I have no more excuses, folks.
For fellow fanatics of this game out there who are participating in leagues across this great land of ours, it is time to make certain that we are involving the tight end position as its own, not bunched with a cluster of wide receivers. Those of you that I have had the pleasure of chatting with over the last three years know that I currently run a local league where the tight end is not a required position. So it probably comes as a bit of a shock that I would be authoring an article that defends the merits of a TE-mandatory format. So why am I all of a sudden supporting this idea? For several reasons, actually…
Adding complexity to your draft
In leagues like mine where wide receivers and tight ends are treated the same, it becomes very easy to just plug in the tight ends’ names into your list of projected wide receivers and sort your stats accordingly. In fact, you could say that there would be even more strategy in the 1960’s when you had John Mackey and Mike Ditka in a class of their own, followed by everyone else. In any case, why make life easy for anyone? League participants can get very complacent when things stay the same for too many years and your league can get predictable, which I feel puts everyone on an even playing field. But you are all better than that. Tweak them a little by throwing a wrench into the operation that you will be prepared for since you subscribe to this Award-Winning web site! I mean does it really make sense to have to deliberate between selecting Bernard Berrian or Jason Witten in the sixth round? Not to me. Not when I know that Witten is an elite player at his position against any opponent, and Berrian essentially is a league-average receiver who makes occasional big plays and needs to have the right matchup to exploit in order to be effective. Instead, drafters should have to make the decision between Witten and Santonio Holmes, a much more difficult choice (to me, at least).
Athletic demands of the position
You will see in the next section a more detailed analysis of how the position evolved, but tight ends these days can not be specialists. They must be faster than linebackers and stronger than safeties. They have to be in-line blockers and motion blockers. Split wide or line up in the slot. Be reliable pass receivers and jump-ball artists in the end zone. Gator wrestlers and chicken pluckers…ah, you get the idea. Versatility is more important than ever now at the tight end spot.
Some teams like the Denver Broncos have employed a two-TE system with the “blocker” (Dan Graham, who is a better receiver than he gets credit for) and “receiver” (Tony Scheffler, an athletically gifted receiver with great hands, who is a poor blocker and injury-prone). However, with a salary cap in place and roster spots limited, a multi-faceted tight end comes in at a premium. We just watched the Lions use a first-round pick to draft Brandon Pettigrew from Oklahoma State, a well-regarded blocker and mismatch creator in the passing game. A few years ago, Vernon Davis was drafted sixth overall, as was Kellen Winslow, Jr. in 2004. Teams have shown a willingness to pay big money to go after a young kid who exhibits great physical tools that need translation to a football setting (even if it is done with mixed results).
Speaking of the draft, we also recently witnessed Tony Gonzalez, who is now 33 years old coming off of yet another Hall-of-Fame season on a truly horrific 2-14 Chiefs team, was traded to Atlanta for a SECOND-ROUND pick in the 2009 NFL Draft. Even Kellen Winslow, Jr, (owner of only one good season in Cleveland) was sent to Tampa Bay for this year’s second-round pick and another pick in 2010. When these types of deals get made in the NFL, it is only showing us just how valuable the tight end of today is.
Let’s also remember that the top two tight ends of the decade were both very good basketball players at legitimate Division-I programs (Gonzalez at Cal-Berkley and Antonio Gates at Kent State). It just shows you what kind of specimen can be successful at this position. Wide receivers might get all of the flashy attention, but the burdens of the tight end are far greater and deserve to be separated from the listing of wide receivers in your drafts.
Run-first to pass-first evolution
As I am apt to do, I took a look at some historical performances going back to the 1960s, so if you can hang in there with me you will eventually understand what I am getting at. I started there because the wide-open, bombs-away arrangement of the AFL was formed and became a real threat to the plodding, ball-control, defense-heavy systems of the NFL. A hodgepodge of players lining up inside at the line of scrimmage were able to put together a nice season here and there. However when title games were played we continued to see teams with strong blocking skills and powerful running games dominate the championship landscape through the 1970s. Vince Lombardi’s Packers threw the ball far less than other teams in the league. The 1972 Miami Dolphins perfect season featured two running backs (Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris) notching 1,000 yards rushing each; something that required a lot of blocking from the tight end position (Marv Fleming only had 13 catches). We also know that the Steelers over the past 35-40 years have an established identity of tough, hard-nosed running games. So for a good 10-15 years, we almost underwent a sort of “Dark Age” for receivers in general, let alone the tight end.
When the Oakland Raiders won their first title after completing the 1976 season, they did it with a wild, rambunctious group that really liked to stretch the field with legendary field-blazing WR Cliff Branch. Lost in a 46/1111/12 season by Branch (yes, those were his final 1976 numbers) was the fact that TE Dave Casper emerged from the shadows of Godfather fantasy football tight ends Mackey and Ditka. Casper finished the year with 53/691/10, a statline that would begin a string of similar performances until 1982, consistently landing him in the top ten from a fantasy standpoint for all tight ends in the league. So what do other teams do when a newfangled weapon emerges? They copy it…enter the Era of Kellen Winslow (Senior).
