NFL

Fantasy Football: 5 Late-Round Tight Ends With Huge Touchdown Potential

Jim Sannes  —  @JimSannes Jul 21st, 2017
After last year's dumpster fire that was the tight end position, you're likely reluctant to spend there in 2017. Which players going near the ends of drafts have the touchdown potential we so desperately need?

If you were happy with your tight end in fantasy football last year, you were in the minority, and all of your friends secretly despise you.

That may be a bit harsh on their part, but can you blame them? Rob Gronkowski, Jordan Reed, and Tyler Eifert got hurt, Coby Fleener decided he wanted no part of the New Orleans Saints' offensive success, and countless others failed to produce on a consistent basis. Unless you got one of the magical unicorns able to avoid the plague, you were slamming your head against a wall.

This frustration isn't going to go away quickly, and as a result, you may wish to just pretend the position doesn't exist at all. You would not be alone in that sentiment. Unfortunately, tight ends are still part of the game, and they're probably still going to drive us mad.

If you can't beat the frustration, you may as well lower the costs associated with it. Heading into this year, there are a handful of tight ends who are going relatively late in drafts who have the ability to find their way into the end zone on a decently regular basis. They may not have the floor of a Travis Kelce or a Greg Olsen, but ceilings? They've got those.

Because the tight end position is so touchdown-dependent, we want to try to find guys with a decent role who are on offenses that are going to score points. If we can do this, it's entirely possible we'll avoid the yearly headache that is filling in that one roster spot.

A good way to gauge this touchdown potential is by utilizing numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP), the metric we use to track the efficiency of both teams and players. NEP shows the expected points lost or gained on each play, illustrating the difference between a five-yard completion on 3rd and 4 and that same completion on 3rd and 6.

To keep things neat and tidy, we'll focus exclusively on tight ends outside the top 10 in average draft position (ADP) at the position, according to Fantasy Football Calculator. Each one of these guys is going outside the first 10 rounds, and they could be your savior on draft day.

Which tight ends can we find late with massive touchdown potential? Let's take a look.

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