1. Dallas Clark ESPN: 2 Yahoo: 3 CBS: 2

2. Antonio Gatess ESPN: 1 Yahoo: 1 CBS: 1

3. Jason Witten ESPN: 3 Yahoo: 4 CBS: 3

Before you admonish us for not making Antonio Gates the number one tight end, we project all three of them to finish with 155 fantasy points. The three elite tight ends comprise the upper echelon of the position. None of them are worth drafting unless they are available in the 6th round (assuming 12 teams) or later.

Dallas Clark is also coming back from injury. While the receiving corps is stacked in Indy, there are question marks surrounding Collie’s health. Dallas Clark should definitively take the starting tight end role back from Tamme and continue to get many looks up the middle. Manning should break 600 attempts again, and Clark will get a large chunk of those coming his way. We project 1048 yards and 8.62 touchdowns for Clark.

Antonio Gates has the most upside and is the most consistent out of the three. However, his amazing run of 10 touchdowns in 10 weeks is unlikely to be repeated. In all of his five previous seasons, he ended up with 8 to 10 touchdowns in 15 to 16 games. For this reason, we have him projected to lead tight ends with 10.18 touchdowns over the course of 2011. He is great, but not worth the pick that you would need to give up to draft him.m

Jason Witten may, just may, be able to fall far enough in the draft to be worth it. Witten has had a consistent last four years, and there is no reason to see anything different this year. He is the only tight end that we project to break 100 receptions (101). We also see him gaining the most yards with 1109. Even though he is less of a touchdown threat than the other two listed, he should get the most targets and catches.

4. Kellen Winslow ESPN: 9 Yahoo: 6 CBS: 6

Kellen Winslow is the only veteran skill player on the Tampa Bay offense. We are betting that he will get the ball and get it often. While we don’t see his touchdown numbers improving all that much (we project 5.84), we project him to have the third most receptions (89) and yards (1029). That is, if he can stay healthy.

5. Vernon Davis ESPN: 5 Yahoo: 5 CBS: 4

Vernon Davis had the third best 2010 for a tight end. He did this without a solid quarterback or even solid receivers around him. He had almost one-third of the receiving yards of the whole team. We project Davis to repeat his success from the previous two seasons.

6. Marcedes Lewis ESPN: 8 Yahoo: 13 CBS: 10

7. Rob Gronkowski ESPN: 13 Yahoo: 12 CBS: 7

8. Jermichael Finley ESPN: 4 Yahoo: 2 CBS: 5

9. Tony Gonzalez ESPN: 14 Yahoo: 8 CBS: 11

10. Jimmy Graham ESPN: 11 Yahoo: 7 CBS: 8

11. Aaron Hernandez ESPN: 19 Yahoo: 16 CBS: 13

It gets pretty boring to write about tight ends, so I will not continue. If you miss the top five guys, then I would recommend waiting to pick up your tight end near the end of the draft. Here are the next six in our rankings, and we have them all ending up within 10 fantasy points of each other. These guys should be good for 700ish yards and 7ish touchdowns. Not great, but they are only tight ends.

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