Tag: Pat Freiermuth fantasy football

Fantasy football: 3 tight end sleepers to target in 2024

Here are three sleepers to target at the tight end position in fantasy football for the 2024 season.

With summer break just around the corner, fantasy football managers will be thrust into drafts before they even know it.

Finding sleepers is the name of the game when it comes to overachieving in fantasy football, and it’s never too early to start looking for those potential game-changers.

The tight end position is a tricky beast to understand. For most leagues, the elite tight ends truly make a difference. Going into 2024, there’s a bucket of four tight ends who could likely be considered elite options.

That would be Travis Kelce, Sam LaPorta, Mark Andrews and Trey McBride. The rest of the position is mostly a crapshoot where managers are hoping for some respectable yardage and some touchdown receptions here and there.

But finding a tight end sleeper can make a difference. Those who drafted LaPorta or McBride late in 2023 were rewarded with a high-end starter nearly every week. Their tight end position went from an unknown to a game-changer.

Here’s a look at three tight end sleepers to keep an eye on going into the 2024 season:

Is Kenny Pickett ready to ascend into fantasy football relevance?

What can fantasy gamers expect from Pickett in Year 2?

The lead up to the start of NFL training camps is when the projection machine starts winding up and everyone wants to be the smartest person in the room by forecasting players to make a gigantic leap from the previous season to the coming year. Few players are in that crystal ball of hype more than Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett.

The first quarterback taken in the 2022 draft, it only took three games before Pickett replaced Mitchell Trubisky as the starter and the post-Ben Roethlisberger era was underway.

It didn’t come easily or smoothly. In his first four starts, Pickett threw seven interceptions and at times looked like he had bust potential. However, the coaching staff didn’t have a quick hook for him and he ended up repaying that trust, winning five of his last six games to help keep the Steelers streak of finishing .500 or better going for an amazing 19th straight year (finishing 9-8 after a 3-7 start).

Pickett played a role in that strong finish, but it wasn’t because of eye-popping fantasy numbers. While he threw only one interception in his final eight games, he finished the season with more interceptions (9) than touchdown passes (7). He never had more than one TD pass in any game and had twice as many games with fewer than 200 passing yards (8) than more than 200 (4).

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He didn’t offer much as a runner – after scoring two rushing TDs in his first start, he had just one more the rest of the way and had more than 20 rushing yards in just three games. His rushing production dropped as the season went on – in his final five games he had 20 carries for just 42 yards and no touchdowns.

So why all the hype? Many NFL quarterbacks make their biggest leap from Year 1 to Year 2 after a full offseason with the coaching and training staff. Pickett has done all the right things in that regard. The reason for excitement is that he has all requisite weapons to be effective. He has a significantly upgraded left side of the offensive line from a year ago. He has a strong bell-cow runner in Najee Harris who forces defenses to respect the run and makes play-action more effective. He has a trio of solid wide receivers – emerging star George Pickens, leading receiver Diontae Johnson and veteran acquisition Allen Robinson. Throw in playmaking tight end Pat Freiermuth and it’s understandable why people are jumping on the Pickett bandwagon. But I think it’s a year too soon.

Fantasy football outlook

Pickett isn’t going to make the kind of second-year leap Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence did because the AFC North may be the best top-to-bottom division in the NFL. All of them have solid defenses that can’t be exploited twice a year and games in this division tend to be low-scoring bloodbaths.

Pickett has showed flashes of talent but is a middle of the pack fantasy quarterback. Ask yourself would you rather have a veteran like Derek Carr or Kirk Cousins and their numbers or Pickett? While Pickett has a higher ceiling, for 2023 he’s a low-end QB2. Fantasy owners should hope he won’t have to play more than to cover a bye week.

Fantasy football team previews: AFC North

A team-by-team fantasy football outlook from the AFC North.

The 2022 fantasy football draft season is starting to heat up now that we’ve gone through the height of free agency and all of the chosen rookies have been assigned to their professional home cities.

The landscape has changed a great deal for many franchises after a whirlwind offseason, and our divisional preview series will help you stay on top of all of the changes to date.

AFC divisional previews

East | North | South | West

NFC divisional previews

East | North | South | West

Fantasy Football Market Report: Week 13

Fantasy football risers and fallers as we enter the penultimate playoff push.

Injuries are always a part of any NFL season, but when you look at the running backs who were ranked highest heading into auctions and drafts prior to the start of the season, it just goes to show why RBs maintain their fantasy value – they’re an endangered species.

The list is impressive and growing with those who will be out in coming weeks. It’s staggering.

Derrick Henry has missed four games and counting. Christian McCaffrey has missed five games and left Sunday’s game, only to be placed on season-ending IR. Dalvin Cook has missed two games and left Sunday’s game. He’s out at least two more. Alvin Kamara has missed three games. Saquon Barkley has missed four games. Nick Chubb has missed three games. Josh Jacobs has missed two games. Clyde Edwards-Helaire has missed five games. Aaron Jones has missed one game and parts of three. Chris Carson has missed six games. J.K. Dobbins has missed the entire season. Miles Sanders has missed three games. David Montgomery has missed four games. James Robinson has missed one game and parts of two others. Raheem Mostert has missed 10 games. Darrell Henderson has missed one game. Kareem Hunt has missed five games.

