Fantasy Football Today - Tight End Breakouts! Pitts? Kincaid? Ferguson? (08/15 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Want to be in our next mock draft and have a shot at being on air? Check out our St. Jude Draft-a-Thon Store here: https://tiltify.com/@fftfundraising/fantasy-football-today-draftathon-2024 Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts There are potential breakout tight ends in the early, middle and late parts of your drafts, but we don't necessarily agree about which TEs are the best breakout candidates. Is it Jake Ferguson? Kyle Pitts? Dalton Kincaid? Pat Freiermuth? Does Sam LaPorta have another level to reach? We bring on Alfredo Brown of FootballGuys to discuss the position and the best drafting strategies.  Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts SUBSCRIBE to FFT Dynasty on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-dynasty/id1696679179 SUBSCRIBE to FFT Dynasty on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aHlmMJw1m8FareKybdNfG?si=8487e2f9611b4438&nd=1 Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I had no idea. It's time to dominate your fantasy league. Off to the races, and he stays on his feet. He's just going to go the distance. Now, here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, and Heath. It is our last Breakouts episode of the day on Fantasy Football Today, presented by BetMGM. And our last awesome guest is Alfredo Brown of Football Guys.

We are here to talk about tight ends. Alfredo, welcome to the show. Tell us about Football Guys and the wonderful content you have. Oh, so much wonderful content over at Football Guys. You can check us out over on YouTube.com backslash at Football Guys Fantasy. We've got the Football Guys Fantasy Show, the Dynasty Show, the Audible. It's been around for 18 years, so it can legally be drafted if there's a war or anything like that.

So yeah, Football Guy's been around forever, man. Got a lot of cool new content coming out. Yeah, well, I think we're 16 or 17 years, so props to you, Audible. All right, we're going to talk about breakout tight ends. Heath is here. Dave, we're trying to get Dave back. He had to do some video work after the J.J. McCarthy news,

so we're hoping he hops on for this episode. Is this the year? Speaking of Dave, he had called Kyle Pitts a bust on our bust episode earlier today. Is this the year of the Kyle Pitts breakout, Heath? Yeah. I think that Kyle Pitts will finish better relative to his average draft position than he ever has.

How's that? I don't think he's going to set a career high in receiving yards. Probably sets a career high in touchdowns. I think this is a weird position for me, at least, when it comes to talking about breakouts. Because there are several guys that I think are going to score more fantasy points than they ever have. Um, but also I'm not as high on them as any, everybody else. And so I don't draft them like Dalton Kincaid,

right? Right. Okay. Alfredo, is this going to be the year for Kyle Pitts finally get that breakout? I mean, if there was going to be a year, it would hopefully be the

year where arthur smith is gone and kirk cousins gets added in there so i think heath is like saying all the right things here we could see the most touchdowns for kyle pits we could see the most receptions for kyle pits and i guess breakout is relative it feels just like all the first seven or eight tight ends it's all pretty flat so if he breaks out we're kind of just getting exactly what we drafted in the first place so who are you excited about who's a breakout for you alfredo well what are we what are we defining breakout as like how how low are they are they being no idea we have we will never know the answer uh okay best one is break at the minimum best year of their career

and i would say i would say these guys need to have a serious fantasy impact here. They have to be very good. I think for a fantasy breakout, a guy that I think is just still really undervalued and maybe the ADP will catch up as drafts start to happen is Pat Fryermuth. He's sort of been the Jalen Waddell of tight ends. He's had three very different years throughout his career. Tight end 13 as a rookie with a bunch of touchdowns

and then tight end eight in 2023, only scoring two touchdowns, but he was getting the volume. And last season was just a nightmare with injuries, almost exactly like Jalen Waddle. Last season was just a nightmare for everyone on the Steelers.

Frymouth missed five games. He only had two targets inside the 10 yard line, which was one of the big things that stood out to me so it's you really you didn't see him getting the volume you didn't see him getting the touchdowns I think a lot of people are just holding that in the back of their mind so now he's going as a tight end 15 whenever I'm looking for a tight end in this range that could quote break out it's a guy that could be a top two target on his team and get you know six targets at least and be good after the catch have some touchdown upside we know arthur smith likes to use the tight end he actually

uses 11 personnel the least amount of any coach especially last season so we're not going to see pat fry with leave the field there's going to be two tight ends on that field almost all the time so i i really like pat fry which is a guy that could break out. Same with some other guys down the list I'm sure we'll get to. Oh, yeah. Look at this. Joint practice day for our shows. That's terrific. Comment from T. Martin there. Heath, how about you?

