Keep Your Eye on the Slop: Top 2 Undrafted Tight Ends Worth Watching
Draft season is, sadly, pretty much over.
The high-stakes crowd will keep drafting into next weekend, but most of us have folded up the draft boards and moved on to the next fantasy obsession: figuring out who we can grab before everyone else realizes they’re useful.
A typical 12-team draft goes about 16 rounds deep. That’s roughly 192 players and defenses off the board, leaving hundreds of offensive players sitting around waiting for someone to care.
Most of them can keep waiting. But every year, a few players emerge from the waiver-wire wilderness and become legitimate fantasy options. And tight end is exactly the kind of position where finding one early can save you months of misery.
If you don’t have one of the handful of set-it-and-forget-it starters, you’re basically digging through the couch cushions hoping to find eight points.
So before Week 1 gets rolling, here are two undrafted tight ends we’re watching closely.
Greg Dulcich, TE, Dolphins
FantasyPros Real-Time ADP: #239
Let’s start with the obvious: Miami isn’t exactly overflowing with proven pass catchers. That’s good news for Greg Dulcich.
Somebody has to catch the football, and Dulcich has already shown he can do something when it comes his way.
Last season, he ranked second among tight ends in yards per route run and yards after the catch, while finishing sixth in fantasy points per route run. Those are pretty interesting numbers for a guy being drafted after pick 200.
The question isn’t really whether Dulcich can be productive. We’ve seen enough to believe there’s something here. The question is whether Miami gives him enough routes and targets to matter every week.
That’s why we’re not telling you to rush out and roster him today. We’re telling you to watch him.
If Dulcich starts running a healthy number of routes and sees five or six targets in Week 1, things get interesting quickly. By the time he catches a touchdown and everyone notices, you’ve probably already missed your chance.
At an ADP of 239, finding out costs you absolutely nothing.
Pigskin Take: Don’t chase him yet. Watch the routes and targets. If those numbers start climbing, Dulcich could go from waiver-wire debris to a legitimate fantasy tight end very quickly.
Gunnar Helm, TE, Titans
FantasyPros Real-Time ADP: #216
Gunnar Helm has something we love to find this far down the draft board: A job.
Chig Okonkwo is gone, taking 76 targets from last year’s offense with him. That leaves Helm with a much clearer path to becoming Tennessee’s primary receiving tight end.
Then there’s Brian Daboll. Tennessee’s new offensive coordinator is expected to lean more heavily on 12 and 13 personnel, which should keep Helm on the field. And at tight end, simply being on the field a lot is half the battle.
The other half is convincing your quarterback to throw you the ball. Fortunately, Cam Ward already seems comfortable doing that.
Ward posted a 106.6 passer rating when targeting Helm last season, while Helm caught 80% of the passes thrown his way. That was the second-best catch rate by a rookie tight end since 1978.
Okay, that’s enough numbers. Here’s what actually matters: Helm has a path to playing time, vacated targets and an established relationship with his quarterback. That’s a pretty decent starting point for someone essentially nobody drafted.
Are we predicting the second coming of Travis Kelce? No. Everybody settle down.
But Helm doesn’t need to become Kelce to matter. If the targets follow the playing time, he could become a perfectly useful TE2—and potentially something more.
Pigskin Take: Helm is one of our favorite deep tight-end flyers. He doesn’t need an injury or some bizarre series of events to become relevant. He just needs the opportunity that’s already sitting in front of him.
The Bottom Line
Neither Dulcich nor Helm needs to be on your roster right now. They should, however, be on your radar.
Dulcich gives us the more intriguing efficiency profile and could benefit from a wide-open target tree in Miami. Helm has perhaps the cleaner path to snaps and targets in Tennessee.
At tight end, that’s enough to get our attention. The trick with the waiver wire isn’t identifying a breakout after he catches six passes and two touchdowns. Your entire league can do that.
It’s identifying him one week earlier. Keep your eye on the slop.
And keep your eye on: