 3 negative DMX score tight ends hit in the 17 years of measurement. The one all the way to the right is Antonio Gates. You can see as DMX goes up the value of the 5 yr. fantasy production goes up. Now take a look at decile 1 & 2 only scatter plot:

Here you see that most decile 1 & 2 tight ends perform very well. There are more dots to the right of 198 fantasy points then there are below. Certainly these guys are a good bet. Now let's look at the scatter plot for decile 3 and under:

Here you see a predominance of dots to the left of 198 and only 10 out of 218 prospects falling to the right of the 198 threshold. 198 fantasy points in the first 5 years is near the low end of the 20th percentile of rookie production. It's clear from the statistical analysis above that decile 1 & 2 prospects should be invested in long term and those below that level should be ignored at least for drafting purposes, until they are given a couple of years to prove they are up to NFL standards of production. The big question then becomes, which tight ends are decile 1 & 2?

Below is a list of current decile 1 & 2 tight ends, ranked by their DMX score. You'll notice there are all ages represented and so this ranking is simply by DMX score to highlight currently available decile 1 & 2 tight ends. Some of these are over the hill, some seem to never quite put it together and some are on the cusp of breaking out. Whether you have a veteran team and can use an older TE for depth, you are looking for young but unknown players on the waivers or you want some young rookies and second year guys to invest in, this is the subset of players you should be looking at. Notice no Dion Sims, Clive Walford, Jesse James, Seth DeValve, Tyler Higbee, Nick Vannett and Jerell Adams among others. Does this mean don't pick those guys up? No. But it does mean historically the cards are stacked against them and if you do pick them up you don't want to spend much on them. Happy hunting!