While most of our 2020 tight end breakout candidates have fallen flat on their faces, Jonnu Smith has bucked the trend. Despite already having his bye week, the 25-year-old ranks fourth at the position in PPR scoring and he's a consensus top-five option in our Week 6 rankings.
Smith's rise began in 2019 if you look close enough. In fact, it began when Ryan Tannehill took over at quarterback for the Titans. That also coincided with Delanie Walker playing his last game for the Titans.
Tannehill and Smith have now played 14 regular season games together. In those games, Smith has 47 catches for 563 yards and eight touchdowns. He's topped double-digit Fantasy points in eight of those games, including all four in 2020.
It's worthwhile to point out that Smith has been helped by the Titans lack of continuity this year. They haven't played one full game with A.J. Brown, Corey Davis and Adam Humphries year. That is a reason to be concerned about whether Smith can maintain his top-five production, but there should be little doubt he's a starter for the rest of 2020.
More Week 6 Fantasy prep: Waivers | Trade Values | Winners and Losers | Believe It or Not:
Week 6 TE Preview
The following players are not being projected to play Week 6:
- 15% --- Darren Fells has scored on 15% of his targets the past two years. That's not sustainable, but you could do worse if you miss out on all the streamers below.
- 24.2% -- Mike Gesicki is responsible for nearly a quarter of his team's air yards. At tight end, that's second only to Mark Andrews.
- 4.7 -- Evan Engram's average depth of target is miserably low and made worse by his 56% catch rate.
- 4.1 -- Zach Ertz is averaging 4.1 yards per target. He's never been particularly good in this area, but that would even be bad for a running back.
- 8 -- Jimmy Graham already has eight red-zone targets. That's tied with Travis Kelce and Darren Waller for the most at tight end this year.
Hooper had the same number of targets in Week 5 (10) as he had in the first three weeks of the season combined. I believe that was more matchup related than anything, but you cannot leave a tight end with a 10-target game on the waver wire.
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I prefer Ebron to Hooper this week and rest of season. Especially if Diontae Johnson is out. Ebron has 18 targets in the Steelers past three games and seems to be developing rapport with Ben Roethlisberger.
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We don't get Travis Kelce or George Kittle on the main slate and Mark Andrews is overpriced considering he has almost identical stats to Smith in one more game.
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So who should you start and sit this week? And which surprising quarterback could lead you to victory? Visit SportsLine now to get Week 6 rankings for every position, plus see which QB is going to come out of nowhere to crack the top 10, all from the model that out-performed experts big-time last season.