We want tight ends with class mobility.
When 2014 began, the upper-class, high-dollar tight ends were Jimmy Graham, Julius Thomas and Rob Gronkowski. Despite varying results through seven weeks (plus Thursday night), all three of those guys still belong in that upper echelon. Our weekly expectations for them remain lofty.
Greg Olsen, a consensus top-10 tight end this summer, has joined this elite group. He's scored a more-than-respectable five touchdowns in seven games and has been below 60 yards receiving just once. He has proved to be upwardly mobile. Antonio Gates' two-touchdown night Thursday just might clinch his inclusion in the top group as well. But after that? The tight end middle class is in full effect.
Per usual, from No. 6 to No. 15, TEs are a mess. There's no shortage of huge, athletic, sometimes-dominant specimens who play the position, but for varying reasons aren't week-to-week consistent. Maybe they're raw as blockers and don't stay on the field in all situations. Maybe they play in offenses that don't consider them weekly focal points. And maybe they are simply incapable of mustering the same high effort and concentration every week.
The thing is, I'm OK with drafting these tight ends. I think the alternative is too expensive. Take a look at those three aristocrats who were selected well ahead of all other tight ends this summer:
Top-Tier TE Comparison, This Season
* Stats entering Week 8
As a third-rounder in 10-team leagues, Thomas has been a bargain, but Graham and Gronk have been dreadful relative to where they were picked. Right now, you'd have been better off waiting and grabbing Olsen, Gates or Martellus Bennett, and using your high picks on scarcer positions.
To me, that's not surprising. Tight ends have to perform at historic levels (like Thomas had done until his past two contests, including Thursday) to justify such an early selection. But that doesn't mean it isn't frustrating when you don't luck into one of the upwardly mobile middle-class tight ends. And heck, while I do mostly trust Olsen and Gates to continue their production, we've already seen enough inconsistency from Bennett to imagine that he could plunge back down among the hoi polloi.
So here most of us are, barely making ends meet at tight end. As I said earlier, I still believe in a top tier at the position, even if Graham and Gronk haven't quite performed like it, and I also include Olsen and Gates in that group. But the next nine players are weekly question marks: Bennett, Travis Kelce, Dwayne Allen, Jordan Reed, Owen Daniels, Jason Witten, Delanie Walker, Jordan Cameron, Zach Ertz ... each is capable of huge things in any given week. But each has also already caused ulcers in '14.
You know what would be great? If we could foretell a midseason income-bracket adjustment the likes of which Olsen and Gates have already undergone. What if one of these middle-class members could step up with the big boys?
As much as I want to like Cameron and Ertz because they're in "plus" situations and can do almost anything athletically, the middle-class TE who interests me most is Jordan Reed. There's no question he comes with major injury concerns; he lost the final six games last season because of a concussion and missed four contests earlier this year with a hamstring pull. But I've liked what I've seen on tape in his two games back.
You know how we talk about "hybrid" tight ends who are more like big wide receivers? (Heck, Graham waged a contract dispute over being called a TE at all.) Well, Reed is one of those. In his past two games, he's run 46 routes. I rewatched 'em all. Here's where he lined up each time he ran a pass pattern:
Jordan Reed Deployment Breakdown, Past 2 Weeks
We are truly talking about a TINO (Tight End In Name Only). In fact, Reed is a terrible blocker. The only effective thing he does in that regard is occasionally chip a defensive end, and even then he sometimes whiffs. Niles Paul and Logan Paulsen are the blockers here, which explains why Reed played on 70 of 114 possible snaps (61.4 percent) these two weeks. But as a glorified WR, Reed is a handful:
Washington loves to get Reed in the kind of alignment above. A dozen times he was isolated on one side, with three receivers on the other. Here, he's matched against press coverage from rookie Arizona Cardinals safety Deone Bucannon. The Cardinals are in a man-under dime formation with two deep safeties protecting against the kind of deep shots Kirk Cousins already completed earlier in this game. Reed runs a delayed post and crosses Bucannon's face, and it's over: He gains 20 yards on the reception.
Several times when Reed splits wide by himself, defenses respond with "off" coverage and no safety help, which creates one of the NFL's easiest audibles: Either Cousins or Colt McCoy checks to a 5-yard stop and fires a pass before a linebacker or slot corner can cut off the angle, and Reed has a simple catch-and-run. If you read my Insider piece about 2014's five most unstoppable plays, you recognize this from No. 1: Julius Thomas gets this exact formation a lot, and he is essentially unguardable out of it.
Now, do athletic marvels like Ertz, Cameron and Kelce get similar opportunities in their respective offenses? Of course they do, and they haven't yet become consistent producers, which is the defining characteristic of the TE middle class. Conversely, has Reed converted the usage I've just described to massive statistical days yet this season? He has not.
But I'll take 14 targets in two games, especially when so many of them are of the isolated variety. Reed came awfully close to a fourth-quarter red zone TD Sunday against the Tennessee Titans, but he had the back-shoulder throw knocked away at the last moment by Blidi Wreh-Wilson. If he'd caught that pass, the fantasy layperson would be all over Reed this week. As it is, I still think we're looking at a buy-low opportunity. Reed has to stay healthy, but if he does, I think he could creep into every-week starter territory, where the blue bloods dwell.