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The New York Jets have not had a tight end with any fantasy relevance since Dustin Keller had a couple halfway decent seasons back in 2010 and 2011. However, 2016 could change the way fantasy football owners think of Jets tight ends.
Jace Amaro will fly under the noses of many fantasy owners who have forgotten all about him when your league’s draft day arrives. This is what happens when a player has missed an entire season the year before and was not much of a fantasy factor when he was healthy. But we all witnessed how tight ends can come out of nowhere to post humongous numbers last year.
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A Deeper Dive into Jace Amaro
Gary Barnidge, Jordan Reed, Benjamin Watson and Delanie Walker all had the best seasons of their careers in 2015, so that proves finding sleepers at the tight position can be as easy as finding blood inside a UFC cage.
Amaro could be one of the tight ends that goes from sleeper to keeper this year. There was a reason why he was drafted in the second round of the 2014 NFL draft. He had one of the best seasons for a tight end in college football history, catching 106 passes for 1,352 yards for Texas Tech in 2013. Attaching soft hands and quick feet to his bulky 6’5”, 265-pound frame makes him difficult to cover as he can overpower cornerbacks and safeties and run by linebackers. Make no mistake why Amaro is valuable, when he is on the field, he is there to catch passes, not to block.
Amaro has barely blipped on fantasy radars during his first two NFL seasons. In his rookie campaign, he had 38 receptions for 345 yards and two touchdowns while he got his cleats wet at the NFL level, then his sophomore season was ended before it began beacuase of a torn labrum suffered during the 2015 preseason. He also never had a decent quarterback like Ryan Fitzpatrick throwing to him, nor did he have Brandon Marshall and a 100-percent healthy Eric Decker opening seams in the secondary for him.
The Jets have once again ignored stacking up depth at the tight end position during the offseason. I guess the front office was too busy stringing Muhammad Wilkerson along before signing him to a long-term deal and playing chicken with Fitzpatrick to worry about getting a decent veteran option to work alongside Amaro. Journeyman Kellen Davis, he of the three receptions for 18 yards in 2015, is the only warm body that could keep Amaro off the field for a few snaps per game. That is not much competition.
The world is wide open for Amaro to do some damage. He has a much better supporting cast surrounding him than he did two years ago, he has had time to study from the sidelines and he has to know that he better produce this year or else the Jets will probably acquire a tight end via the draft or free agency in 2017.
Marshall and Decker, one of the best receiving tandems in the NFL, will be the pass catchers garnering all the attention from defensive backfields. Even newly-acquired Matt Forte and his receiving ability out of the backfield will have more coverage switched his way. That means defenses will leave Amaro with matchups he can exploit because there is no possible way they can cover all of the Jets weapons.
Fitzpatrick is the key to Amaro’s fantasy value, though. This General Hospital-like saga between the Jets and Fitzpatrick has to stop. If the Jets fail to sign Fitzpatrick and he decides to use his Ivy League degree to become a math professor, then Amaro is stuck with Geno Smith, a man who has never met a turnover he did not like. This would destroy Amaro’s sleeper status.
If you allow other fantasy owners in your league to use higher picks on vet tight ends who could crash down to the earth like Watson and Walker, possible one-year wonders like Barnidge or injury-prone players like Reed, and opt instead to take a late-round flyer on Amaro, you may end up with one of the best sleepers of 2016. All Amaro needs is to stay healthy and have Fitzpatrick be the one throwing him the ball to have one of the best breakout candidates at the tight end position this season.
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