Fantasy Football: 5 Tight Ends You Can Trust
Cameron Brate, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
A popular sleeper pick at the position in the preseason, Cameron Brate is exceeding even the most optimistic predictions for 2017. Despite already having his bye week, Brate is 4th among tight ends in raw fantasy points and is 3rd in per-game scoring, ahead of even Travis Kelce
Perhaps the hardest trait to find in a tight end is week-to-week consistency, as they tend to be game plan or game script dependent. Not Brate. He's been a model of consistency, scoring a touchdown in four straight games.
There are plenty of mouths to feed in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense, but that hasn't prevented Brate from putting up points. While he has seen 5 fewer targets than teammate DeSean Jackson, he has 4 more catches and just 6 less yards than the deep-threat specialist. His efficiency is something to marvel at, and you may have noticed from the chart in the Gronkowski section that no tight end in the league with at least 10 targets has a higher NEP per target than Brate.
In 2018, this job could well belong to rookie O.J. Howard, but this year, it's all Brate, and you should be taking advantage.