Finding 2023's Fantasy Football League-Winning Tight Ends Through Season Simulations

We've learned in the past from Kevin Garnett that anything is possible in the world of sports.

But what's possible and what's probable aren't always the same thing.

And while we definitely want to be optimistic on some fantasy football sleepers, it never hurts to know the probability of certain players hitting certain thresholds by the end of the season.

After all, fantasy football is a volatile game. Your first-round running back might miss half the season, and your star wide receiver may have some unfortunate touchdown luck (which even happened to Justin Jefferson in 2022!).

So what are we to do? When in doubt, simulate it out.

That's what my motto is, at least.

And in case that's not also your motto, I'm going to share my findings after simulating the 2023 NFL season 10,000 times to try and help uncover the most likely "league-winning" players at each position.

I started with the quarterbacks and am moving on to the tight ends.

If you're not very interested in the math or history behind this, skip ahead to the "2023 Fantasy League-Winning Tight End Odds" section.

Simulating the NFL Season

Fantasy football tight ends can certainly be game-changers -- but only a few of them. Otherwise, fantasy points are scarce and hard to predict.

That bears itself out in both the historical results among the position and the simulations for this year's expected outcomes (which I am basing off of numberFire's fantasy football projections).

That's only getting more exacerbated with someone such as Travis Kelce dominating so easily at the position, but elite tight ends giving us good results is nothing new.

Since 2012, no year-end overall TE1 had an average draft position (ADP) worse than TE6, and seven of the past TE1s at the end of the season were the TE1 by ADP.

If you look at ADP buckets for tight ends, it's a pretty clear trend where the real league-winners (the TE1 and top-five tight ends) are taken in drafts: early.

So, when I simulate the season 10,000 times (again, using numberFire's fantasy football projections), I should expect to find Kelce, Mark Andrews, T.J. Hockenson, Darren Waller, George Kittle, and Dallas Goedert -- the top six tight ends in FanDuel's best ball fantasy football drafts -- to have elevated odds to finish well.

That's not groundbreaking.

But Kelce in particular is causing some problems because his fantasy projection is nearly 80 half-PPR points greater than anyone else's. (ESPN's fantasy football projections and CBS' fantasy football projections also show a huge gap for Kelce over anyone else, too.)

So, while he's in the same tier by ADP as those other five names, he's going to separate greatly when I use actual projections to simulate the season.

2023 Fantasy League-Winning Tight End Odds

Here are the results of the 10,000 season simulations and each tight end's average draft position in FanDuel's best ball fantasy football formats.

I know that a lot of these are going to look "wrong," but when we look back at history, they largely check out. They do a good job of accounting for historical injury rates, overperformance or underperformance ranges, and anything else that can make or break a fantasy season.

As expected, Kelce is more or less breaking historical precedent with such a massive projection relative to his peers. Really, health -- not production -- is the main variable regarding Kelce's odds to be this year's TE1.

But Andrews (14.7%) and Hockenson (10.8%) are really in a tier of their own behind Kelce in terms of odds to lead the league in fantasy points. Their projections are roughly 75 points shy of Kelce's projection -- but still around 45 more half-PPR points than any other tight end's projection.

For what it's worth, other projections have certain tight ends in the bottom of that second tier -- Waller, Kittle, or Pitts -- but there's no consensus on another TE being in that tier.

After the top three, then, we really see a flat tier of top-five odds for Kittle (27.9%), Waller (25.2%), Goedert (23.9%), Kyle Pitts (24.9%), Evan Engram (20.4%), and Pat Freiermuth (22.3%) before another drop off.

If you miss out on Kelce and then miss out on Andrews and Hockenson, you have another tier of six tight ends with pretty similar projected outcomes before really losing potential for a high-end season.

If you view a particular one of them in Tier 2, then go for it. Otherwise, you can try to wait until the end of that tight end run in your drafts and still get solid odds for a top-five season.

Again, TE1s tend to come from the top few draft slots.

But this part is interesting: historically, top-five tight end seasons have actually been more common from the TE13 to TE18 range by ADP (15.9%) than from the TE7 to TE12 range (10.6%), likely because of touchdown regression and our tendency of overdrafting the overperformers from last season. (You can check out some work I did on touchdown regression among the position if you're curious.)

The projections and looking at the ranges of outcomes help us avoid chasing those seasons.

While you wait for Week 1's daily fantasy football slates to lock, you can get in on some best-ball fantasy football drafts on FanDuel, as well. Just draft your team and watch the points pile up throughout the season.

The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.