Fantasy Football Domination Part V: Tight Ends and Swandive Vomit

It's the year 2000 and I'm in my senior year at Cal State Northridge, a sprawling campus made even moreso by the aftermath of the huge earthquake that leveled half the buildings in 1994, necessitating a city's worth of temporary structures to house classes and seemingly endless construction.

For four years I've had a massive crush on a girl named... let's just call her Z. For four years, I've been in the friend zone - squarely shoved there by myself and only myself, as I never mustered up the courage to ask her out. Until then, that is. We're all graduating in 9 months, and while it may not be now or never, it's gonna be never or more never if I don't get on with it at some point.

So finally, I ask. "Hey, would you want to go out sometime? Like on a date or something?" I don't know what I was expecting but she said yes instantly and with a decent enough helping of enthusiasm that I was pretty stoked. And then she suggested, "it's my friend's birthday tomorrow, she's having a party. Why don't you come with me?"

It's all playing out perfectly. Day of, she calls me. "Hey, I needed to get to the house early to help set up. Can you still come? I'll get you the address." Ok, no major hiccup. So that's the new plan, but the internal debate is raging. Do I show up early too to help? Nah, too desperate looking. Do I show up fashionably tardy to demonstrate... what exactly? Kid, just get there when you're supposed to get there.

So that's what I do. I show up around 8 and the party is already going. I don't know Z's friend apart from her name, and I'm not anticipating knowing too many people at the house, if any. That isn't a problem, evidently. A friendly dude exiting as I'm approaching holds the door open for me.

Because I'm not an idiot, I look for someone who could be the birthday girl and find her almost immediately, due to my advanced detective skills and her tank top with the words "birthday girl" emblazoned across the front of it. She smiles warmly as I introduce myself and ask where I can find Z. She points me in the direction of an addition to the home, clearly not part of the original construction but well-made and generously furnished.

I thank her and head off that way to get the gut punch of my young life so far. Immediately upon reaching the room, I can see Z on one of the couches, aggressively making out with some dude. I can't really tell much about him, probably because the near entirety of his face is in Z's mouth. She's also openly rubbing the dude's crotch so if there was any doubt about how willing of a participant she was in the exhibition, it vanished.

I was shocked, and disoriented. I needed a cigarette. I managed to find my way to a patio where the fellow smokers were congregating, and thankfully also, where the keg was. Whoever tapped it did well, and the beer flowed rapidly and frigidly into my cup.

I don't know exactly how much time and how many beers had passed but I must still have appeared shell-shocked because I hear a voice inquiring, "you ok, man?" I snap back into the current reality and in front of me is standing a giant Armenian dude in a trenchcoat with metalhead hair and a thick beard. He's at least 6 foot 5, and easily north of 300 lbs.

Imposing presence aside, he's kind and was checking how I was doing, my distress apparently visible. So I said, "thanks, man. Not the best start to the night, but I'm good."

And then comes the part you won't believe. But I'm not making this up. He says, "Same here, dude," and launches into a familiar story. He knows this girl, has had a crush on her for years. Never asked her out, until a few days before. To his surprise, she says yes and invites him to a birthday party for a friend. He shows up in a chipper mood, only to find the girl he was coming to meet already indisposed with another fella on the couch in the addition.

It was Z. And in one particular way, his story was worse than mine. He had shown up a few minutes after I did, and by the time he found Z, she'd figured out the button on the other fella's jeans and was working on him without all that pesky denim in the way.

This big fella introduced himself to me as... let's just call him J, but his full name was a lot longer. When I told J my story, he laughed to the point of convulsing. He was taking this better than I was, but he was also good company. I had to ask him a couple of times to remind me of his name, and out of nowhere he says, this might help, and pulls down his lower lip to reveal his name tattood on the inside of it in cursive.

Who the heck tattoos the inside of their lip!? Apparently J does. Anyway, J and I are God knows how many beers deep when he asks, "wanna smoke some weed?" I'm not and never have been much of a pot smoker, but I figured at this point, why the hell not. The party was a bust but I was making a friend and that was not nothing.

So out of his trenchcoat, to my amazement, he pulls a three foot bong. Yeah. We're just a few hits in when it all starts to add up. The beers, the weed, the trauma seared onto my retina from Z, I hadn't eaten since breakfast...

"You're not looking too hot, man," J says, his voice sounding like it was coming from a subway tunnel.

"I'm not feeling too hot either, man," I respond. We agree it's probably best if I find a bathroom, and fast.

It's a big-ish house, but apparently only has two bathrooms. After stumbling my way around for a bit, I find a master bedroom which in my experience always has bathrooms attached. This one does too but the door is locked and i can hear the sounds of enthusiastic sex coming from the inside. No idea if it's Z and the dude from the couch or not, but it doesn't help the churning in my stomach.

I find the other bathroom but my luck is even worse there. The door is also locked and someone is already upchucking, loudly and painfully, in my last hope. That did it.

