Okay, here we go again. Week 12. Felt like I just finished last week’s grind, and now it’s time to sort out these tight end rankings. It’s always a bit of a puzzle, this position.
So, first things first this morning, I grabbed my coffee and sat down to pull up the usual stuff. Injury reports are key. No point ranking a guy high if he’s sitting on the bench or didn’t even practice all week. Scrolled through those updates, made a few notes on guys who are questionable or definitely out. That clears out some immediate clutter.
Next, I went back and looked at the game logs from Week 11. Not just the final stats, though yards and touchdowns obviously matter. I focused more on targets and snap counts. How involved was the guy really? Did he get looks near the end zone? Sometimes a TE has a quiet yardage day but sees like 8 targets – that tells me he’s still part of the game plan. Found a couple of guys whose usage ticked up, worth keeping an eye on.
Digging into the Matchups
After checking who’s healthy and who got work last week, I started looking at this week’s matchups. This is where it gets interesting. Some defenses just bleed points to tight ends, year after year it feels like. You see a guy playing against one of those teams, you gotta give him a little bump.
- Checked which teams give up the most points to TEs.
- Looked at recent trends too – maybe a defense was bad early on but tightened up recently?
- Considered how specific defenses play – do they use linebackers or safeties mostly on TEs?
Had to shuffle a few names around based on this. Player A might be more talented overall, but Player B has a dream matchup this week. You have to weigh that.
The ‘Gut Feel’ and Putting it Together
Alright, got the data, got the matchups. Then comes the part that’s less science, more just… feeling it out. Sometimes a player looks good on paper, great matchup, getting targets, but something just feels off. Maybe the QB is spreading it around too much lately, or the offense just looks clunky.
Honestly, past experience plays a big role here. I remember getting burned ignoring a gut feeling about a TE facing a supposedly tough defense who then went off for two touchdowns. So, I try not to ignore that little voice entirely. Made a couple of adjustments based purely on that – maybe dropped one guy a spot or two, bumped another slightly.
Finally, I started actually building the list. Put the obvious top guys in place. Then started slotting in the mid-tier guys, comparing them head-to-head. Moved guys up, moved ’em down. Erased names, wrote them back in. It’s never a clean process. It’s messy. Took a good chunk of time just arranging that middle group.
Gave the whole list one final read-through. Does it look reasonable? Does it pass the common sense test? Yeah, feels about right for Week 12. It’s never perfect, especially with tight ends, but it’s my best shot based on what I could dig up and how things feel. Now just gotta wait and see how Sunday plays out.
