Im sick of Tight End premium scoring and heres why

Unless you’re new to reading or listening to my opinions, you already know I’m not a fan of Full PPR. I’m “okay” with Half-PPR but still don’t love it. I went in-depth on why I loathe “free points” in my Best League Settings piece, but the simple version is the lack of logic in this play: a zero-yard gain on a reception equaling a point. I won’t sidebar too long, as you can #CheckTheLink for Best Settings… this is about Tight End Premium (TEP) scoring (1.5 PPR for tight ends, while the rest of the positions are Full PPR). Ugh, my eyes have already rolled deep inside my head.

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Let’s start with my main complaint about TEP scoring. The “reason” behind it. Just like two-catcher leagues in fantasy baseball and the introduction of PPR in fantasy football, TEP is all because, “Wahh, wahh, tight ends don’t matter enough, and managers just wait until the end rounds to gamble on one or two and then get lucky while I don’t get much benefit for taking Zach Ertz early!” Basically, players want to be rewarded for taking a tight end in the Round 5-7 range instead of making the tough call to take Travis Kelce or George Kittle in the second — or just waiting until Rounds 8-10 to take someone who will be just as good as the “upside and/or consistent” guy in the fifth round.

This is even worse than when PPR was implemented to offset the running back dominance in fantasy football. It was a reactionary “course correction,” and as seen in today’s NFL, it’s not needed and just artificially inflates certain players.

But, instead of just dishing out logic in the form of words, I figured I’d back this up with some stats, as it takes any perceived bias out of the equation.

Tight End Premium scoring does boost tight ends… obviously. Does it really impact the overall player pool? What happens to the position itself? That’s what I’m going to show you, and I went back five years for the snapshot to get a good sample for the stats.

Tight End Finishes vs The Field

Year by year, we know tight ends populate the Top 10, 25, 50 and even 100 way less frequently than running backs or wide receivers. Let’s first look at the finishes for each position by scoring.

HALF PPR

Outside of the strange 2015 season, running backs dominate the Top 10 – understandable given the volume – slightly outperform wide receivers in the Top 25, then lose ground to them in the Top 50 and 100. As expected, tight ends don’t show up much at all. None in the Top 10, rarely in the Top 25 and 50 and then a smattering in the Top 100.

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FULL PPR

Full PPR hurts running backs and boosts wide receivers (no surprise) with around a 5% average drop for running backs and 13% average boost for receivers. Tight ends benefit as well, jumping around 18%. “Well, that’s not enough!” say the TEP truthers.

TEP PPR

Now, running backs drop around 9% on average, but so do wide receivers, falling around 8%, with tight ends jumping 19%. “Yay, success!” scream the truthers.

Well, it’s not as large of an impact as you might assume, as in PPR, we had zero tight ends finishing in the Top 10 every year, anywhere from 0 to 3 in the Top 25, a total of 3 to 7 any given year in the Top 50 and 12 to 16 in the Top 100. Those numbers improve around 2-3 tight ends on average, increasing to 0-2 in the Top 10, 3-6 in the Top 25, 6-10 in the Top 50 and 16-22 in the Top 100. Again, it’s fine but not a huge impact.

Already, even Tight End Premium isn’t that big of a difference, but that’s not even my main complaint, as many might look at that and say, “Well, let’s do more.” My main problem (in addition to the artificial inflation) is that it mainly gives the top-end tight ends a bigger gap over the rest of the position and doesn’t do much to make the value of tight ends more equitable to other positions.

“Tiers” or the Drop-off for Tight Ends

Okay, these tables are going to be a LOT to look at and try to digest, so let me break down the important parts.

There is often a significant drop from TE1 and TE2 to TE3 and again around TE7-8 compared to the overall average drop for each player (average of -0.5 FPPG from the tight end ranked one spot above). To show the impact of TE Premium, the final two columns first show the Difference going from PPR to TE Premium. As you can see, it often compounds the gaps already in place versus pulling all the tight ends closer. Additionally, the second column shows that the drop from the “elite” tight ends becomes more pronounced in TE Premium. There are larger differences each year outside of 2017, where it is flatter, especially near the top, but there is still a more pronounced gap from TE4-5 and TE6-7.

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2019

Kittle scored 1.3 more than Andrews, and it increases to 1.5 with the addition of TE Premium. The gap from TE4 to TE5 isn’t huge, but it also increases and continues to hit the position at a decent clip until we get down to TE13.

2018

Ertz closes the gap with the added scoring, but the gap from Ertz to Kittle and Kittle to Ebron jumps each level… and quite a bit. After that, it’s relatively flat with Howard as the big hit. But even with the Engram increase, the elite options versus the field effect is already felt.

2017

The gaps at the top were already large, but the TE5 and TE7 gaps increase with the same happening at TE12.

2016

Again, the elite gaps are already significant, but things take a turn with Walker at TE6, is slightly worse still at TE7 and then has another bump at TE10.

2015

There is an enormous drop with Gronkowski and then again with Barnidge. The TE5 spot keeps it going and then TE11 has the other major impact.

TL;DR

There are some tight ends whose gaps to the player ranked just above him decreases already just from the addition of Half or PPR scoring. Of course, that only makes sense and is the overall thought behind TEP scoring. However, as you can see, the premium scoring doesn’t truly inflate the position as much as you would want/think. What it truly does is artificially inflates the position while often widening the gap of the top-end tight ends from the rest. That simply makes the top-end tight ends more valuable, not the position overall. There is still little difference between low-end TE1s and the rest of the position, which, if you want to truly make tight ends more valuable, shouldn’t be the case.

So, enough with the artificial point boosts because you don’t like that someone found a Mark Andrews, Darren Waller, etc. late and outscored your Hunter Henry. The Kelce’s and Kittle’s of the world already have premium value just as Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes do at quarterback. That’s a tough decision to make without trying to “boost” a position’s value and fail to make the desired impact anyway (just like 6-point versus 4-point quarterback passing touchdown scoring. All that truly does is inflate the top-end guys and ding the rush-valued quarterbacks a tad).

(Photo by Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)

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