While tight ends rarely impact your fantasy team as other positions do, they still provide a lot of valuable points and can be the difference to a win or loss. If you don’t grab one of the top guys at the position, you can still find quality later on. Here’s three fantasy sleepers to consider.
1. Brent Celek
Certainly not a household name, Celek, in his second year in the league, showed that he was quite adept at finding the soft zone in the defense. He and McNabb developed a strong rapport towards the end of the season.
It culminated in an ultra impressive NFC Championship Game where Celek reeled in 10 catches for 80 yards and two TDs.
This year, with rookie TE Cornelius Ingraham out with a torn ACL, Celek has an excellent opportunity to step up and be McNabb’s mid-range target over the middle.
He’ll most likely be available later in the draft and could end up a tremendous fantasy sleeper if he can build upon last season’s playoffs.
2. Martellus Bennett
Word out of Big D is that Bennett reminds a lot of people, in both physique and skill, of another great TE in this league: Antonio Gates. And while he’s the back-up behind this year’s top fantasy ranking TE, Jason Witten, we think the Cowboys will employ more two TE sets this year to compensate for the loss of T.O to the offense.
Roy Williams just didn’t do enough over the last ten games of the season to inspire trust that defenses will pay him the respect that a No. 1 deserves. So once they begin to focus on Witten, which could have an adverse effect on his fantasy numbers, we see Bennett taking advantage of nickel backs and LBs and Romo quickly taking advantage of this mismatch.
3. Vernon Davis
As hard as this is to say, Davis might be a valuable fantasy sleeper over the course of this season. Mike Singletary seems to have certainly reached his TE in the short time they’ve been together and so far the results seem to support it.
With the recent announcement of Shaun Hill as the starting QB, look for the veteran to use Davis as his middle target and for San Francisco to move the TE around to take advantage of his size and speed.