Who's a breakout tight end? I'll go with the free space and my number one tight end, and that's Trey McBride. I think that you could see... Some people are expecting a major volume drop-off because Marvin Harrison's there. I don't think that necessarily has to happen. I just expect it to be a very concentrated attack with Harrison seeing 25 to 30% of the targets and McBride 20 to 25%. The difference is that McBride's efficiency will be much better with a true number one wide receiver drawing that attention and i think we see a big uptick in his touchdowns from the year before he's almost always the number three or four tight end and fantasy drafts and really my tight end strategy is just wait until round four and then draft trey mcbride because i think

he should be the first tight enough board where do you have mcbride alfredo he's my tight end three but honestly my first four tight ends are all just a giant amoeba cluster of rankings from Kelsey, Andrews, McBride, and LaFleur all just huddled together. So how do we feel about Dalton Kincaid then? I don't dislike Dalton Kincaid. I've got him ranked pretty high. I know he sounds like you're not too high on Dalton Kincaid. There were enough things last year, the peripheral metrics and the things that he did as a rookie, and now just the opening for targets on this offense,

a Josh Allen-led offense, that leads me to believe that we can get a ceiling. But it's going to be very similar to a confidence where how high is that ceiling? You're kind of already drafting him at where he should be going. So I look back So I'm, I look back and you see, okay, the final 11 weeks of the season,

don't Kincaid and Sam Laporta have nearly the exact same targets, exact same receptions per game, same yards per game. Big difference was touchdowns. So if touchdown variance is a thing that separates Dalton Kincaid from the guy who was tight and one last year, I'm yeah, sure.

I'll bet on that being better this year at a Josh Allen led offense and potentially even more targets for him. And that's, I think I've just made a point that I've not really taken into account enough is that like the, the second half numbers for Kincaid could predict a breakout because second half numbers, while I think they generally don't matter as much as people think they do, they do matter for rookie pass catchers. And so like, if you were telling me that the target share from his last 11, a regular season games is going to get him to 111 targets, then it becomes much easier for me to see the breakout that everyone's drafting him to have. It does bother me a little bit that the two playoff games, he didn't really quite maintain that same pace. I think that he and Kyle Pitts should basically be drafted back-to-back. Because they both have the potential to jump into that top four tier, undoubtedly. And they both have the downside to not really matter this year.

I don't mean that in a you're cutting them, but they're just like tight in 10, tight in 11, who cares? And the thing that I kind of think is weird, and I guess it's because Drake London, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone make the argument that Dalton Kincaid is better at anything than Kyle Pitts. Well, I don't know that people, who's better at,

okay, who's more talented than Kyle Pitts? Which tight ends? I'm not saying that or not. I'm asking which tight ends are more talented than Pitts. Mark Andrews. Travis Kelsey. George Kittle, Brock Bowers.

But Pitts is supposed to be in this discussion. That's how he was drafted. That's what I'm saying, though. I think Kincaid and Pitts should be pretty much back-to-back. They haven't done it yet, but we have reason to believe they could. And they also might just be Jags.

Hey, Dave. Jags is a bit steep, even for pits. What about, how do you feel about Kincaid? I think he's got a chance to be his team's number one target getter. And that's what keeps him in my top five among fantasy tight ends. And we've, we've seen the explosiveness from him as recently as last season, and he can still be a red zone threat and all that other good stuff for Buffalo. But there was a point where I was putting Kincaid ahead of guys like McBride and maybe even Andrews. I can't go there anymore. Just can't.

The explosiveness is kind of what worries me. Because his ADOT was so low and his yak was almost nothing. Like I don't, I don't, I think he almost has to be like a Zach Ertz or maybe he's just, things are going to be different this year. But if he's the same, if he's the guy he was last year, he's got to be like a Zach Ertz volume because there, there wasn't really explosiveness. I get that.

And I guess that's the difference between assuming that last year is who he is or that there's a projection to be made and he's better than that. And the guy that we saw in college is that type of guy. And the answer is, we just don't know. And that's, that's part of the problem with a lot of tight ends with a lot of players in general,

obviously in fantasy. Yeah. So is it worth taking Kincaid in the fifth round, or should we wait for the Kittle-Ingram-Pitts group? Alfredo, what do you think? I'd rather wait if I can. I mean, I think all these guys

end up being good values because it's just so flat throughout those top seven. But if I can go ahead and get George Kittle a full round later i'm more than happy to do that i did that in uh the flex league draft with with jamie where i got george kittle as tight end seven off the board on the five six turn i was really happy to get george kittle as pick 601 like i'll do that with don kincaid going like 16 spots ahead

of that you get fantastic value that way. Yeah. I like that. I think that's good. And if, if I, you leave San Francisco, exactly.

He's wearing, he's back at practice today wearing a San Francisco 49ers shirt. So I think that, I think he's, he's staying in San Francisco. It's Steelers underwear though. I heard it might be Steelers. Somebody made the joke.

