Fantasy Football Today: Sleepers, breakouts, busts at tight plus the biggest questions for preseason Week 2 - CBS Sports

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OK, so if, as I wrote in yesterday's newsletter, betting on the tight end position to be anything but a disappointment is a mistake, how should you actually approach the position in your drafts? It's easy to say you should only draft the three elite tight ends, but that's not actually a viable strategy -- unless you play in a three-team league, I suppose.

Who should you draft? And who should you avoid, specifically? That's what I'm looking at for today's newsletter, as I explore my sleepers, breakouts, and busts for the position in 2021. It's a position where a lot can go wrong, but it's also a position where, if you bet right, the payoff could be huge.

I also have 10 big questions I'm looking for answers to from Week 2 of the preseason -- which kicked off Thursday night with Cam Newton holding serve in his battle with Mac Jones to be the starter and with very little of note from the game otherwise. The good news for the Patriots remains that both have continued to look solid, but I'm hoping that means Newton remains in the driver's seat for the starting job, mostly because I've drafted him as a late-round starter so often.

If you're drafting this weekend, make sure you bookmark the CBS Fantasy Football Draft Prep page, where you can find all of our latest content, from our QB, RB, WR and TE previews from the past few weeks to our latest mock drafts, rankings, team previews, sleepers/breakouts/busts, positional tiers and so much more.

And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at Chris.Towers@CBSi.com and I'll try to get to as many as I can this weekend. We're less than three weeks away from the start of Week 1. Let's make sure you have everything you need.

Sleepers, Breakouts and Busts

Sleeper tight ends

Sleeper [ slee-per ] (noun) -- A player whose price doesn't reflect the impact they can make for your team.

Evan Engram -- There are a lot of reasons opinions on Engram have soured. His struggles catching the ball in 2020 -- a career-high 10.1% drop rate especially sticks out -- stick out in most people's minds, and the signing of Kyle Rudolph this offseason seemed to signal a similar lack of faith in the soon-to-be 27-year-old. Add in the acquisition of Kenny Golladay to be the Giants No. 1 receiver and it seems like Engram's chances of breaking out are slimmer than ever. But he doesn't have to break out to be a good pick at his current cost, which is TE20 at 148.4 overall in CBS ADP. Engram wasn't good last season, and he left a ton of points on the board with his drops, but he also hadn't really struggled with drops like that before, so it's not exactly guaranteed to be a problem again. And, with Rudolph still held out of practice after undergoing offseason foot surgery -- he "doesn't appear particularly close to returning" either, per The Athletic -- Engram could still have a significant role in this offense. If you want to wait on the position and take a late-round flier, why not do it with Engram?
Zach Ertz --The longer Ertz stays in Eagles camp, the more it makes sense to target him as a late-round tight end sleeper. He looked finished last season, but that also came early on in an offense that looked completely broken with Carson Wentz at QB, and then Ertz came back from a serious injury that he maybe shouldn't have. By all accounts, he's looked good in camp, and it's not even clear if Dallas Goedert is necessarily ahead of him in terms of the receiving hierarchy. There's still time for Ertz to be traded, but I wouldn't expect that to hurt his Fantasy value anyway. His presence is sending Goedert's price tumbling, and while I would still rather have Goedert, Ertz might end up being the better pick.

The entire FFT team has broken down their favorite sleeper quarterbacks. You can find the rest of those picks here. Also, check back on CBSSports.com/Fantasy/Football in the coming days and you'll find our staff's favorite quarterbacks bust and breakout picks.

Breakout tight ends

Breakout [ breyk-out ] (noun) -- A player who can take their game to another level this season.

