National Tight Ends Day may not be a recognized holiday, but the fantasy football tight ends sure played like it was in Week 8. Heading into Monday Night Football, a full 15 tight ends scored at least 10 points in half-PPR scoring. Compare that to Week 6, for example, when just seven tight ends reached double-digit scoring. With so many strong options, surely some are available on your waiver wire.
Can we expect this kind of positional production to continue? Certainly not, but Week 9 for fantasy football certainly offers us more opportunity to find a hidden gem than any other week this season. Several low-rostered players are seeing increased roles and can be picked up this week.
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This weekly column helps identify tight ends that are strong streaming options for the week ahead. Whether it’s due to bye weeks, injuries or overall lack of production, these tight ends are often widely available on the waiver wire (all are fewer than 50% rostered in Yahoo! leagues) and have matchups worth exploiting for fantasy football rosters.
Fantasy Football Tight End Streamers & Waiver Wire Pickups (Week 9)
Zach Ertz (TE – WAS) at New York Giants | 28% Rostered
The Washington Commanders having one of the NFL’s best offenses may not have been on your 2024 bingo card, but they are proving week after week they can keep up with anyone and put points on the board when it matters most. Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears was a slog (Jayden Daniels‘ ribs surely had something to do with it) until the final Hail Mary play, but plenty of Washington players saw big numbers, even if they didn’t have touchdowns attached. Zach Ertz was one of those players.
Active TEs with 500+ catches:
Travis Kelce
Zach Ertz
George KittleThat’s it. pic.twitter.com/5Gan5tjKrJ
– StatMuse Football (@statmusefb) October 28, 2024
Ertz finished Sunday with seven catches for 77 yards on 11 targets. Those 11 looks represented a season-high. Ertz now has 29 targets in the last four games. In Week 8, Ertz was tied for second among tight ends in target share (28.9%), he was eighth in route participation (73.9%) and was 10th in yards per route run among tight ends with at least four targets. Ertz’s next two games are against low-scoring opponents (the Giants and Steelers), but the Eagles and Cowboys come calling after that in games that may feature a lot of offense.
Will Dissly (TE – LAC) at Cleveland Browns | 1% Rostered
It appears that after the Los Angeles Chargers’ Week 5 bye, they are making a concerted effort to get tight end Will Dissly more involved in the passing game. In Weeks 1-4, Dissly had 10 targets that amassed 85 yards (or 21 per game). In Weeks 6-8, Dissly had 23 targets that earned him 148 yards (nearly 50 per game). With Hayden Hurst falling out of the pecking order and Quentin Johnston injured, it appears the Chargers’ passing game will feature Dissly and Ladd McConkey.
Dissly was sixth in tight end target share in Week 8, as he saw 21.9% of Justin Herbert‘s throws. Five of his next seven games are against teams allowing top-18 numbers to tight ends on the season, including the Ravens, Chiefs and Bengals, who find themselves among the top six best matchups for the position this season. Dissly is universally available on the waiver wire in leagues everywhere, but managers are going to start to take notice after back-to-back strong games for the Chargers.
Adam Trautman (TE – DEN) at Baltimore Ravens | 1% Rostered
Have you seen Bo Nix and this Denver Broncos offense lately? They average 368 yards of offense per game (compared to 307 yards for the season). They average just under 6.0 yards per play and Nix is generating 7.1 yards per pass attempt in that time (the same number as the Kansas City Chiefs). Part of that success has been the emergence of Adam Trautman out of Greg Dulcich‘s shadow. Trautman has seven targets, 85 yards and a touchdown in the last two games. In his first six games, he had three targets for 32 yards and zero scores.
HOLY HANDS TEAM!! What a grab for TE Adam Trautman ???? #NationalTightEndsDay
????: #CARvsDEN on CBS/Paramount+
????: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/rhHjvzE4O2– NFL (@NFL) October 27, 2024
As the Denver offense improves, it comes at the perfect time for Trautman. Over the next two weeks, the Broncos play the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs. Baltimore is the sixth-easiest matchup for tight ends this year while Kansas City is the absolute best so far in 2024. Trautman may not see the overwhelming volume like Ertz, Dissly or even Hunter Henry (39% rostered), but he now has the trust of Nix and Sean Payton and should have the best possible matchups for Weeks 9 and 10.
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