You’ve got your stud Fantasy tight ends, your good-enough-to-start Fantasy tight ends and then you’ve got the rest of the tight ends.
The free-agent crop this spring might have one, maybe two good-enough-to-start guys. Maybe. If we’re being generous.
At the very least, these tight ends will work as fill-in starters for a week or two with potential to be moderately reliable from week to week.
Bennett turned out to be the most available tight end in New England, though he was just as inconsistent as he was in all of his other previous stops. He had five games with 10 or more Fantasy points but nine with three or fewer. He also had nine games with three or fewer receptions. Despite this, Bennett is coming off of being a key role player for the Patriots’ Super Bowl winning team, so he will draw attention.
Best fit for Fantasy: Packers | Green Bay tight ends combined for over 100 targets last season, a number Bennett should be able to match on his own. Aaron Rodgers has always loved having a strong tight end in the red zone and would be able to play the matchups between Bennett and his other receivers. He’d be a step up in class from Jared Cook.
Cook’s never been a counted-upon Fantasy asset, but to be fair, he came to play in the playoffs with 229 yards and two touchdowns on 18 catches. To be fair, he was dominant at the end of the year when he was healthy and the Packers were desperate for receiver help. To be fair, those three postseason games were his best consecutive performances since the end of 2011!
Best fit for Fantasy: Raiders | For all his faults, the veteran still has immense size and good enough speed to lure a quarterback into throwing to him. Oakland could use another red-zone target to take pressure off of Michael Crabtree and help replace the dozen scores Latavius Murray rushed for in 2016. If he were to stay healthy, Cook could come close to his early-years-with-the-Rams numbers catching passes from Derek Carr.
Unrestricted free-agent tight ends: Jacob Tamme, Vernon Davis, Dion Sims, Mychal Rivera
