The easiest way to fall behind in dynasty leagues is to Ben Simmons your first-round rookie picks. the same holds true in season-long leagues. you brick your first, second, third-round redraft picks, you’re going to wind up falling kiloyears behind your league-mates. A gap harder to fill in than the hole in my heart left by any Spanish girl under 5’5.
The same holds true with rookie picks. Your rookie picks are the adrenaline injection your team needs to stand up and rejuvenate itself. They are the Saturday night Adderall after pulling a Friday all-nighter. However, missing on your early-round rookie picks is like someone slipping you Nyquil instead of Adderall. Luckily for y’all, there are multiple rounds in our rookie drafts, typically 4, sometimes 5 for the freaks out there.
The later the rookie pick, the less likely they are to breakout, especially with more and more dynasty players becoming savvier to what matters when evaluating prospects. But shit still slips through the cracks like a broken toilet.
You can yell at me about what you’d consider a “late-round pick” in rookie drafts, but we’re going to staunchly settle on anything after pick 3.06 according to our rookie ADP.
Over the last two years, players you could’ve acquired in rookie drafts after pick 3.06 include: James Robinson, Myles Gaskin, Terry McLaurin, Chase Claypool, Gardner Minshew, Adam Trautman, Darnell Mooney, Mecole Hardman, Gabriel Davis and Preston Williams.
I’m not going to act like it’s a goldmine for the taking out here, and I know, not all of these guys have fired at the NFL level, but the goal is to acquire players that eventually find their way into your starting lineups OR accrue value heading into their sophomore season, and we can confidently say all of the guys listed did so.
We’re going to break down some of our favorite late-round picks (3.07+) in the 2021 rookie drafts that we’re hoping will land on ^^ that list when we write this big girl next year.
So, tuck ya shirts in stop yellin and let’s eat.
Every year, every tight end gets every bit of hype available.
Doesn’t matter when they were drafted. Doesn’t matter how many catches they had in college. As long as they ran a sub 4.80 40-yard dash, they’re either the next Gronk or Ertz. Never heard of a rookie tight end disappointing.
Good friend of the show, Mr. Jax Falcone aka @DynoGameTheory does a neat lil thread every offseason breaking down the “anatomy” of a ‘top-8, 10, 12″ (whatever arbitrary number he chooses) dynasty tight end. It takes into account the top dynasty assets at the tight end position and dissects the different parts of their prospect profiles (size, speed, production, breakout age, etc) to help us understand which of the incoming prospects are most closely related to the top dynasty assets at the position already.
You can read his full thread on Twitter here.
A quick summary spits this out:
Looking at the current crop-dust of tight ends being taken after pick 3.06 according to our ADP, we’ve put together this lil chart:
At best, half the boxes are checked. None of these prospects are particularly appealing to me, but Brevin Jordan, Hunter Long and Jacob Harris seem to be the best sum of their parts here. Brevin Jordan saw a ton of hype pre-draft as some spectacular athlete before ultimately disappointing at his pro-day like most of this class. Jordan has a few things going for him; he seems to actually be good at football, producing at a very high level during his stay at the U. Secondly, he lands on a Houston Texans team that, to call a skeleton of a roster would be a stretch. The Texans could be trotting out the worst roster we’ve seen an NFL team sport in years. There’s a clear path to the starting tight end job and involvement in the passing offense whenever he’s ready.
Hunter Long has gotten a ton of hype, too. Landing in Miami puts him in an up-and-coming offense with draft capital (3). Gesicki stinks. He’s nothing more than a gym-class hero who might catch some passes. And if he does that in 2022, it’s likely not going to be in South Beach. That would leave the starting tight end role for the (at the time of this writing July 2021) 21-year-old. I don’t think Long has crazy upside. He’s not particularly explosive or athletic, but he’s “good at football”. Future TE1 years are definitely within Long sniper range. He’s got the highest floor of the group and the most likely chance to return value where you’re getting him in drafts because of it.
Jacob Harris checks most of these boxes simply because he operated as a hybrid WR/TE at UCF. He was a soccer player turned weapon. And is a wildly athletic human.
But the Rams love the guy and plan to use him full time at the tight end position.
Ideally, Harris needs to put a little bit of weight on his frame, but Gerald Everett played south of 240lbs so the bulk won’t be too much of an ask over a multi-year period as Tyler Higbee operates as the one.
The rest of the group, if we’re being honest, are spins on the roulette table with your chips stacked on 00. I can list a few things I like about each of their situations and a few things I don’t.