“My mission is to ensure the survival of “Tight ends for me block first, catch second.” Obviously, we don’t earn fantasy points in most leagues for blocking, so this philosophy seems foreboding for any fantasy production from the desert in fantasy.

Can Carlson – or any Cardinals tight end – be a fantasy blast from the past in this potentially potent Arizona offense, or will their coach smelt them down to scrap metal?

Rise of the Machines

Before examining specific players, I always like to examine the system they will be playing in. Much like preparing for nuclear war against Skynet, you want to know what environment you’ll be in before you decide which gear is the best for it. For our purposes, this means pulling apart the machine that is Bruce Arians offense and looking for its historical tendencies.

We’ll do this through examining our signature metric here at numberFire, Net Expected Points (NEP). NEP is a measure of just how much a player adds to or detracts from his team’s chances of scoring on any given play, and this is measured in expected points on that drive. You can read more about NEP in our glossary. For tight ends, we are solely concerned with Reception NEP and Target NEP – the sums of NEP gained solely on plays resulting in a reception, and plays on which a specific player is targeted, respectively.

First, we have to understand that Arians’ basic offensive scheme is a two-tight end, one-back system (also known as “12 personnel”). I detailed the effects of a 12 base offense in two articles last month, both on OurLads lists John Carlson as the starting tight end on the Cardinals, along with Troy Niklas in the second tight end role (again, the primary inline blocker), with Rob Housler as the second-string primary tight end. These are our three most likely candidates for fantasy production in 2014, though converted professional basketball player Darren Fells could be a very quiet dark horse.

The last time we saw Carlson take meaningful first team snaps prior to last year was in 2010, and even then he had a very diminished role in new Seattle head coach Pete Carroll’s offense. In 2011, he suffered a season-ending shoulder injury, and by the end of the season had been released, then signed as the backup in Minnesota. In 2013, however, Carlson looked like he stole Kyle Rudolph's clothes and motorcycle, and rode back to fantasy relevance for a few games late in the season. Could Carlson be a Heath Miller clone?

In short, yes. The brief table below contains Carlson’s production by NEP for his career, excepting his 2011 injured season and 2012 pure backup year.

Carlson’s early-career opportunities and production are scarily similar to the averages we established for the Arians system. The even more interesting thing is that his Reception NEP per target (receiving efficiency; value per opportunity) was higher than or equal to the Arians' average early in his career. Clearly, Carlson is older and perhaps has lost some of his effectiveness due to the torn labrum that sidelined him for the entirety of 2011, but there is value to be had here. Miller only produced per target efficiencies between 0.50 and 0.69 from 2008-2011; even a slightly diminished Carlson could well be a fairly useful weapon.

Niklas, again, figures to function more as the inline blocker in this scheme. The 6’6”, 270-pound Niklas is almost a picture-perfect clone of 6’7”, 260-pound Matt Spaeth, who was Miller’s blocking cohort during Arians’ time in Pittsburgh. Don’t expect fantasy contribution out of Niklas this year, but he could be developed into an interesting red zone threat with time. He’s still a quality dynasty player for the end of your bench.

Housler has seen his time come and go in Arizona. He was drafted as an athletic, catch-first “move” tight end, but that role has very little use in this scheme. Coby Fleener's 2012 with this offense is the most even comparison to Housler: both are unreliable receivers that need volume to thrive. With Arians, there isn’t much volume even for the primary tight end, meaning that solid-catching, reliable targets are the best fits. Housler will ride the pine this season, or be traded; only if the latter happens will he have any legitimate fantasy value.

Judgment Day

The Bruce Arians offense, truly, has not historically been friendly to the tight end, but there is still a role to be had for a reliable pass-catcher. Efficiency and reliability are the keys to a tight end in this offense. For our purposes, John Carlson should be the clear heir to this throne, and every other option is clearly behind him. I’m not expecting wonders, but we could potentially see a low-end fantasy starter emerge in the desert for the first time since Todd Heap.

We know now why Rob Housler cries, but it is something we can never do. We've got fantasy teams to build.