2020 Season Strength Of Schedule: Tight Ends

Jul 22

Written By Rob

And the last position to break down for the 2020 strength schedule (SOS), which is based on fantasy points allowed by opposing defenses, NOT winning % like your standard SOS!

Enough of the chit-chat. Data and the tight ends (TEs) SOS below.

Data Model:

Position: TE
Based on 2019 fantasy points allowed by opposing defenses per game
PPR Scoring
Quads are grouped by teams of 8
- Quad 1: Teams 1 to 8 that allowed the most fantasy points
- Quad 2: Teams 9 to 16
- Quad 3: Team 17 to 24
- Quad 4: Teams 25 to 32 that allowed the least points
Ranking is a weighted scoring system based off-tiers. Average points allowed (most to least) is the tie breaker
Highlighted cells for each quad means that team has 5 or more games against defenses in that particular quad
- I.e. Minnesota has 4 games against Quad 1 defenses. These are the top 8 defenses that allowed the most points to opposing TEs

The SOS is for your own digestion and a tool for your research.

As always, I do provide a few thoughts:

Minnesota (MIN): 12 of their 16 games (or 75%) are against quad 1 and 2 opponents. If only they had a reliable TE, right? Kyle Rudolph really faded last year and every time I watched him I honestly thought that he needed to be blocking. And no, I don’t care if he did catch the winning touchdown against New Orleans in the playoffs. Irv Smith Jr., however, he is a different story. He’s one of the few TEs in the league that looks like a big wide receiver (WR) when he catches the ball. At FU, we like tight ends with WR skill sets. Right now his ADP is ~174 on Drafters and with additional volume, it could pay off.
Philadelphia (PHI): they have the second easiest schedule for TEs. That seems appealing for the team that had the most receptions and points scored by TEs as a group last year. One point to consider: Since Philadelphia scored the most points in the league last year for TEs, that also means that they punished their opponents. Three of those opponents are in their division, which account for 6 of their total 16 games in 2020. This actually could mean that PHI has a good group of TEs and the defenses aren’t quite that bad against TEs. But still, if they torched their divisional opponents last year, who is to say they won’t this year?
Carolina (CAR): Do not sleep on Ian Thomas’s ADP value of ~151 on @Drafters. THAT IS IT.

New England (NWE): The third least friendly SOS for TEs. They lose Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski comes out of retirement, and now they have a difficult schedule for TE production which had been a staple of their offense play calling prior to last year. OUCH.

That wraps up this four part data series.

Note: We will also be dropping a post that includes the 2020 schedule for each team by week. This schedule will highlight their weekly opponents by points allowed and the quads detailed in these posts.

Until then, PEACE.