The tight end position has been dominated by a big trio of players the last couple of seasons, as George Kittle, Zach Ertz and Travis Kelce have all been ranked inside the top four tight ends in PPR scoring in each of the past three seasons. Kelce has easily been the most dominant figure of the bunch, leading the position in fantasy football scoring the last four years. 2019 saw some disruption to the big three, though, with the Raiders’ Darren Waller and the Ravens’ Mark Andrews both landing inside the top five. Both of those players were available in late rounds last year and ended up being big parts of many championship winning fantasy rosters. Let’s get into some fantasy football breakouts at the TE position.
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It wasn’t all rosy, though, for people who took risks on breakout players later in the draft in 2019. Players like O.J. Howard and Eric Ebron, who were being taken much higher than Andrews and Waller, ended up ranking well outside the top 20 in points at their position. Ebron experienced some major touchdown regression in 2019 after catching an insane 13 touchdowns in 2018, while Howard simply couldn’t play himself into a bigger role in Bruce Arians’ receiver-focused offense.
Avoiding these types of busts and capitalizing on the kind of late-round breakouts we saw from Waller and Andrews last year will be pivotal for any successful fantasy team, especially at tight end where it feels like there’s a ton of late-round talent in 2020 to capitalize on. To help you identify who those later-round picks might be in 2020, we’ve identified our top-three breakout players for 2020 at the position.
2020 Fantasy Football Breakout Candidates: Tight Ends (TEs)
Fantasy Football Breakout #1: Tyler Higbee
Higbee has started to gain some heat over the summer as a potential top-10 tight end pick in 2020, but his current ADP (77) still looks too low. Ranked as the fifth-best tight end in the current Awesemo rankings, Higbee’s potential really started to shine through towards the end of the 2019 season when the Rams started using 12 personnel more frequently due to injuries at receiver and ineffectiveness of their offensive line.
The change in targeting came late last year when Robert Woods missed a game in Week 12. Higbee caught five passes that game and then went on to average 8.6 catches and 104.4 yards over his last four starts. The Rams unloaded Brandin Cooks in the offseason, and while Josh Reynolds and rookie Van Jefferson will obviously see expanded roles, the release of Cooks should mean that Higbee’s late-season targeting is now much less likely to see a massive dip in 2020.
It’s understandable why there’s still a lot of skeptics with Higbee. This is a player, after all, who went from being lightly used as a pass catcher — with absolutely no week-to-week viability for fantasy purposes — to an every-week sensation basically overnight. In fact, before the week 11 spike, Higbee hadn’t caught more than four passes in a game, had just one TD and hadn’t gone for more than 44 yards in a game in 2019. Still, he worked well in a spread/air-raid style offense back in Western Kentucky, averaging over 15 yards per reception and catching 12 TDs in his last 24 games there.
After his showing at the end of last season, there’s little doubt that Higbee can work as effective receiver in the Rams offense.
This Tyler Higbee sideline grab leads to the #LARams TD!
📺: #SEAvsLAR on NBC
📱: NFL app // Yahoo Sports app
Watch free on mobile: https://t.co/jQ30PKCS7y pic.twitter.com/zA4F0WpbAr— NFL (@NFL) December 9, 2019
The only drawbacks here are a draft status that is rising a bit and the fact Gerald Everett still looms. Everett’s been labeled as a “breakout” threat himself, though, for multiple years and has never been able to beat out Higbee for steady playing time. Worrying about Everett now that Higbee has established himself so well in the Rams offense and gained the trust of Jared Goff seems like a red herring. The draft stack is rising here on Higbee but still remains slightly low for the kind of upside that seems to exist. He’s a top breakout candidate at tight end for 2020 and capable of disrupting the big three’s dominance in 2020.
