5 Tight Ends to Target in Your Fantasy Football Draft
Dwayne Allen, Indianapolis Colts
ADP: 150 (12.12)
Being drafted as the 15th tight end off the board in standard-scoring leagues, Dwayne Allen, I've said it before and I'll say it again, is being criminally undervalued for the 2015 season.
Despite being a physically dominant athlete and skilled pass catcher with fluid hips and solid route running -- he stands at 6' 3" and 265 pounds and was a top-performer in the agility tests, posting a 7.12-second 3-cone time and 4.37-second 20-yard shuttle time -- Allen is being overlooked as a victim of recency bias.
Allen started off the 2014 season strong, putting up TE1 value over the first nine weeks. He surpassed the eight-point mark in seven of these contests. But as the season waned, Allen broke down, recording just 21 receiving yards total from Week 10 on.
Still recovering from a stress fracture in his foot and surgeries on both hips that kept him out for most of the 2013 season, by his own admission, Allen played at just 70% in 2014.
When healthy, however, Allen was highly efficient. As the Colts' move tight end, he managed to record a Reception NEP per target that was third-best among all tight ends with at least 30 targets last season, with his 0.90 mark landing him between Julius Thomas (0.97) and Antonio Gates (0.92), and just ahead of Gronkowski (0.86) and Kelce (0.83).
For fantasy football purposes, Allen averaged an impressive 1.74 fantasy points per target. To put this into perspective, the number-one overall tight end from last season, Rob Gronkowski, averaged 1.41 points per target in 15 games with the Patriots last year.
While his value has been suppressed by underlying health issues affecting his play last season, one encouraging thing to note is that in an effort to stay healthy and play faster this year, Allen has shed 13 pounds and re-committed himself to his conditioning.
And now another year removed from his devastating 2013 injury, if Allen can stay healthy and maintain the same level of production this season that he had in the first half of last season, he could be an absolute steal as a TE1 going at the cost of a super late-round flier.
