The 11th week of the 2016 regular season is just about coming to a close with only the Monday Night Football game remaining. Most fantasy football leagues will run their waiver wires late Tuesday or early Wednesday, but we are here to help you get a jump on the best options to consider.
We will be ranking the top five or more players likely to be available in your league at each of the major positions. Some weeks there might not be five good options available, but we’ll scour for the best we can find. Additionally, throughout the week, we will update each of these articles as ownership percentages change (via Yahoo!) and news arrives.
Waiver wire tight end rankings, Week 12
1. Charles Clay, Buffalo Bills (13 percent owned)
The Bills have struggled to maintain a healthy group of receivers in 2016, with Clay himself having some injury problems early on in the season. This trend continued as Robert Woods left the Bill’s Week 11 game with a knee injury. Clay caught five passes for 23 yards in the Bills win over the Bengals. Look for Clay to receive more attention in the passing game as one of the remaining healthy receiving options.
2. Lance Kendricks, Los Angeles Rams (12 percent owned)
The Rams were locked into a low scoring affair with the Dolphins leading to fairly low fantasy production for both teams. Kendricks caught four passes for 38 yards in the loss to Miami. Look for Kendricks to bounce back next week as he continues to receive a large proportion of the Rams targets and has a great match up against the Saints in Week 12.
3. Jared Cook, Green Bay Packers (11 percent owned)
The Packers defense will likely continue to force the offense to produce in order to win games. A beneficiary of this game script is Cook, as Aaron Rogers will have to constantly throw the ball to keep his team in the game. The Packers tight end caught six passes for 109 yards and a touchdown in Green Bays loss to Washington. In addition, he lost a consequential fumble. Cook should have considerable upside moving forward.
4. Vance McDonald, San Francisco 49ers (eight percent owned)
McDonald continues to receive a lot of attention from Colin Kaepernick regardless of where he is on the field. The San Francisco tight end caught three passes for 46 yards and a touchdown in the 49ers loss to the Patriots. McDonald has developed a good rapport with Kaepernick, and the trend of production should continue against Miami next week.
5. Will Tye, New York Giants (two percent owned)
It would appear that Tye has supplanted Larry Donnell as the preferred tight end of the Giants, seeing as how Donnell was a healthy scratch in Week 11. Tye caught two passes for 12 yards and a touchdown in the Giants win over the Bears. This is an encouraging sign for Tye, who has been the more dynamic tight end limited by sharing time with Donnell in the past. In addition the Giants face a very exploitable Browns defense next week.
6. Logan Paulsen, Chicago Bears (zero percent owned)
Zach Miller’s season was ended in Week 11 as he broke his foot, in the midst of a good performance. Despite this injury, Miller still managed to end the day as the Bear’s receiving yardage leader, demonstrating Jay Cutler’s fondness of passing to his tight end. It may be worth taking a chance on Paulsen who will be an option for Cutler among a fairly unimpressive list of receivers in Chicago.
