For fantasy owners, the tight end position is the toughest to figure out. The position is entirely reliant on touchdowns, and touchdowns are one of the toughest things to predict in all fantasy sports.
After the top two guys (Jimmy Graham and Rob Gronkowski) everyone else at the position seems to be sandwiched together. So where does that leave rookie Eric Ebron? Ebron, who was drafted by the Detroit Lions, is basically a younger, smaller version of Graham.
He doesn’t block much, and loves to play out of the slot, which is gold for fantasy tight ends. That’s not to say he’ll ever be as productive as Graham, but it at least gives us a good measuring stick for where he should go in fantasy drafts this summer.
Since it’s really difficult to predict touchdowns (especially for tight ends) on a game-by-game basis, targets will probably be the best predictor of where Ebron should go. The more he’s targeted in that high-flying Detroit offense, the more yardage he’ll get and likely the more red zone targets with teams mainly focusing on Calvin Johnson down there.
Last season, Graham was the most targeted tight end in football (no surprise there). The next highest was Tony Gonzalez (who is out of the league now), followed by Jordan Cameron and Antonio Gates, who were 28th and 29th, respectively, in total targets among all offensive players in the league, according to our premium stats (paid subscription required).
There’s no reason to believe that Gates or Cameron’s targets would go down this year, unless Gates is injured. If anything, Cameron’s targets could go if there’s stability at the quarterback position in Cleveland and if Josh Gordon ends up missing the majority, or all, of the season.
After them, the position gets a little murky. Jason Witten’s age is starting to show now (he ranked 35th in targets) and Charles Clay’s (44th in targets) production should decrease with Knowshon Moreno now on the roster, with the Dolphins presumably running the ball more often than they did last season.
Greg Olsen (33rd in targets) has the best chance to duplicate his season in Carolina. There’s about the same amount of offensive weapons (if not less without Steve Smith) and he’s had at least five touchdowns in the last six seasons.
With the Lions, Ebron will see more targets that Brandon Pettigrew did last season (64) because he’s much more of a receiving threat and teams will now have to cover Johnson and Golden Tate along with Reggie Bush and Joique Bell in the backfield, who are both threats to get involved in the passing game.
Detroit’s new head coach, Jim Caldwell, liked using tight ends in Baltimore, where he had been the offensive coordinator for the last year and a half. Despite missing all but four games of the season in 2013, Dennis Pitta had 33 targets and even the aging Dallas Clark was targeted 52 times, and Ed Dickson had 43 targets.
Obviously, Johnson will be the top option for Caldwell in Detroit. But it’s not out of the question to think Ebron could pick up 90 targets. If you take some away from Bush and Bell, who had 80 and 68 targets last season, respectively, and take a lot more away from Pettigrew’s 64, it’s a realistic expectation.
Among tight ends, that would have put Ebron last season in the Julius Thomas/Jared Cook category. With Thomas’s huge season, he’ll be a top four tight end this season in fantasy drafts, but Ebron will be more consistent in Detroit than Cook.
As a rookie, it’s not realistic to think Ebron will out-score Cameron, Witten or Vernon Davis in total points, but we can project him to be somewhere in the top 13. Cook and even Delanie Walker managed to get into that category last season, giving Ebron an guaranteed starting spot on a standard fantasy roster.
In drafts last summer, Gronkowski was going in the early fourth round and Graham in the second, according to FantasyFootballCalculator’s ADP rankings. Cook and Olsen were both late eighth/early ninth round picks, and that’s where we can slate Ebron to go. He won’t be as productive this year as Davis or Cameron, but he will be targeted just as much as Cook and Kyle Rudolph in Minnesota.
Ebron’s eventual NFL ceiling his higher than a ninth round fantasy draft pick, but as a tight end, it would be difficult to gamble on him in any higher round. And, as always, it depends upon how your draft plays out. If there’s a sudden run on tight ends in the fifth round, Ebron could be a seventh-round pick. But in a vacuum, Ebron should be going before Rudolph and Cook in drafts because of his athletic ability and the opportunities available in Detroit’s offense.