Tight ends in football are being used differently, not necessarily more.

XNSports.com, drawing similar conclusions about targets while focusing more on TE2s – stream-worthy tight ends.

His most recent study looked at how many fantasy points bottom-10 defenses versus the position were surrendering on average each week. The results showed that, despite a decrease in volume, tight ends (in general now, not just TE2s) were seeing the same amount of fantasy points scored against bottom-of-the-barrel defenses. To put this another way, the decrease in volume didn't really matter much to the overall production of tight end streamers.

And after digging into our metrics, this actually makes a whole lot of sense.

When you have less volume, you must play at a higher level – have higher efficiency – in order to sustain production. If a tight end were to continue to play at the same level he had always played at, seeing less volume, that tight end wouldn’t be a better fantasy asset. He’d be worse.

I looked at our Reception Net Expected Points (NEP) metric, which measures the number of real points a player adds for his team on catches only. But to make sure I wasn’t favoring volume in any way, I divided this number by the number of targets (Reception NEP/Targets) to see if there was any change in efficiency at the tight end position through the years.

And there was!

Since 2009, when tight end usage started to even out as a percentage of total drop backs, the 2013 season saw the best Reception NEP per target average of any year. In other words, tight ends were more efficient in 2013 than they’ve ever been in recent years.

For comparison, this number at wide receiver has been incredibly consistent through the years – it’s not as though the natural pass-catching positions have simply been more effective on the field.

So what does this mean? Well, similar to the conclusion I made in the tight end article that spawned this one, I think this is another example in fantasy football where we need to be more and more aware of on-the-field effectiveness, not just volume.

The game of football is seeing more and more passes each and every year. But it’s also getting more and more creative, finding new ways to get particular players at various positions the football. It’s no longer a game with just two wide receiver sets. More players are touching the ball, which means there’s potential, outside of the elite players in the league who will naturally see a crazy number of looks each game, for targets to be spread thinner.

This isn’t a bad thing for tight end streamers. This just means that you need to be aware of the efficient tight ends in the league rather than the ones who see a high number of targets.

And remember, this is has only been a one-year thing. It’s not like this is necessarily a new standard in football. But like anything else in fantasy football, you always want to be on top of your game.