Considering fantasy owners get heartburn when their star players are on their bye weeks, missing time at this rate for a critical position has likely broken a lot of teams – both fantasy owners and NFL franchises.

Here is the Week 13 Fantasy Market Report:

Fantasy Football Risers

WR Kendrick Bourne, New England Patriots

While his numbers don’t jump off the page as a receiver, when you split them out between home and road production, the contrast is stark. He has scored five touchdowns – all at home. He has five games with 60 or more receiving yards – all at home. While he has just one game with more than five receptions, he has showed that he can be a valuable fantasy contributor when playing at Gillette Stadium, and his numbers all year have borne that out.

TE Rob Gronkowski, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Many fantasy owners will forget that two weeks into the 2021 season, Gronk stood alone as the leading scorer in the NFL with four touchdown catches. That was good Gronk. Then came bad Gronk. Late in the Week 3 game against the Los Angeles Rams, he went down with an injury and didn’t have a reception in the next six games. In his two games since returning, he has reestablished himself as Tom Brady’s go-to target. He has been targeted 18 times, catching 13 passes for 194 yards and putting himself back into the discussion of the top fantasy tight ends in the game – just in time for a postseason run in defense of Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl championship.

RB Alexander Mattison, Minnesota Vikings

For those who didn’t have Mattison as a handcuff for Dalvin Cook, these could be heady days. Cook has a history of injury because of his punishing running style. In the last three games Cook has missed due to injury, Mattison has rushed 72 times for 320 yards, has caught 16 passes for 149 yards and scored three touchdowns. With Cook sidelined with a shoulder injury and free-falling Detroit and Pittsburgh next up on Minnesota’s schedule, Mattison could be one of the most valued running backs in the fantasy game.

TE Pat Freiermuth, Pittsburgh Steelers

At a time when game-changing tight ends are in short supply, fantasy owners scramble in hopes of tight ends that are used considerably in the red zone. Everyone is looking for the 2021 version of what Green Bay’s Robert Tonyan accomplished last year. That is becoming Freiermuth this season. While he only has one game with more than 45 receiving yards, in his last five games, he has caught five touchdown passes and has four or more receptions in each game. While not earth-shattering numbers, at a time when the tight end pool is relatively dry, these are numbers sent from heaven.

RB Joe Mixon, Cincinnati Bengals

Typically, we don’t put weekly fantasy starters on the risers list, but for most of his career, Mixon was a premium pick in fantasy drafts that was most likely to be benched for a better matchup due to long stretches without consistent production. In his first four seasons, he missed time due to injury in three of them and scored just 20 rushing touchdowns in 40 games. This season, he has scored 13 touchdowns (11 rushing, two receiving) and has scored two TDs in each of his last four games. With the Bengals staring down a trip to the playoffs, over his last two games against wild-card contenders (the Raiders and Steelers), he has rushed 58 times for 288 yards and four touchdowns. He’s lining up with Jonathan Taylor for fantasy MVP consideration.

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Fantasy Football Fallers

WRs Courtland Sutton and Jerry Jeudy, Denver Broncos

The Broncos have been snake-bitten when it has come to pairing up Jeudy and Sutton. Last year, it was Sutton, who played just one game before going down for the season. This year it was Jeudy, who was injured in Week 1 and missed the next seven games. The two have been playing together for the last month, and, in those four games, Jeudy has caught 18 passes for 181 yards and no touchdowns. In that same span, Sutton has caught seven passes for 95 yards and no TDs. Both players have a high ceiling to their talent, but neither is worth putting in a lineup as things currently stand, much less when the stakes are higher in December.

RB Saquon Barkley, New York Giants

Similar to McCaffrey, Barkley has been battling injuries the last two seasons and the results have been numbingly bad. Prior going down in Week 5, Barkley never had more than 57 rush yards in a 2021 game. While he managed to score three TDs in that span, he wasn’t putting together the type of huge numbers that were expected. He’s back and has taken over the lead back role, but he has just 19 carries for 65 yards, 10 receptions for just 44 yards and no touchdowns in those two games. At this point, it’s difficult for those who made a big investment in him to bench him out of fear he will be the Barkley of past vintage. In the end, most owners who invested in Barkley will have to sink or swim with him and, at the moment, they’re drowning.

WR T.Y. Hilton, Indianapolis Colts

I’ve never been a huge Hilton guy but had to respect the numbers he put up with Andrew Luck at the wheel. However, this season has been a disaster. He missed the first five games and has been inactive in two more. At least under those circumstances, he doesn’t hurt fantasy players. In the last four games he has played, he has caught just nine passes for 75 yards and one touchdowns. At a time where Michael Pittman has established himself as the No. 1 guy and four others have more receptions than Hilton in the games in which he has played, it seems about time to stick a fork in Hilton as fantasy commodity and move on.

