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Each year, without fail, we are forced to rewrite a few previously inviolable laws of fantasy football.
If you’ve been drafting and managing teams for a decade or more, then you already understand how quickly and dramatically our guiding principles can shift. The NFL itself has changed substantially during the fantasy era, dragging our game-within-a-game along with it.
Today, our task is to discuss the five essential lessons of the 2023 season, the first of which upends fantasy dogma at a traditionally messy roster spot …
Young tight ends are thriving
Back in the day, everyone generally accepted the notion that first and second-year tight ends were unlikely to make any sort of serious fantasy splash. The learning curve for young tight ends was too great. It was a multi-season developmental position. In many cases, tight ends didn’t break out until year three (Ben Coates), or four (Shannon Sharpe) or five (Dallas Clark). Jared Cook didn’t crack the top-10 at his position until his 10th pro season.
In 2023, however, the leading scorer among all tight ends was 22-year-old Sam LaPorta.
He was one of two rookies to finish inside the position’s top 12 (Dalton Kincaid being the other). Trey McBride and Jake Ferguson, a pair of second-year players, ranked as TE8 and TE9 respectively. Isaiah Likely, also in his second season, was the game’s TE2 over the final five weeks.
It’s not as if the veterans at this spot let us down, either. Evan Engram, Travis Kelce and George Kittle finished second, third and fifth in year-end scoring. We’ve simply arrived at a moment in which tight ends of all ages and experience levels are booming.
Next summer, while we’re debating LaPorta vs. McBride as the overall TE1, we’re also gonna have to wrestle with the Brock Bowers dilemma — because rookies at this position no longer feel like such a trap.
Injury-prone is a concept we can just launch into the sun
This is truly the Rasputin of bad fantasy ideas. It’s been shot, battered,…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/the-5-biggest-fantasy-football-lessons-from-2023-173519507.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-01-09 17:35:19
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