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Fantasy Football Breakout TE #2: Blake Jarwin
With all of the hype surrounding the Cowboys offense in 2020, you’d figure there’d be a little more buzz surrounding Jarwin. The third-year player was basically handed the starting pass-catching role at tight end for them this offseason, a position that was productive for Dallas last year. Between Jarwin and Jason Witten, the two combined for 124 targets in 2019, a mark that would have led all Cowboys receivers. Even more interesting is how much the Cowboys used the position in the red zone. Witten and Jarwin combined for 12 red zone targets last year, with Witten’s 10 targets leading all Cowboys receivers.
While we can’t just take last year’s tight end numbers and simply award them Jarwin in 2020, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that he will approach that kind of production. The Cowboys committed to him as their starter over the offseason, awarding him with a four-year, $22 million deal. There’s also the fact that he’s actually looked very good working with Dak Prescott when given the opportunity to act as the TE1 for Dallas:
From 2018-2019 among the 54 TEs with 50 or more targets:
Blake Jarwin👀 is 11th in Yds/Tg (8.73)
(Immediately ahead of Hunter Henry)https://t.co/FUlRFP9JgQ— Derek Brown (@DBro_FFB) August 4, 2020
In games where Jarwin has received bigger workloads, he’s produced TE1 numbers. In the final four games of 2018, he took on a larger role, getting 25 targets over that span and producing a gaudy 15.2 points per game in PPR leagues. That average was obviously blown up by a week 17 effort that included a crazy three-touchdown performance, but even if you take out the three scores, he still averaged 10.7 points in that span.
Jarwin’s ADP right now sits around 172.2, putting him well back of players like Jonnu Smith and Noah Fant, who may be talented in their own right but will be involved in low-volume passing offenses and have a bigger threat of a shared workload. Jarwin will be playing on the league’s sixth-highest-scoring team from 2019 with little to no viable competition for targets, (as of writing, there was some discussion the Cowboys were entertaining David Njoku, but he looks likely to stay in Cleveland now). At his current draft stock, Jarwin looks like huge value and a great candidate for a breakout of his own in 2020.
Fantasy Football Breakout TE #3: Irv Smith Jr.
There’s little doubt that Smith has a far tougher path to a true breakout in 2020 than the first two candidates I’ve posted, but enough potential exists here to consider him as a fine late-round breakout candidate in season-long drafts. The Vikings second-year player saw just 47 targets in his rookie year, but was certainly more involved in the offense as the year went along, averaging 4.0 targets per game over his last 10 games after seeing just 1.33 per game in his first six.
Smith’s snap count went up later in 2019 too as he played on over 70% of the snaps for Minnesota between Week’s 10-14, when Adam Thielen was out. Thielen may be healthy this season, but the Vikings also lost Stefon Diggs, leaving Smith as a player who could potentially emerge as Kirk Cousins No. 2 target at some point. Rookie receiver Justin Jefferson will also be in the mix for targets, but who knows how he’ll fit into the offense early in the year without a preseason.
While Smith is well rounded enough to be a starter on his own, his strength in the pass game should mean his playing time in 2020 won’t see a massive dip. Kyle Rudolph did outscore Smith by catching four more touchdowns in 2019, but Smith saw just one fewer red zone target than the veteran, suggesting the tables could easily be flipped in his favor in that regard in 2020.
The @Vikings are on the board!@KirkCousins8 to Irv Smith, Jr. for the TD. #SKOL #DENvsMIN
📺: CBS
📱: NFL app // Yahoo Sports app
Watch free on mobile: https://t.co/414bcK9I5b pic.twitter.com/JZYXLBLKpZ— NFL (@NFL) November 17, 2019
Smith’s 189 ADP makes him a perfect back-end target for anyone rolling with a non-elite TE1. There are numerous outcomes for him in 2020 for him, but if Smith develops more trust with Cousins early in 2020, a big breakout is certainly on the table. He’s the tight end to own on Minnesota. It’s just a matter of whether or not his playing companion syphons off too many targets to stop him from reaching true TE1 status by the end of the year.
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