He was going to rip it off and have a Steelers shirt at like an NWO type thing. One of my favorite stats at the tight end position. Can I take a break? Sorry. Yeah. your first wager with BetMGM. And here's how you do it. Download the BetMGM app and sign up using bonus code FANTASY. Deposit at least $10 and place your first wager on any game and you will receive up to $1,500 in bonus bets if your bet loses. That's a ton of money, $1,500 in bonus bets. Make sure you use the bonus code FANTASY when you sign up. We are so excited to hear about Heath's awesome tight end stat after this break on FFT. Did you know that across Ontario,

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Visit OntarioOneCall.ca and avoid unnecessary damages to get the job done right. Data sourced from the ORCGA 2023 Dirt Report. Okay, Heath, you're up. Dalton Kincaid had one more target than George Kittle did last year. George Kittle scored 51 more fantasy points. Is that just a fun stat or does that mean something to you? Well, first off,

George Kittle is one of the most efficient tight ends in NFL history. But, I mean, it's a fun stat also. And it highlights that Dalton Kincaid's going to have to be much more efficient this year to justify where he's being directed. Yeah, I get it.

But we usually don't judge rookie tight ends on their... We usually don't judge tight ends on their rookie season efficiency. I feel like because Laporta had such a good year, I think we might be judging Dalton Kincaid's rookie season a little bit harshly. Laporta wasn't actually very efficient either except for the touchdowns. I don't generally judge

tight ends on their opportunity. What do you mean? Like, a rookie tight end doesn't get to play that much. It's not that surprising. A rookie tight end doesn't see a huge target volume. It's not that surprising. A rookie tight end doesn't see a huge target volume. It's not that surprising. I don't know that I necessarily expect his usage down the field or ability to break tackles to change that much.

All right. Well, listen, this show's been like all about Dalton Kincaid, so I think we can put that to rest. He does need to be used down the field more. That would certainly help his explosiveness. And we'll see. I mean, look, we haven't even said it, but Stefan Diggs is not on the team anymore. That's obviously a huge deal. Dave, who is a breakout tight end for you? Alfredo said Pat Frymuth. He said Trey McBride, who he has as number one. Who's a breakout tight end for

you? I really like Brock Bowers and I it's the talent more so than the situation. But from what I saw in the preseason game, he was being used similarly to how he was used at Georgia. He was lining up all over the place. He ran a decent amount of routes, not as many as I would have liked to have seen. He did some blocking as well. But he's going to be a matchup problem. And the fact that the Raiders weren't just using him in the slot and in line as a typical tight end,

that, that makes me feel good about his potential this year. If Garner Minch is a starting quarterback we saw last year, he did pepper one guy with targets, but they were short targets. That could be good for Devante Adams, but I think he'll have a second short area target that he'll like to lean on in Brock Bowers. And I also think he'll be able to add a little something in the Raiders' short yardage goal line package so that it's not going to be all Zamir White, that they can use Brock Bowers a little bit on some gimmick plays that might end up meaning a touchdown or two. And I'm not saying that reaching for Brock Bowers is a good idea.

Reaching for any tight end is a bad idea. But if I'm getting Bowers right around a hundredth overall, just the chance to get somebody who's this much of an athletic freak, who's got potential to be second on his team and targets. And for that number of targets to be bigger than 90. Yeah. I think I'm happy to take that chance on somebody like Bowers. Alfredo, do you think any of these players can be, you know be significantly better than they were last year, just in terms of points per game, not necessarily fantasy finish?

Sam Laporta, Mark Andrews, Jake Ferguson. Out of those three, so Mark Andrews was already surprisingly very, very good in points per game. I don't think Sam laporta gets better in points per game because i think we see some touchdown variants there it almost it's kind of de facto ends up being jake ferguson but i actually think there was a lot of meat left on the bone for jake ferguson last year we he surprised everyone with the targets but now dallas doesn't have tony pollard and they're just down more weapons they could be passing more than ever. I don't really know that they did a whole bunch to add real pass catchers

that are going to take away from Jake Ferguson. And he's one of those guys. We keep talking about like touchdown variants with tight ends. And it's usually you want one or the other, either give me lots of touchdowns or give me volume. If you can give me both. That's great. With Ferguson,

he led all tight ends and red zone targets and still only ended up with five touchdowns so if there's a guy who could see a just a total reversal and a spike and jump into the top five of tight ends and be really surprising yeah it's jake ferguson i 100 agree and i think like it's fair to make the argument that we're drafting cd lamb as the number one wide receiver those who are based largely on the last 11 games and how he he spiked and turned into an elite fantasy playmaker in his last 11 games and jake ferguson's last 11 games including the playoffs he averaged 14 ppr fantasy points per game and he had 30 something points in the playoffs If you just take that and add it to his season total,

he gets 1.5 more fantasy points per game based on that one playoff game, which was... Well, I did say including the playoffs. I know, but... You can't count it again. No, I'm just saying if you add it to his full season number... Yes. You add 1.5 fantasy points per game.