I could feel the contents of my stomach getting rowdy and knew I had seconds at most before I hurled. I somehow turned into prime Barry Sanders and sprinted down the hall toward the patio, nimbly spinning around other drunk people, out through the (thankfully open) sliding door.

And in the single greatest athletic maneuver of my life, I vaulted myself over the waist-high stucco separating wall to the front yard, took three long strides, and swandove toward the flowerbed while projectile vomiting.

I don't know how long I was laying there on my stomach, but when I finally rose, it was to a standing ovation from my fellow partygoers on the patio. J was holding up a beer as if to invite me back over. Z was not one of the applauders.

I don't remember much else from that night, but the following morning I somehow woke up on the floor of a guy named Evald, whose dad at some point managed the Toronto Blue Jays. No, I'm not making that up, and no, I'm not certain he wasn't either. But he'd apparently volunteered to drive me back from the party in my car and let me crash til morning so I could go home.

I remain grateful.

What does this have to do with drafting tight ends? Nothing! I just wanted to tell you that story.

The State of the Tight End Union

Back to business. Tight ends. Or, as I like to call them, the craft beer of fantasy football: Expensive but worth it for the right one, but most of them will just contort your face in angular disgust.

Let’s be brutally honest: there are only two tight ends worth treating like the centerpiece of your fantasy dinner party this year — Brock Bowers and Trey McBride. Draft them as if they’re WR1s, because that’s what they are in everything but name. Round 1 is overkill, but if either guy falls to you in Round 2, you grab them faster than I grabbed that sliding glass door on my sprint to puke. Both are good bets for 100 catches, 1,200 yards, and 8 touchdowns. That’s WR1 territory, folks, and if you snag one, you lock the position down harder than Z locked down my heartbreak.

And if you do? That’s it. You’re done. No backups. No wasting a pick on some middle-tier TE “just in case.” When Bowers or McBride hit their bye week, you stream some random goon off waivers, pray for 4 catches and 40 yards, and move on.

I don’t buy much into the notion of positional scarcity. In fantasy, you’re trying to accumulate contributors of reliably gaudy point totals. People say that running back is scarce. No. You can find weekly double digit contributors in rounds 7-10. BELLCOW guys are scarce. Valuable point getters? Not really. That’s why you can get them late. But tight end is SCARCE scarce. There aren’t 12 dudes worthy of a starting fantasy spot, and only two elite ones, so…

Everyone Else? Handle With Tongs

Miss on Bowers or McBride, and you’re in swampy territory.

• George Kittle: Brilliant player, but he’s one CMC ankle away from being a blocking decoy. Injuries and age have him looking more like a bottle of wine left open on the counter. Fifth round or later only.

• Travis Kelce: Still Mahomes’ guy, but no longer the guy. Drafting him high now is like paying $40 for a Bud Light because you “liked it in 2018.”

• Sam LaPorta: Rookie rocket turned sophomore sputter. Still talented, but he’s option #5 in Detroit’s offense. Fifth round is fantasy malpractice.

• David Njoku: Athletic freak, stuck in Cleveland’s QB blender. You’re not drafting Njoku — you’re drafting chaos.

• Tucker Kraft: Sleeper I like, but there’s a lot of projection and no small amount of hope that goes into Kraft as your TE1. That’s a prayer, not a plan.

• Mark Andrews: He was a touchdown monster last season, but he’s aging, seemingly always dealing with an injury, and has Isaiah Likely looking over his shoulder. Tread carefully.

From there, it’s stream city. Don’t be ashamed of it. Some guys to keep on the Rolodex:

• Brenton Strange: Rumored chemistry with Trevor Lawrence. Worth watching, not worth drafting.

• Tyler Higbee: Fine real-life player, bad fantasy asset. Still, Stafford trusts him.

• Zach Ertz: Yes, he’s old. Yes, he’ll get you 6 yards per target. But he’s reliable, and if McLaurin sits out, Daniels is going to need a security blanket.

The Punchline

Tight ends are either champagne or tap water. If you can’t get one of the Fabergé eggs, think long and hard before buying a knock off from the guy in the trenchcoat. Unless it’s J. He’s cool and would hook you up.

And so concludes your five-part masterclass on dominating your fantasy league. You’ve learned the tuxedo trick, the running back patience game, the wide receiver overload, the quarterback wait-and-smash, and now, the tight end reality check.

In closing, I saw Z at school a couple of days after the party. She was her same, always friendly self, and asked, "Did you end up making it to the party?" Yeah, Z. I did. I never saw J again, but I remember him vividly and fondly. He was a good dude back then, and I imagine he still would be now. Z and I lost touch after graduation, until ages later, she found me on Facebook. We chatted and caught up a bit online, but never met. She suggested coffee but I was engaged to be married and it didn't sound right. We've since lost touch again, but I'll always remember her. With everything, she was indeed a good friend through college and I'd be lying if I said she didn't have a great tight end.

Torsten / 120 Proof Ball

Proof that the internet was a mistake.