2017 Fantasy Report Card: Evan Engram
The TE landscape can be a bitter wasteland filled with miles and miles of poo for the fantasy owner. Trusting a rookie TE is not something that caters towards a fantasy championship. Evan Engram, on the other hand, decided to give us a rookie campaign for the ages that somehow is quietly going unnoticed and unheralded.
2017: Season Review
Engram was the beneficiary of being the last man standing in a completely decimated WR corps as Odell Beckham Jr., Brandon Marshall, and basically anyone on the Giants roster went down early. Engram took advantage seeing the second most TE targets in the league. He was only the 2nd rookie TE ever to see over 100+ targets in a season.
EVAN ENGRAM 2017 STATS
| GS | Targets | Rec | YPC | TDs | 0.5 PPR | TE Finish | Consistency Rank | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | 115 | 64 | 722 | 6 | 141.6 | 5th | 4th |
Few owners drafted the Giants rookie TE to be an every-week starter as he was taken on average as the 22nd TE off the board according to FantasyFootballCalculator.com. However, if you scooped the rookie off the waiver wire, you likely were able to ride him for much of the season.
In terms of consistency rating, as discussed in the TRUTH about TE episode recently, Engram was “good” 53% of the time and “great” 27% of his games played. He was a PPR maven with 5 top-5 performances on the year, 4th best among TEs. Despite all of the turmoil surrounding the Giants this year especially at the QB position, Engram was fairly consistent (especially for TEs) except for a Week 5 goose egg. Engram had 7 or more targets in 11 of his 15 games, a feat only surpassed by Travis Kelce.
Final Grade: A-
For being a rookie TE, Engram is at the top of a usually disappointing class. He just submitted the best PPR season since 1989 for a rookie TE. As detailed earlier in the 25 TE Statistics article, his 173.6 PPR points topped Jeremy Shockey’s 2002 campaign for most in the last 28 years. In terms of draft capital, owners essentially found themselves a cheap version of Jordan Reed, the one that didn’t end up hobbled each week.
2018 Outlook
Engram’s draft price will sky rocket as he’s definitely moved into the conversation of being selected in the first 5 rounds. His 55% catch rate needs to improve in 2018 if we want to consider him moving into the upper tier of TEs. With OBJ returning and a new head coach in Pat Shurmur, there are some question marks heading into 2018. Still, Engram is young, exciting, and the type of athletic, field-stretching TE that will give defensive coordinators frustration for years to come.