Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: TEs and first downs

(Leading up to the 2021 NFL season, FTN’s Tyler Loechner will dive into the fantasy football numbers to bring you his Fantasy Stat of the Day, five days a week.)

Many players in the upcoming Scott Fish Bowl (SFB11) will take a TE much earlier than usual thanks to the unique scoring rules the major tournament features.

Unlike WRs and RBs, who score 0.5 points per first down and 0.5 points per reception, TEs rack up a full point per first down and reception. This makes the top TEs — who are really like fantasy WR1s — even more valuable in the SFB11.

Today’s Stat of the Day article will examine all of the TEs that will benefit from the point-per-first-down rule in SFB11.

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Even in non-peak years, Rob Gronkowski and George Kittle were elite first-down guys in 2020

The chart below shows the TEs who had the most first-down receptions in 2020.

player	Targets	Receptions	1st Downs
Travis Kelce	151	108	82
Darren Waller	152	107	74
T.J. Hockenson	107	69	46
Mike Gesicki	93	56	42
Logan Thomas	115	74	40
Mark Andrews	92	59	40
Hayden Hurst	93	58	40
Evan Engram	119	68	37
Hunter Henry	96	62	36
Rob Gronkowski	85	47	35
Dalton Schultz	91	64	35
Jimmy Graham	78	51	34
Noah Fant	94	62	34
Robert Tonyan	60	52	34
George Kittle	64	49	33

For starters, the correlation between receptions and first downs among TEs is extremely high. It has an R-squared of 0.98 on a scale of 0-1, with 1 being a perfect match. This means you could sort by receptions and get a similar list. Among RBs, WRs and TEs, the TE group has the strongest relationship between receptions and first downs (though all of them are extremely high).

But looking a little closer at the data tells us which players are above or below average when it comes to collecting enough yards to get a first down. Here are some key findings:

Travis Kelce and Darren Waller were so far above the rest of the field, it’s not even funny. Kelce’s 82 first downs were more than Mark Andrews and Mike Gesicki combined.
George Kittle, the other big-time TE, made this list despite playing only eight games last season. People are forgetting how dominant Kittle is when healthy.
Speaking of dominant TEs, Rob Gronkowski is a pleasant surprise on this list. The big man had just 47 receptions, but 35 of them went for first downs — on par with Kelce and Gesicki for highest first-down rate among all TEs in the league.
Many of the 2020 breakout TEs (many of whom are spilling over into 2021 as breakout options again) are on this list, including T.J. Hockenson, Gesicki, Logan Thomas, Noah Fant and Robert Tonyan.
Evan Engram is one of the five TEs on this list who saw over 100 targets last season, but his first down conversion rate on receptions (54%) was the lowest of the group of TEs shown above. Improvement from Daniel Jones could see Engram leap up in value in 2021.