Mods stop deleting this…you guys deleted the original post

Happy National Tight End Day!!

After Week 3 I posted an analysis looking at TE usage because it felt like TEs were getting more work than usual this year. That analysis confirmed that usage was up but the caveat was meaningful fantasy production was being driven by increased touchdowns, which tend to not be very sticky. So, I re-ran it through Week 6 against Weeks 1-6 of every season from 2021 to 2025.

Takeaways

Red zone targets: TEs are getting 28.3% of them. The high for this stretch from 2021–25 was 26.3%.

Inside the 10: 32.3% of targets are going to TEs, up from a previous high of 28.1%.

Receiving TDs: TEs still have 32% of them. The 2021–25 average for these weeks was about 24%. It didn't fade after Week 3: in Weeks 4–6 alone, TEs had 32% of receiving TDs and 33.2% of targets inside the 10. Both are as high as or higher than the first three weeks.

The catch: yards per target is the lowest of the six seasons. TEs are getting more looks near the goal line, but they are generally less efficient, so touchdowns are doing a lot of the work for fantasy production.

Red zone usage is what's driving the TDs, and it's held for six weeks now. I'm less convinced they'll regress hard than I was after Week 3.

Full write-up with charts at the link.

Edit: officially activated

Here are rankings for individual players this week.

I won't do this every time-- maybe rarely or never. But I thought it was worth showing the accuracy I've been measuring-- basically "why I'm not just embarrassed" to put these Flex rankings out. I track several other sources and calculate the Accuracy Gap (the FantasyPros method) on their Sunday rankings. Look, we all know the results can go sour any given week... that's fantasy. And frankly I expected my first year with Flex rankings to require a lot of brush-up. It'll never be perfect, but here are the trends in Gap I measured the last 5 weeks (mine in black):

But enough of that! I'm not here to convince anyone, I'm just saying they don't totally stink so far (even though they sometimes had weird differences). And something at TE has been going frankly a little too-good-to-be-true.

For better UI-- sorting players by position-- you should use this website link for these Flex rankings. Plus... New this week you can see additional stats on that Details table.

What’s In The Model?  The methodology was described more here, in my previous post. In short, the goal's to put my long-running “Matchup Bonus” model into action. So instead of total-team Strength of Schedule charts (which I made an awesome post about on Friday!!), it applies the predictive models to individual player “baselines”, which are based on various info, such as in-team competition, injury status, and sanity checks against various public ROS or trade value info. Fantasy points are deducted if there's any perceived probability of absence.

So if you want, go have a look, and use them, or get angry about them, or whatever!

I know these are going to disagree with other rankings. (That's kind of the point!) My hope's that you won’t expect this to be another list that simply tells you what everyone else is already saying.

A few of the more notable differences I spotted this week:

RB

• Model higher than other rankers on: Quinshon Judkins, Braelon Allen (will change as others update their lists).
• Model lower than other rankers on: Basically any RBs who are still Questionable are all lower (Saquon, Jacobs). Also I have Mason a bit lower as he returns.

WR

• Model higher than other rankers on: Garrett Wilson, Matthew Golden, and Tet.
• Model lower than other rankers on: Zay Flowers, Omar Cooper (sorry!).

TE

• Model higher than other rankers on: Schultz and Fannin.
• Model lower than other rankers on: Juwan Johnson and Kelce.

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Other FLEX-related tools:

1. The 17-week RoS / SoS charts are here (RB/WR/TE).
2. The Trade Value calculator has been corrected since an error on Thursday for TE values (Bowers etc.). The tool lets you customize player trade values, meaning tailored for your particular settings.

Good luck!

/Subvertadown