Leave it to an offensive genius like San Diego’s head coach Don Coryell to take full advantage of the skills of one of the first real athletic “freaks” in Winslow. In just his second year, starting in just 11 of the 16 games he played in, Winslow posted a gaudy 89/1290/9 en route to one of the most dominating stretches a tight end had ever had prior to that point in time (if you project the strike-shortened 1982 season, Winslow was on pace to finish with 96/1282/11. If not for a physical breakdown in 1984 followed by re-emergence in 1986 for two seasons, we were looking at a tight end that would like have finished in the top five every year for eight seasons out of all tight ends. With all due respect to Ozzie Newsome who was a fine player (and Hall-of-Famer in his own right), he was not even close to Winslow in my opinion as I felt Newsome hung on for five years past his prime as a stat-compiler.
Now I am sure you are all saying to yourselves, “what does this history lesson have to do with anything?” Well to be honest with you, nothing…YET. What we still have not gotten to yet is creating a list of multiple tight ends that can be relied on year-to-year (which in the past had always been my biggest complaint about a TE-required league…there were simply not enough guys to go around)…until the 1990s began, anyway…
When the ‘90s weren’t beating us down with Vanilla Ice and the like, we did begin to see a shift in offensive philosophy. In a league where it was rare for teams to throw the ball more than 500 times in a season, we started to see totals well over 500 consistently from year-to-year. Because of this, the “establish the run” mantra went out the door; teams started to pass more so they could get an early lead so they could run out the clock. If this was going to be the general philosophy, then more options are needed in the passing game. This way of thinking introduced us to some fantasy superstars at the TE slot: Shannon Sharpe, Ben Coates, Keith Jackson, and even Eric Green, Jay Novacek, and Brent Jones would join the party on occasion.
Now as we wrap up the first decade of the 2000’s, we have seen quite an impressive list of really strong contributors. We already discussed Gonzalez, Gates, and Winslow in some detail already, but look at whom else can be relied on to produce:
Dallas Clark, IND: 135 catches, 1,464 yards, 17 TD in the last 2 years
Jason Witten, DAL: 5-time Pro-Bowler, 3 seasons of 80+ catches and 900+ yards
Visanthe Shiancoe, MIN: role increase led to breakout season (596 yards, 7 TD)
Owen Daniels, HOU: increased catches and yardage in each of his three seasons
John Carlson, SEA: 55/627/5 on a 4-12 team with no discernable skill-position talent
Anthony Fasano, MIA: Set career-highs in three categories (34/454/7)
Greg Olsen, CHI: 54/574/5 in a part-time role
Zach Miller, OAK: Jamarcus Russell’s security blanket (56/778/1)
Tony Scheffler, DEN: 40/645/3 in a part-time role
The players listed above will not be thirty years of age when 2009 kicks off, other than Clark (who will be exactly thirty). There is a lot of room for growth just within this group. Notice how the majority of the tight ends on here had younger, inexperienced, or declining quarterbacks leaning on a reliable source offense like the guys listed here. If you want to include the five guys drafted (Pettigrew, Richard Quinn, Jared Cook, Chase Coffman, and Travis Beckum) in the first three rounds of the 2009 Draft who can all be significant contributors to their respective franchises, I would have to say we are entering the Golden Age of the Tight End. This is all thanks to a need to increase the number of choices for the quarterback in the new pass-first mentality in the league.
An increase in the number of teams running a 3-4 defense is placing an even greater level of importance on the TE
For a little while, the Cover-2/Tampa-2 style of a 4-3 defense was en vogue, especially once the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the 2002 Title running this defense with such ease. When other teams attempted to copy this setup, there just was not enough personnel, particularly at defensive tackle and middle linebacker to respectively generate enough pressure on the quarterback and cover the middle of the field (see: the Detroit Lions). Tight ends were exposing these holes in the deep middle and finding great success (even the David Martins of the world).
However with the consistent success of the Patriots and Steelers in this decade (accounting for six championship appearances and five Super Bowl wins), more and more teams are beginning to shift defensive alignments to produce more 3-4 sets. With the 3-4, offenses need to figure out which of the four linebackers is going to rush the quarterback on passing plays with the three down-linemen. Now, the tight end will also need to be just that much savvier in his route-running abilities to get open, finding the hole left by the rushing linebacker quick enough so the quarterback can find him, adding yet another layer of complexity to the position.
The more athletic players on the previous list who are not the best route-runners (like Shiancoe, Olsen, and Scheffler) may find it more difficult to improve upon their previous seasons as an additional team in their divisions will be switching to the 3-4 (Green Bay, Kansas City) if they do not get better in this aspect of their game. Weeding out some of these players would increase the importance of fantasy draft strategy that much further as I have described in the first point of this article; the gap would widen a bit between the top and middle tier of this position.
Summary
It can certainly look like I am giving no respect to the wide receiver position, but that is not the case. As some of you know, I have also written the third-year breakout wide receiver pieces over the last two years and there is a reason for this phenomenon; wide receiver is difficult to learn since players need to harness speed, run more precise routes than they did in college, establish timing and rapport with the quarterback, etc. What I am saying is that the tight end’s unique responsibilities to the position are more physically demanding and more complex today than ever before in the history of the league, and therefore, TE deserves to have its own separate position on your fantasy rosters. NFL general managers and coaches know how valuable a good one can be and those who are less specialized and more complete help alleviate roster space concerns. After all, the league is specialized enough with kickoff specialists, pass-rushers, third-down running backs, and now “Wildcat” quarterbacks (another opinion for another time).
It is just the way the NFL has progressed and fantasy leagues need to develop accordingly. Now I just have to convince my local league to do the same and take part in this Tight End Evolution.