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Finding bargains in a salary cap draft is how you take a good draft and turn it into a great one. It is how you turn a team that can make the playoffs into a team that can win a title. Targets aren’t limited to low-dollar players. Instead, they are players you anticipate your league being lower on than their value. Finding those deals isn’t always easy, but that’s why you’re here. Below are some tight-end targets at all price points.
Elite Targets
In salary cap drafts, you have the rare opportunity to shove your chips in on a player who hasn’t completely broken out yet. Pitts is young, had a dynamic rookie year, and is one of the top options in the Falcons’ offense. In PPR leagues last year, Pitts finished as the TE5, and had he scored five touchdowns from the 1,018 yards he gained, would’ve been TE3 behind Mark Andrews and Travis Kelce. It’s hard to overstate how impressive that is for a rookie. The advantage of a salary cap league over a serpentine draft is that you may not want to reach to grab Pitts in the third round in your snake draft this year, but you can attempt to budget to nab him in your salary cap draft for a price that should be markedly lower than the top guys. Betting on young players with historic rookie seasons is how you want to do salary cap drafting. While Pitts might not be cheap based on the strictest definition of the word, you could look back on his TE4-5 price and think it was a bargain.
Usually, Kittle is being overdrafted every summer. But that has changed for the first time in his career. Drafters have finally had enough of the uncertainty in the target distribution and the tendency for Kittle to get nicked up and miss time. He’s now been pushed out of the Top 4 players at the position, and therein lies your chance to score a deal on one of the best talents in the league. Kittle, like Pitts, won’t be cheap from a raw dollar perspective, but he’s likely to be the lowest price you’ve seen on him since his rookie year. That makes him a great target in salary cap drafts. Kittle is someone you should wait to nominate until some money has left the room because his name still carries weight. If people have a lot of money, they’ll use it on him. But if at all possible, you should try to get him out there before the top guys have been rostered because people will be saving their money for Kelce or Andrews.
Middle-Tier Targets
It’s fair to criticize Hockenson for failing to finish another season as he’s now played 12 or fewer games in two of his three seasons. On top of that, the Lions certainly have a huge increase in competition for targets from last summer to this summer. They added Jameson Williams and D.J. Chark, and Amon-Ra St. Brown emerged down the stretch. Yet, these reasons are precisely why Hockenson is a salary cap target this year. The general sentiment is down on him, so he should be fairly cheap compared to the top options. The talent is still there. and this year. grabbing him for around $10 seems entirely possible.