RB Kenyan Drake, Las Vegas Raiders

It was curious on two fronts when Drake hit free agency last year – one that the Arizona Cardinals made no effort to re-sign him and second that the Raiders did. In 23 games with the Cards, Drake was close to dominant from the fantasy perspective, rushing for almost 1,600 yards and scoring 18 rushing touchdowns. His role with the Raiders has never been defined. He has played in every game and has more than eight carries just once and averaging less than six. He has more than 34 rush yards in just one game and when Josh Jacobs was down with an injury, Peyton Barber was the primary back. He has talent, but it isn’t being utilized in Las Vegas.

Rookie Rundown: TE Pat Freiermuth, Penn State

An all-around talent coming back from shoulder surgery.

The traditional “Y” tight end is slowly going extinct in the NFL, but we’ll see it live on for the immediate future. There’s zero doubt Florida’s Kyle Pitts is the king of this year’s tight ends class (and most years, for that matter), but Penn Stater Pat Freiermuth is not terribly far behind.

It all comes down to what teams look for in the position. These two couldn’t be much farther apart in style of play as Pitts is so freakishly athletic that the more well-rounded Freiermuth lags behind in luster.

A highly decorated high school star, Freiermuth contributed immediately as a true freshman for Penn State. He scored eight times on just 26 catches and would receive an honorable mention for All-Big Ten as well as being named to the Freshman All-American team in 2018.

Surprisingly, Freiermuth was not among the 2019 finalists for the John Mackey Award, which is given to the top tight end in the nation. He earned second-team All-Big Ten honors and was named Penn State’s MVP on offense.

Height: 6-foot-5
Weight: 251 pounds
40 time: TBD

A shoulder injury that required surgery after his fourth game in 2020 ended Freiermuth’s junior season, and he did not lift or run at his school’s pro day.

Table: Pat Freiermuth NCAA stats (2018-20)

Year
School
Class
Gm*
Rec
Yds
Avg
TD
2018
Penn State
FR
12
26
368
14.2
8
2019
Penn State
SO
13
43
507
11.8
7
2020
Penn State
JR
4
23
310
13.5
1
Career
92
1,185
12.9
16

*includes postseason/bowl games

No tight end in Penn State history has scored more touchdowns than Freiermuth’s 16, and he proved to be not only efficient but a dangerous weapon down the field.

Pros

  • Played all over the field as an H-back, slot tight end and in the traditional “Y” role
  • Great body control going up for the ball
  • Quality hands and doesn’t let too many get into the pads
  • Size-athleticism combo will immediately catch a scout’s eye
  • Devastating stiff arm
  • Plays with palpable enthusiasm and energy
  • Displays pretty good spatial awareness for the sticks and soft spots in coverage
  • Confident and competitive — was a two-time team captain
  • Above-average natural blocking skills
  • Tough to bring down in the open field — bullies defenders and has just enough of a stutter step to pick up a few more yards
  • Background playing basketball offers coaches some fundamental tools to improve
  • Considerable upside for improvement

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Cons

  • Good but not great athlete who sometimes struggles to shake physical defenders
  • Shoulder injury needs to check out
  • Doesn’t always use his size to his advantage vs. defenders — needs to rely more on his hoops background to box out and keep defenders away from incoming targets
  • Most of his room for growth comes as a blocker — generally gets by on combination of athleticism and willingness. Displays flashes of elite blocking potential and can be molded for improvement by a quality coaching staff

Fantasy football outlook

People will compare Freiermuth in ways to Rob Gronkowski, and some of it is fair, but a more apt comparison is a blend of Jason Witten and Zach Ertz in terms of style and potential career trajectory. Gronkowski will go down as one of the best players at his position and has been in many ways revolutionary for his position.

Witten had a lunch-pail career that will land him in Canton, but for many years he was the top receiver in Dallas due to his crafty routes and above-average athleticism. Ertz is a blend of the those attributes, too, but is probably on pace for the “Hall of Very Good” instead of collecting a yellow jacket. There’s an argument he belongs, but it’s not a slam dunk like with Gronk or Witten.

Loft comparisons, for sure, and the Penn State standout deserves scrutiny, too. Keep all of that in mind as Freiermuth is far from a finished product. He has 29 appearances under his belt, and it remains unclear how the NFL offseason will look for rookies early on. Tight end is typically one of the positions that is slower to develop at the next level when it comes to finding fantasy football success, Freiermuth’s trajectory should be no different.

He is expected to be a second-round selection, but the injury could cause him to fall into Round 3. There are plenty of teams in need of the position, but the best immediate fits would be the Indianapolis Colts, New York Jets, Cincinnati Bengals, Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans, Tennessee Titans and New Orleans Saints.

It’s entirely possible the team that drafts him isn’t on that list, because several other clubs have potential situations developing. Philadelphia, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, the Los Angeles Chargers and the New York Giants all have viable starters in place but could be in the hunt to improve for beyond 2021.

Freiermuth figures to become one of the staples at his position in fantasy football as he finds his way over the next several years. The landscape is currently top-heavy, and he’s capable of battling his way into the top six or so fantasy tight ends by the end of 2022 if everything around him lines up properly.