Didn’t make your fantasy championship? Good. More time to focus on the REAL money maker. Daily Fantasy Sports. DFS won’t leave you in the ditch and tell you “You can’t play this week”. DFS is for everyone and you can make as many teams as you please! And you can win a heck of a lot more money than in your hometown league, that’s for sure. This week there is no Monday Night Football so we’ve got a nice big slate to choose from with a LOT of great tight ends. So let’s dig in!

Be sure to check out the rest of the NFL DFS Coaches and DFS Watch List throughout the week!

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As a reminder, here is how we separate the groups here.  We do it this way so that you have an option no matter how much (or how little) money you have available to spend on the tight end.

Top Tier:  the safest and most expensive guys available if you want to pay up

Mid Tier: affordable players that offer the best bang for your buck

Value Tier: the bargain bin players that are risky by nature but can have the huge upside in terms of value created

Fades: The guys we feel are the worst value proposition that you should actively avoid

For Week 2 we now have actual statistical information from the first week to analyze so this is where the real money is made.

Top Tier

Travis Kelce, Kansas City Chiefs

Lean into the narrative. Travis Kelce is hanging out with pop stars? Who cares. Travis Kelce doesn’t “look right”? He leads all tight ends in fantasy points per game. Within the last calendar month, he has a stretch of games with 91, 81, and 83 yards. In October he had a game with 12 catches for 179 yards and a TD. He is now a drastically different player than what we saw then somehow? Travis Kelce is still capable of great things and this week he gets arguably the best matchup a tight end can have in the Cincinnati Bengals. 

We rarely ever get a time when folks are fading him so let’s lean into it. He’s 13-14% of your budget on all three platforms but FanDuel especially never gives us good bargain bin options so 13% over there sounds great to me.

Evan Engram, Jacksonville Jaguars

Trey McBride isn’t a bad play against the Eagles but he’s going to be incredibly popular - our Projected Rostership Tool has him at 18.8% with no other TE above 14%. We prefer the slightly sneakier play of Evan Engram, especially on DraftKings where he is cheaper than McBride despite it being full PPR. Engram has gotten at least five targets in every single game this season and he’s coming off a stretch with 9+ receptions in three of his last four. A big reason for that is his usage in the slot since Christian Kirk has been out, as you can see in the Tweet below. He’s ~11.5% of your budget on all three platforms - McBride is 11.7% and 11.8% on DK and FanDuel but only 10.5% on Yahoo so we actually don’t mind McBride over there. We are using Engram on the other two.

Mid Tier

Darren Waller, New York Giants 

There are a lot of good options in this range. And we like Isaiah Likely a lot as well. So, if you are someone who makes a lot of lineups, mix in some Likely at a very similar price to Waller. But Waller is in an incredibly unique situation. Since returning he’s ramped up from ~40% of the snaps in his first game back to 63% this past week. He gets Tyrod Taylor back at QB who is an upgrade over DeVito. Darren Waller was Tyrod’s preferred target and three of his four best games came with T-Mobile at QB. 

In fact, Tyrod’s most targeted player all-time in his career is tight end Charles Clay. On top of all that, the Rams are one of the worst teams against the tightened. Waller is 9.8% on FanDuel so we aren’t using him there but 9% on DraftKings and 8% on FanDuel is a great price.

Kyle Pitts, Atlanta Falcons 

If it ain't broke, don’t fix it. We’ve been riding this for a few weeks now to great success. The Carolina game was a complete washout with crazy rain but, in the other three games, Pitts has run a 90% route share in each. That’s something he hasn’t done all season. And, with Taylor Heinicke at QB, he now has touchdowns in two of his last three games. He’s still being priced like the Kyle Pitts from earlier this year despite having a rock-solid matchup with the Bears. He’s 9.5% on FanDuel where they hate us but he’s 7.5% and 8.2% on Yahoo and DraftKings respectively where we’ll use him.

Value Tier

Chigoziem Okonkwo, Tennesse Titans

In Week 11 Chigoziem Okonkwo hit a low point, playing only 40% of the snaps while splitting with Trevon Wesco and Josh Whyle. It looked as if they might be moving in a different direction. But since then he’s clawed back that job. Josh Whyle has missed time but was a full participant in practice and was active this week but didn’t play a snap - Chig played 71%. And he had his best day yet with six catches for 63 yards and a touchdown. 

Ryan Tannehill under center seems to help him and there’s always the chance Derrick Henry throws a TD pass to a tight end (which he’s done twice already this season). And the matchup against the Texans has been a soft one for tight ends all year. We already said we are paying up on FanDuel where he’s 9% but he’s 7.2% on DraftKings and 7.5% on Yahoo so we like that. He runs a 4.52 forty which is the same as George Kittle and Chig actually led the league in 40+ yard plays for a tight end last year with three so this could be the week he breaks off the big one.

Gerald Everett, Los Angeles Chargers 

We rarely like using Gerald Everett because he’s not a full-time player. Since joining the Chargers, he has NEVER played more than 80% of the snaps. But, in the first game after firing Brandon Staley, Donald Parham was a healthy scratch (coach’s decision). And Everett played 70% of the snaps (something he’s only done four times since joining the Chargers and twice this year despite all the injuries). 

All that said, his price is simply too good against one of the worst TE defenses - a team he caught five balls against just two weeks ago. That makes him a great cash game option but one we don’t really love in GPPs. He’s 8.8% on FanDuel (typical) but he’s only 6% on Yahoo and 7% on DraftKings which is simply too low for the floor he gives you. If Donald Parham does play this week, Everett is still an okay play but not nearly as interesting as they do rotate.

Bonus Dart Throw

Stone Smartt, Los Angeles Chargers 

Our old pal. Stone Cole Smartt (yes, that is his real middle name). We mentioned how Donald Parham was a healthy inactive. Well, that means more work for our guy Smartt who hauled in a 23-yard reception. In fact, at 11.2 yards, he has the third-highest aDot of any tight end with 10 targets meaning he can take chunks. We saw him break off the 50-yard TD last time we were throwing TE darts. He’s the minimum price on Yahoo and DraftKings and $4,300 is pretty close to the $4,000 minimum on FanDuel. Though $4,300 is still 7.2% of your budget compared to 5% on the other sites. Either way, if Donald Parham is a healthy scratch again, I’m throwing a dart on the QB converted to WR converted to TE.

Fades

George Kittle, San Francisco 49ers

It’s not that I don’t think George Kittle is capable of big plays. Of course, he is. I just worry sometimes that it won’t be necessary. In the games against the Cardinals, for instance, he had one catch in the first matchup and two in the second one. And that’s not because they are particularly good against the tight end or that he is bad, they just didn’t need to go crazy throwing the football. In fact, Kittle this year has NINE games with three or fewer catches. In DFS, I’m looking to catch lightning in a bottle by finding shootouts where teams are chucking it all over with their backs against the ropes. The 49ers are 12.5-point favorites against Washington with Jacoby Brissett starting so it might just be another game where CMC waxes the floor with them and then everyone hops on the bus.

Taysom Hill, New Orleans Saints

It boggles my mind that I need to write this but I STILL have people asking me about Taysom Hill. Not just in DFS but in CHAMPIONSHIP matchups. How did you even survive this far? The fact that Tampa Bay is one of the worst teams against the tight end does not matter to Taysom because he’s not a tight end. He has a banged-up foot. He has seven total combined yards in all phases over the last two weeks. Start someone else.