Noah Fant -- There's no question in my mind that Noah Fant has the talent to be one of the best tight ends in Fantasy. He's a massive target with elite athleticism and has shown elite ability to make plays with the ball in his hands. In fact, he was behind only George Kittle in average yards after catch in 2020, and he leads all tight ends since the start of 2019. One of the great differentiators at the tight end position is the ability to turn those short, safe plays in the middle of the field into big plays, and Fant has that. There are concerns about the level of quarterback play in Denver as well as his place in the receiving hierarchy alongside Jerry Jeudy and Courtland Sutton, but if you want to bet on talent after the top six at the position are gone, he's the obvious bet.
Kyle Pitts -- I'm honestly having some trouble coming up with a second breakout for the position. Irv Smith and Jonnu Smith both have the potential, but I don't actually feel all that confident in their chances to do so in their offenses. So I'll go with what will probably end up being the default pick. Rookie tight ends generally don't produce enough to be Fantasy relevant, but rookie tight ends generally don't get drafted in the top five of the NFL Draft. And Tight ends generally don't have 770 yards and 12 touchdowns in eight games as 20-year-old juniors in the SEC. Pitts will need to be an outlier among rookie tight ends to justify his draft price, sure. But here's the thing: He's already an outlier. If ever you were going to bet on one. For more on Pitts' potential, Dave Richard went to Miami and Atlanta's joint practices this week and wrote about how the Falcons are using Pitts and what it could mean for his breakout chances.

Bust tight ends

Bust [ buhst ] (noun) -- A player who could really let you down this season.

T.J. Hockenson -- I want to be clear about this: I do not think Hockenson is likely to be a bust in the traditional sense. He has a very safe floor as the presumed No. 1 target in his offense, and that alone should make him a solid weekly starter. I just wonder if he'll ever be anything more than that. He was TE5 in PPR scoring in 2020, so with an even bigger role in the offense, who can make a case against him going in that exact same range in 2021 drafts. The problem is, though he finished that high overall, he was just one PPR point ahead of TE12 and 2.0 ahead of TE18 in points per game. He wasn't a difference maker last season, in other words. And I'm just not convinced he's set up to be a difference maker this season despite the likely increase in targets, because I'm not sure he has difference-making skills. He's a good athlete, but not necessarily a special one, and he's been a good playmaker (ninth in average YAC since entering the league), but again, not a special one. Hockenson took a big step forward in 2020 and was still at just 7.1 yards per target, but that was just 26th among the top 50 tight ends in Fantasy scoring. He's going to face more defensive attention and has a downgrade at QB going from Matthew Stafford to Jared Goff. If you are going to reach into the fifth round for a tight end, you need someone with superstar potential. I just don't think Hockenson has that.
Robert Tonyan -- The case against Tonyan should be fairly obvious at this point, and the fact that he isn't being drafted inside of the top 100 right now is a sign of how much sharper the Fantasy industry has gotten over the last few years. Still, I don't really think there's any reason to draft Tonyan at all. He needed 11 touchdowns on 59 targets to even be Fantasy relevant. If you cut his 18.6% touchdown rate in half, it still would have been the third-highest among TE with at least as many targets as he had, he would have been TE13, just ahead of the likes of Eric Ebron and Hayden Hurst. He's a touchdown-or-bust streamer, and you should treat him like that.

Biggest questions for preseason Week 2

We still don't quite know what to expect from most teams when it comes to how they are handling the preseason, since they only have three games, not four. It used to be that the third game was when we would see the first-teamers, and that could be what happens this weekend. Or, maybe they're waiting until Week 3? Either way, there's plenty of storylines we need to keep an eye on this weekend, and here's what I want to get some answers for:

