If you haven’t read the previous two articles in this series, examining the same question for RBs and WRs, check them out now!
Have you ever considered whether playing the TE on the same team as your opponent’s QB is a valuable strategy? Consider the following scenario: you are facing Michael Penix Jr. in your weekly matchup, and have both Kyle Pitts and David Njoku, but can only start one – do you attempt to handcuff Penix by starting Pitts, or do you go with Njoku, who is arguably the better TE? While this question is difficult to tackle, it’s nothing an analytical dive can’t solve. In this article, I break down whether it is or isn’t worth it to stack TEs against your opponent. Let’s jump into things.
Approach
To answer this question, we must break QBs and TEs into different groupings – this assumes that the advantages or disadvantages you might gain from stacking changes as you are playing different tiers of QB. The same goes for TE quality when considering your alternate TE option. With this, I split both QBs and TEs into three groups each: 1-10, 11-20, and 21-50, based on total fantasy points on the season. After gathering this information through the 2013-2024 seasons, I plotted matrices depicting the various combinations of TEs you would have to decide between for every tier of QBs. The matrices compare TE1, TE2, and TE3 for pass catchers on the same team as the QB at hand (in this case the TE you would be using to stack against your opponent), to TEs 1-10, TEs 11-20, and TEs 21-50 overall on different teams than the QB at hand (these are the TEs that would not be a stack against your opponent’s QB).
From here, I evaluate performance based on expected points scored above or below the opposing QB’s output. This displays the idea of trying to ‘cancel out’ the performance of your opponent’s QB, with just your handcuff. In the matrices below, each box is split into two halves to compare the expected performance of the handcuffing TE on the top (the TE on the same team as the opposing QB) and the expected performance of the non-handcuffing TE on the bottom. Let’s jump into our analysis.
Analysis
First, we’ll look at the results of handcuffing against top-tier QBs, those ranking 1-10 in fantasy. Off the bat, we see there is a clear disadvantage to using a TE to handcuff instead of a top 10 TE on another team. Top 10 TEs on average are expected to score two points more than the TE1 of your opponent’s QB. However, when we compare the TE1 to TEs on different teams outside the top 10, there becomes an advantage in handcuffing. Once you fall outside the top 10, using a TE1 will produce at least 1.3 points higher than your alternate option on a different team. If we take a look at starting a TE2 or TE3 for handcuffing purposes, we can conclude that it is never worth it to handcuff!
Checking out the variance of these numbers is important – how volatile is starting a TE of a different team compared to starting a TE of the same team? Simply put, starting a TE on another team is more risky, but also more rewarding. You see higher standard deviations in expected points across every level in the matrix below. This tells us that a QB’s point totals are much more correlated to the TEs on their own team rather than those on different teams. In confirming this to be true, we can help reform our handcuffing strategy further. In the case where you might have an advantage on your fantasy opponent in most aspects of the game (let’s say a 15-20 point projected win margin), but they have a top 10 QB who might push them over the edge to overcome you, handcuffing their QB could be a valuable strategy, even if you have a higher ranking/performing TE option on your bench. While that top-tier TE on a different team might outscore the one you choose to start, since the handcuffing TE is more correlated to the QB you are playing, they will better mirror/cancel out that QB’s point total, hence making them a safer bet.
If we expand our analysis to look at the second tier of QBs, the results hold from before. TE1s won’t outperform top 10 TEs on another team, but any worse than top 10, and you should go with the handcuff. Outside the TE1, there is little viability to trying this strategy.
Again, the same results hold true with the bottom tier of QBs, ranked 21-50.
Conclusion
In summary, if you have a TE1 available to handcuff your opponent, it is smart to do so as long as your other option is not a top-10 TE on another team. The only time it may be a viable strategy to stick with the TE1 in this scenario is when you have a strong advantage against your opponent and really want to limit their QB’s potential boom against you.
from Fantasy Footballers Podcast https://ift.tt/TfXpUwE
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