Let’s dive right in, everyone, taking a look back at last week’s optimal lineup:
It’s an interesting week for sure. While Josh Dobbs was our optimal QB due to tight salary restrictions, the Justin Fields–D.J. Moore–Cole Kmet double stack was what you needed until the very end of the 4 p.m. games and was more than viable. I often talk about how infrequent traditional 2-WR double stacks are reflected in a perfect lineup, and here we almost see the QB-WR-TE combination instead. Either way, after last week and Thursday’s night Bears-Commanders game, it’s good to see high-ceiling Justin Fields at it again.
Christian McCaffrey continues to have a ceiling that only he, Justin Jefferson, and Tyreek Hill really possess, and when they reach these ceiling games, their prices truly don’t matter. He remains underpriced for now, and we’ll see where he’s priced when he’s next on a main slate in Week 6.
Nico Collins has been optimal in two of four weeks, while A.J. Brown and De’Von Achane did it two weeks in a row. It’s critical to be getting serious exposure to high-ceiling players like Brown every single week. He was only 4% owned.
Rookies continue to be underpriced and underutilized, too, as Michael Wilson rounded out the Josh Dobbs skinny stack, with CMC as the bring-back in that game.
Cole Kmet’s 27.6 DraftKings-point performance was the highest of any tight end this season, and overall the position has been a wasteland thus far, as Adam notes in his tweet below:
You only add one more to that list if you call it full-point PPR while making the threshold 17 points. It’s been rough, which made me wonder: What exactly are the criteria needed for an optimal tight end? What kind of prices and average scores do you need in your lineup from the position? Is it right to be punting it off like we so often do in cash? I went back and looked at the last two and a half seasons (plus the four weeks of this season) of perfect lineup tight ends to see what we can take away. It’s been a while since we’ve deep-dove some historical perfect lineup content, so let’s jump in.
2023
Week 4 – Cole Kmet, $4,200 – 27.6 points
Week 3 – Sam LaPorta, $4,000 – 22.4 points
Week 2 – Mark Andrews, $6,300 – 15.5 points
Week 1 – Hunter Henry, $3,500 – 16.6 points
Average optimal price – $4,500
Average optimal score – 20.525
2022
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