Don't Forget Me! Mark Andrews Still Has The Opportunity to Be An Elite Fantasy TE

Mark Andrews entered last season as an explosive tight end with an MVP quarterback helming his offense, teetering on the precipice of joining Travis Kelce and George Kittle as a truly elite, difference-making player for fantasy owners. He went on to average the fourth-most points per game at the position while simultaneously disappointing everyone.

That No. 4 finish came during a season where only two TEs – Kelce, and Darren Waller, who has completed his coup of Andrews’ preseason excitement levels – mattered on a consistent basis, and where Lamar Jackson was considered a bust. Andrews finished the season with 58 receptions, 701 yards and seven touchdowns, all very respectable for the position. He delivered those numbers in painfully inconsistent fashion though, scoring touchdowns in only five games, and notching his final multi-touchdown game in Week 4. Andrews had five different games in which he posted fewer than 30 receiving yards with no touchdowns, failed to hit 100 receiving yards in any game, and only surpassed 80 yards even once. So forgive Andrews owners for rolling their eyes when you point out his overall solid end-of-year numbers, because it didn’t feel good for them as they experienced it.

But we shouldn’t forget about Andrews, or write him off, because his low output really wasn’t about him. The Ravens offense is already run-heavy; Jackson is potentially the greatest rushing QB of all time, and the Ravens threw the fewest pass attempts in the NFL last season (406). The same was true in 2019, when they threw the ball 440 times, but in 2020 Jackson struggled mightily to reach the same efficiency. That directly impacted Andrews, who often does not have the pure volume to make up for a struggling QB. 

The good news is that Andrews still soaked up 21.6% of the team’s targets, a healthy slice of the pie, and was one of two players who earned even 50 targets. Jackson, a former MVP, is in a class of running QBs with Cam Newton, Michael Vick and Colin Kaepernick, who, at their best, all supported two major fantasy pass-catchers. In Newton’s and Kaepernick’s cases, they each supported high-end TEs (Greg Olsen, Vernon Davis, respectively). To thrive in this environment, a pass-catcher needs to be a target-hound, a big-play/TD threat, or both. Andrews absolutely fits the latter description; he averaged 16.2 yards per game as a rookie, and even though that dropped to 12.1 yards last season, he was fourth among TEs with at least 50 targets with a 10.2 ADOT (average depth of target).

Andrews could potentially develop into the team leader in targets as well, simply because of talent. Marquise Brown was the team’s most-targeted pass-catcher in 2020, drawing 100 targets, turning them into 58 receptions, 769 yards and eight touchdowns. The Ravens tried to address the receiving corps this offseason, bringing in Sammy Watkins and drafting Rashod Bateman, neither of whom jump off the page as major difference makers in 2021. It would be surprising if Andrews didn’t maintain his 21% target share at minimum, and Jackson was encouraging toward the end of the season.

The last bit of optimism is related to Jackson’s performance toward the end of the season. Fantasy owners who survived his early ups and downs were rewarded from Weeks 12-16 after he’d returned from a bout with COVID-19. Jackson’s always going to be most valuable as a runner, but in that five-game stretch he threw for 809 yards and 11 touchdowns as his TD rate spiked to 11%. That figure is more in line with his MVP-season mark of nine percent, and while numbers like that are usually unsustainable for most QBs, Jackson poses such a unique threat as a rusher that he must be viewed differently. Andrews is attractive because of his ability to gash defenses with big plays, but four of his seven scores in 2021 came from inside the 10-yard line. Jackson’s red zone efficiency is underrated, and Andrews is definitely his favorite target in close when he’s throwing the football.

Andrews is currently being drafted two spots ahead of Lions TE T.J. Hockenson, who plays in a worse offense and has never hit a peak higher than Andrews in 2019. It’s likely that Hockenson will pass him in ADP soon, and Andrews by draft day will be the sixth or seventh TE off the board. It might make more sense to wait until the pick No. 60 range to scoop up Andrews as your TE rather than splurge on Darren Waller or George Kittle in Round 2. I expect both of them to outperform Andrews, but a return to form for Jackson will likely render that gap fairly small. It shouldn’t be a 40-pick chasm, and that means you’re getting value on Andrews, rather than just what you paid for with the pricier options.