Do we finally see Ben Roethlsiberger? -- It sure sounds like it, at least if you hear Roethlisberger tell it. I'm fascinated to see what Pittsburgh's offense is going to look like this season, especially how comfortable Roethlisberger looks in it. He's been running so much of the same stuff for such a long time, and it sounds like he'll be playing under center and in play action more than he has in years. If he can show a comfort level with that early, there's obviously a ton of upside. If he looks as uncomfortable as he did for much of the second half of 2020, this could get ugly quickly.
Who is leading QB competitions in Denver and New Orleans? -- If I had to handicap them right now, I would say Drew Lock and Jameis Winston remain the most likely starters for these teams, but this game could tell us a lot. Lock is still mostly splitting first-team reps evenly with Teddy Bridgewater, but he's held serve throughout camp, so it's his job to lose. I think the same is true of Newton, who was once again the starter in Thursday's preseason game and played well, though I do get the sense that the Patriots are probably looking for more reasons to switch to Mac Jones than the Broncos are to Bridgewater. And the Saints are, quite honestly, a total guess. I'm picking Winston over Taysom Hill for now because I think he's the better choice and I haven't read much to suggest they are leaning Hill's way. But if the Saints start Hill again, that could be a sign.
Can Justin Fields keep pressure on Andy Dalton? -- I don't think there's much of a chance Fields starts in Week 1, but if he plays like he did in the preseason opener, he's going to make it a very tough call. There's elite upside with Fields for both Fantasy and for the Bears, and it's probably in everyone's best interests if he becomes the starter sooner rather than later. I'm at the point where I'm targeting Fields in all leagues with the expectation he'll be the starter before long.
Does Malcolm Brown remain the No. 1 back for the Dolphins? -- It was quite a surprise to see Brown treated like the lead back for the Dolphins, with Myles Gaskin relegated to a clearly complementary role in the first game. By all accounts, the Dolphins plan on using Brown, Gaskin and Salvon Ahmed this season, but will Gaskin get his chance to start and dominate first-team touches this week? If not, we'll have to assume Brown is the starter.
Will Antonio Gibson get in on third downs? -- Folks around the football team are saying all the right things about Gibson -- those Christian McCaffrey comps are still being thrown around willy-nilly! -- but Gibson didn't play on any of the team's five third downs in the preseason opener. That's OK, it's one game, they wanted to get Peyton Barber some reps, and we know J.D. McKissic will always have a role on third downs. However, Gibson's upside is going to be capped if he's strictly used as an early-downs back, so if he remains a minor part (or non-existent part, even worse) of the third-down game plan, it might be worth revisiting our expectations for him.
Does Clyde Edwards-Helaire get third-down and short-yardage work? -- Edwards-Helaire dominated snaps with the first-team offense in Week 1, logging the first 10 snaps, including all of them with Patrick Mahomes. Of course, Mahomes only played four snaps, so we didn't really get to see much situational work from anyone. Edwards-Helaire should be the obvious lead back here, but like Gibson, his chances of reaching his ultimate upside are tied to how often he comes off the field in the most important situations -- inside the 10-yard line and in passing situations.
How much do Leonard Fournette and Ronald Jones play? -- Last week, they split work exactly evenly with Giovani Bernard, two snaps apiece. Tom Brady won't be playing in this one, but I'm hoping we'll see more from the rest of the first-teamers, which includes all three running backs at this point. We know Bernard is likely to dominate snaps in obvious passing situations, but if he works into some early downs as well, that would spell trouble for Jones and Fournette. This is a high-upside offense, but there's just one too many people involved right now among the running backs, and if that remains the case, Bernard is likely to be the only consistent Fantasy producer among them. We'd love to see one of Jones or Fournette take a lead.
How do Amari Cooper and Courtland Sutton look? -- Both carry significant upside, but this is also the first time we're likely to see them since their injuries. Sutton (knee) and Cooper (ankle) are also coming back from surgery. Getting some game reps in without issue will go a long way to quieting whatever concerns are out there. Seeing them play well would be even better.
Does Marquez Callaway remain the No. 1 for the Saints? -- Tre'Quan Smith returned to practice this week and could make his preseason debut, which will be the first test for this "Callaway is the No. 1 WR" narrative that has formed. I love targeting Callaway in the late rounds of all my drafts, mostly because I think the chances of the 25-year-old Smith breaking out 40 games into his NFL career are pretty limited. The buzz in camp has all been about Callaway, so it wouldn't be a great sign if Smith played and outperformed him this week.

