Fantasy Football Rankings: Tight Ends in Week 11

Last week I worked in a reference to Rey Kenobi. This week I could probably work in a Return of the Jedi bit since Travis Kelce and Zach Ertz are returning from bye weeks, but I don’t want to start a trend I can’t continue for the remainder of the season. I confess to loving the Star Wars stories more than I like actually sitting through the movies...is that blasphemy?

Anyway, we could dub this week “Travis Kelce chalk week” except for the fact that Rob Gronkowski still exists and plays the Raiders. The Raiders allow the sixth most points to enemy tight ends, and they got smoked by Julius Thomas (6-84-1) last week. Playing another tight end over Gronk—no matter how epic the matchup is—is a foolhardy endeavor. If red-zone maven Chris Hogan is out again that will only further my resolve.

If you don’t know by now, the Giants have allowed a touchdown to a tight end in every week of the 2017 season, making Travis Kelce the mega-chalk in your NFL DFS lineups this weekend. If you want to rank him ahead of Gronkowski, go ahead—but I can’t imagine a scenario where someone has to decide between those two guys. If you drafted both, you obviously have room to play both. So, play both.

Zach Ertz, Evan Engram, and Jimmy Graham round out the position’s elite.

Cameron Brate gets Mike Evans back this week, so hopefully that and the woeful Dolphins defense will allow Brate to recover from last week’s dud.

Marcedes Lewis gets the matchup of the week against the Browns, and I am currently ranking him pretty aggressively. Even if he only manages five targets, I imagine that will be enough to produce at a high rate compared to his counterparts. Five targets doesn’t sound like much, but none of the players listed after Lewis have a guaranteed floor, either. You may as well take the guy who has seen a slight uptick in targets recently, especially in a matchup where it makes sense to utilize him against the other team’s weakness.

The same is true for Coby Fleener and Lance Kendricks, who each have promising matchups. Neither is assured targets and a guy like Seth DeValve may have a slightly safer floor, but DeValve lacks the ceiling of the other two—especially Fleener, who is wed to Drew Brees.

I will update my rankings as the week progresses. For now, let’s all hope that the DFS world goes a little more according to plan in Week 11, eh?