Fantasy Football Outlook: Pat Freiermuth, David Njoku, Dalton Kincaid (Week 4)

Let’s plunge into Week 4. As always, feel free to use these tiered rankings as a tiebreaker for your difficult lineup decisions. Beneath the tiers, I’ll offer a few brief thoughts on some of the borderline start/sit guys and some other interesting cases. Here are my full fantasy football rankings and tiers for Week 4. Below we’ll dive into a few notable players.

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Fitz’s Fantasy Football Week 4 Outlook

Despite the absence of WR Diontae Johnson, who’s on IR with a hamstring injury, Steelers TE Pat Freiermuth hasn’t drawn more than four targets in a game this season. Freiermuth checked in with a decent 3-41-1 stat line last week vs. the Raiders, but his lack of involvement is still concerning. I think most of is attributable to Pittsburgh’s overall dysfunction on offense so far. It’s still worth starting Freiermuth this week in a favorable matchup against the Texans, who have given up 17-162-1 to tight ends this season. But if the Steelers’ offense remains stuck in the quagmire and Freiermuth has another puny target total, you might need to consider replacing him.

The Ravens have been tough on tight ends this season, giving up just 8-45-0 to opposing TEs over their first three games. If you’re a David Njoku stakeholder, you might want to consider a pivot this week rather than start Njoku against Baltimore.

Rookie TEs are generally poor bets for fantasy football — even highly drafted TEs. Of the 25 tight ends taken in the first round of the NFL Draft since 2000, only four were fantasy TE1s as rookies. The list: Kyle Pitts, Evan Engram, Heath Miller and Jeremy Shockey. We have one rookie tight end who seems destined for a TE1 finish in 2023, but it’s not Bills first-rounder Dalton Kincaid. It’s Lions second-rounder Sam LaPorta. Kincaid, meanwhile, is currently TE27 in half-point PPR fantasy scoring. He has an 11.2% target share and has been targeted on 14% of his routes. It’s not the sort of usage we were hoping for. I have Kincaid ranked TE17 this week, and I’m worried that I’m too high on him.

-Pat Fitzmaurice