Streaming Tight Ends: Week 5 Targets

Oct 06, 2015

If you’re a Jordan Reed owner, welcome back to the world of tight end streaming. Reed’s injury is unfortunate for fantasy purposes, but his early season production is a testament to the streaming process. The goal of streaming tight ends is to nail down an every week starter. Through four weeks, two of our top streaming picks, Jordan Reed and Charles Clay, both rank as top five PPR tight ends. Go Team Stream!

For those new to tight end streaming, the idea is to identify a waiver wire tight end with a favorable matchup that is likely to post TE1 caliber fantasy points. The foundation for the matchup research is 4for4’s Schedule-Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed (aFPA) metric. As the season progresses, aFPA gets more and more reliable. Volume and efficiency metrics will also be considered when searching the waivers for tight end streamers.

In Week 4, the first week with aFPA data, our tight end streaming picks dominated. With a healthy Ladarius Green, three of the four Week 4 streaming candidates finished as top six PPR tight ends, all with at least 15 PPR fantasy points.

After four weeks of football, 4for4 streaming candidates are averaging 10.4 PPR fantasy points per game, which currently ranks as the TE17. The optimal tight end streamer has posted an average of 15.2 PPR fantasy points per game, which is tied for the TE4 on the season.

Streaming candidates must be available in at least 40% of Yahoo leagues, in order to ensure that the picks are readily available in most leagues. As always, be sure to consider 4for4’s weekly rankings in case a highly ranked player fell through the cracks in your league.

Here are the tight end picks for Week 5:

Owen Daniels (DEN) @ Oakland

Death, taxes, and tight end scoring against the Raiders are the only sure things in this crazy life. Oakland has been comically bad against tight ends this season, allowing the most receptions, receiving yards, and touchdowns to the position, including a score in every game and two multi-touchdown games. Through four weeks, the “worst” game from a tight end against the Raiders was Gary Barnidge’s 6/105/1 game. Needless to say, Oakland ranks last in aFPA to tight ends.

Owen Daniels has been an integral part of Denver’s red zone attack, which ranks eighth in targets to tight ends in the red zone. If there is a favorite to score a touchdown this week, my money is on Daniels who is owned in 55% of Yahoo! leagues.