So which sleepers, breakouts and busts should you target and fade? And which QB shocks the NFL with a top-five performance? Visit SportsLine now to get Fantasy cheat sheets for every single position, all from the model that called Josh Allen's huge season, and find out.

Injuries, news and notes

D'Andre Swift (groin) practiced Thursday -- And he took on a "heavy load of reps," per the team's official site reporters. Swift had missed much of the last two weeks as a result of his injury, but it seems like he's on track to be ready for Week 1, as expected. Swift has serious breakout potential and should be a focal point of the Lions offense this season. The only question, really, is whether this offense will be good enough to let him live up to his considerable potential. He's probably the last RB drafted in most leagues with legitimate top-five potential.
Dak Prescott (shoulder) is making progress -- In fact, he told Gil Brandt on Wednesday that he expects to play in Week 1 against the Buccaneers, in three weeks. Prescott is recovering from a lat/shoulder strain, but has been able to increase his reps in practice in recent days. He's not throwing at full strength or with full reps at this point, and it's possible we may not see that until the days before the season to avoid any additional issues. Either way, it sounds like he'll be out there for the start of the season, and as long as that is the case, Amari Cooper and CeeDee Lamb are must-starts (as is Ezekiel Elliott), and Blake Jarwin and Michael Gallup are high-upside streamers.
Mark Andrews left practice -- Andrews had to be helped off the field and was given an IV, and the Ravens had an ambulance come, but it appears like he avoided a serious issue. Andrews was dealing with severe cramping during an especially hot and humid day at practice. Hopefully that's all it was and there are no lingering issues beyond Thursday.
The Bills are hoping to have Stefon Diggs (knee) back at practice soon -- But he won't play in the team's next preseason game, per head coach Sean McDermott. "He will not play in the game. We hope to get him back here in a more active role on the field at least in the next couple of days to next week," McDermott said. Diggs has nothing to prove in preseason or practice at this point, so as long as he's a full participant in advance of Week 1, he remains a top-five wide receiver.
Robby Anderson is dealing with a hamstring injury -- At this point it doesn't sound as if this is a serious issue at this point, but it's one to monitor -- as all hamstring injuries are. Anderson has top-24 upside and a demonstrated chemistry with new Panthers QB Sam Darnold, and he's a solid add to any team after the first 60 picks or so, assuming he is healthy.
Sammy Watkins returned to practice -- The Ravens receiving corps has been beat up in camp, but at least Watkins has been able to return to team drills on a limited basis. Marquise Brown, dealing with a hamstring issue, has been spotted in recent days working off the side, a sign that he could be getting close to returning to practice. With Rashod Bateman likely out through the start of the season following core-muscle surgery, the Ravens need Watkins and Brown to make it through the preseason healthy. Hopefully, they're moving in the right direction.
Denzel Mims left practice Thursday -- It's not clear what Mims' injury is, but he limped off the field with a trainer and did not return to practice, so we'll keep an eye on this one. Mims is fighting for a roster spot, seemingly, and seems to be as low as fifth or sixth on the depth chart, so any kind of injury that costs him time could be costly. In deeper leagues, the big, fast second-year WR has some sleeper appeal, but in your standard 12-teamer, he's off the draft board at this point.
Tyree Jackson suffered a fracture in his back -- Jackson is a converted QB who has been playing tight end for the Eagles and drawing really strong reviews in camp, but now it looks like he's going to start the season on IR. The Eagles seem to like his potential a lot, and it's possible his development might have made an eventual Zach Ertz trade a little easier to swallow, but they won't have him for at least the first half of the season. He's an interesting prospect for Dynasty leagues even after the injury.

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Fantasy Football Today: Sleepers, breakouts, busts at tight plus the biggest questions for preseason Week 2 - CBS Sports