In a fantasy football season featuring almost no depth at the tight end position, a player like Dwayne Allen is the perfect late-round pick.

Allen, who is only starting his second year in the NFL, has incredible upside for someone going as the 23rd tight end in most drafts behind fellow Indianapolis Colt Coby Fleener and the little-known Tyler Eifert, according to FantasyPros ADP. Allen has immense talent, and could potentially be Andrew Luck’s second or third option in Indy early on in the year.

With most drafts coming up in the next week or two, most owners will be scared off by Allen’s recent foot injury which will likely keep him out for the remainder of the preseason. But with where he is going in most drafts (sometimes ending up undrafted) Allen could finish as a top 15 tight end, if not even higher.

Last season, as a rookie out of Clemson, Allen caught 45 passes for 521 yards and three touchdowns. The yards are nice as far as tight ends go that aren’t named Jimmy Graham or Rob Gronkowski but he was averaging 11 yards per catch and tacked on some decent points in PPR leagues. Prior to his rookie year, Allen was won the John Mackey award as the NCAA’s best tight end in the nation as a junior, catching 50 passes in 2011 and scoring eight touchdowns.

At the tight end position, tight ends pretty much carry the majority of a player’s value in fantasy, and Allen should be up in the six or seven range this year. Wide receiver T.Y. Hilton is likely to pull in the majority of the Colts’ passing touchdowns, but Indianapolis is without Donnie Avery who had 781 yards last season along with three touchdowns. Reggie Wayne’s production is also likely to decrease. Wayne is one of the most talented receivers in the league but he will be turning 35 mid-way through the season and his touchdowns have been decreasing since 2009.

There is a position battle going on between Allen and Fleener, but based upon Allen’s better performance last season it’s likely he’ll land the job. This is incredibly important, because Indianapolis mostly runs one tight end sets, which is when Allen caught the majority of his passes. Luck’s drop-back-and-pass style is also beneficial to Allen. If Wayne or Hilton can’t get open, Luck will check down to his tight end, completing 165 of his 279 attempts between one and 10 yards. When Luck gets the ball to Allen, he’s most likely going to catch it, with a 6.25 drop rate, the 11th-best in the league among tight ends.

With tight ends, it is more about how involved they are on offense than anything else. This explains why guys like Tony Gonzalez continue to be relevant, because Matt Ryan in Atlanta always looks for Gonzalez on third down and in tight situations. This is also a reason why players like Eifert and Dustin Keller in Miami shouldn’t be going higher than Allen. Allen is far more likely to get targets on third down and inside the red zone than Eiftert and  Keller, who are on offenses that don’t put much of an emphasis on the tight end.

In 2011, when now-offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton was coaching Luck at Stanford, Fleener (a teammate of Luck’s at the time) was the teams No. 2 receiving option, finishing 2011 with 34 catches and 667 yards along with 10 touchdowns. There’s a chance that Luck could look to Fleener more in Indianapolis because of their history but Allen is the more talented tight end, and could get similar targets to Fleener’s 2011 numbers in Hamilton’s offense.