Streaming Tight Ends: Week 11 Fantasy Football Targets

Nov 14, 2017

Week 11 is the last one with teams on a bye, and by now you’re either streaming the TE position weekly, happy with a TE1 that you initially drafted or have picked up a guy along the way who puts up enough points to satisfy each week. No matter where your roster sits on the TE spectrum, you should always be reevaluating to gauge if your current TE is worthy of starting this week, or if you’re better off hitting the waiver wire in search of a better option. As a strategy, streaming aims to find players with above-average matchups, which can hopefully translate to TE1 production for your fantasy squad.

The main focus of our research when looking at a TE’s matchup is 4for4’s schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed (aFPA) metric. As the season continues to progress and more data is available, aFPA becomes more and more reliable, using rolling 10-week data. Targets and efficiency metrics are also considered when coming up with weekly TE streamers.

The goal in streaming is to roster a player that is going to return TE1 fantasy points and Week 10 was a wild one in the TE department. Garrett Celek came in as TE4 with 16.7 PPR points, followed by Ed Dickson’s 12.3 as TE9 and Eric Ebron’s 11.9 as TE11. Then we had a huge drop-off with Tyler Kroft (1.4 PPR points) and got two goose eggs from O.J. Howard and Jesse James. After 10 weeks of football, 4for4 streaming candidates are averaging 9.3 PPR fantasy points per game, which currently ranks as TE15. The optimal TE streamer has 185.1 PPR fantasy points, enough for TE1 on the season thus far. On to Week 11 and the players who can bail you out of a bad draft choice, fill in for a player on bye, or simply provide the weekly streaming points you crave.

In order to provide advice that you can actually implement, candidates for streaming must be available in at least 40% of Yahoo fantasy leagues.

Eric Ebron (DET) @ CHI

Since Detroit’s Week 7 bye, Ebron has averaged 8.3 PPR points per game with an 11.3% target per snap rate. His start to the season wasn’t pretty, as the Lions’ TE suffered from a case of the drops, and has only one game this year with over three catches. It appears that confidence has been restored in the fourth-year TE and he’ll hopefully be a larger part of Detroit’s offense moving forward.

In the tight NFC North, Detroit will be looking to gain any advantage they can get for a postseason run, and face their rival Bears in Week 11. The contest has a current over/under of 42 points, with Chicago’s aFPA at 11.3 to opposing TEs this season. This bodes well for Ebron’s potential on Sunday, so use him if you need him. Detroit’s TE1 is rostered in 34% of Yahoo leagues.

Continue reading for two more tight end streaming options, and three deep league candidates...