Before the show, Alfredo said that his must-have guys at cost are Trey McBride, Dalton Kincaid, George Kittle, and Jake Ferguson. So I think we pretty much covered those. Your breakouts are Bowers. I guess you agree with Dave there. Friar Muth and Luke Musgrave. Want to talk about that one? Yeah.

So this one, honestly, it kind of just caught me off guard. I've just been going through my rankings and being like, okay, who actually has some sort of potential to break out? And you start to look for archetypes, athletic guys, younger, finding their way in the offense. And really what I like here is that you've got a good offense, a good passer, but a very ambiguous target grouping. Like there's not a specific target funnel. If Christian Watson's in the field, he's not getting everything. If Jaden Reed's in the field, he's not a specific target funnel. If Christian Watson's in the field, he's not getting everything. If Jaden Reed's in the field, he's not getting everything. We really don't have, and even Matt LaFleur was annoyed by this, they don't have a wide receiver one. So the fact that Luke Musgrave could actually end up being the top target earner on this team,

while not likely, he has a path to being top two on the team and targets. And I know that right now, Tucker Craft is the other tight end on here that was drafted same year. He's got a really bad pec injury, just taken off the pop list. He started practicing, but the Packers are notoriously really, really slow with these injury recovery timelines. So if we get even just a few three or four games where Luke Musgrave can play without Tucker Craft taking snaps away from him, we could see him actually really start to blossom. Last year, he had four top 12 finishes in his first nine games. And to do that as a rookie, I mean, we get excited about Laporta, Kincaid, all the other guys.

Musgrave's season just got cut short, but he was on his way to doing some pretty similar stuff. Well, I think one thing that's interesting, unless you guys have anything else, we can wrap it there. But interesting about this position is that just on this show, you heard breakouts at every level, right? You heard Trey McBride as a breakout, Dalton Kincaid, Kyle Pitts, Brock Bowers, Jake Ferguson.

All throughout the draft, you've got guys with potential. Dave, it does make me wonder, what's the best strategy here? Just keep waiting? Well, we can already rule out taking a tight end early unless it's tight end premium, because ADP is telling us that late round two is the absolute earliest where you could find kelsey or laporta to go i think if you want to get one at a fair value you're probably going to be okay but i also think it comes down to how badly do you want one and do you do you still see that positional

advantage that we used to talk about with kelsey Kittle in his heyday and Mark Andrews? Mark Andrews counts in there, too. Yeah. If you want that positional edge over the majority of your league, fine. But we also talked about as many as 10 tight ends. I'm just guessing the number. I wasn't on for the whole show but 10 tight ends that could be within two and a half to three ppr points per game uh from each other so i i don't know how big that edge

will be if half the league has a tight end that is just a no doubt about its starter so getting one at a fair value at fair adp is a good idea um just the other point being that if you hate the idea of streaming tight ends you don't want to do that work, then prioritize it. Not reaching in a big way, but probably if that's how you feel, you'll probably take a tight end with one of your first four picks and you'll probably feel okay about it. Take a top four in round four, like McBride, Andrews, Kelsey, Laporta, one of the, not Laporta, he's not going to fall that far. One of those three is going to be available in round four. Draft them. Okay, but if you've got other people in your league

that are doing the same thing and you whiff on them, I mean, is the fallback plan that third tier with Engram, Kittle, and Pitts? Probably. It has been for me. And then when I don't get them, I panic draft Jake Ferguson. Yeah, and I should have probably said this.

Kittle is my tight end five. So I don't consider him in the third tier. Okay, second tier, third tier. Last question. Alfredo, what would be your advice for someone who's never seen Star Wars? they wanted no part of it. After about 15 minutes, they said it was the worst movie they had ever seen. And my heart broke so fast. So start with something a little bit newer, maybe like that, like The Mandalorian, one of those. And honestly, a 12-year-old and 8-year-old is like the exact person to gauge how Adam's going to react to something. I've seen them. But recently,

I watched them all within like the last five years, and they're terrific. The first three, the first three, the original three, four, five, six. Like they're really good. I mean, I think I think there's a lot of potential here with Star Wars. I think that could be pretty popular. All right. Yeah. Thank you to Alfredo Brown at the pretend GM on Twix and football guys.

You can find his content there for Dave and Heath and Alfredo. I am Adam. Thanks for tuning into the bonanza of breakouts and we'll talk to you on friday with something i don't even know what our topic is uh but then we'll have a mailbag for saturday there will be a show paramount podcasts