Kenyon Sadiq Poised To Join The Ranks Of Top Rookie Tight Ends?
Fantasy

Kenyon Sadiq Poised To Join The Ranks Of Top Rookie Tight Ends?

Ian Hartitz analyzes the case for Kenyon Sadiq to become the next high-end rookie tight end for fantasy football.

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The productive rookie tight end is like Bigfoot. People swear they've seen one, but it happens so infrequently that it calls into question their existence. However, there have been sightings the past few seasons, which helps us make the case with some good health and QB play, Kenyon Sadiq might be able to join that endangered species. Ian Hartitz breaks it down as part of his New York Jets Team Preview. 

What are reasonable Year 1 expectations for Kenyon Sadiq?

I wrote about Sadiq before the draft and highlighted the following big three strengths:

Ridiculous athlete: The aforementioned 40 time and jumps are impressive enough, but adding it all together reveals a VERY impressive relative athletic score (RAS). Now, Sadiq's decision to not test in the combine's agility drills adds a major caveat here—it's safe to assume he would've done so if his times were elite. Still, we're talking about the 71st-best RAS score among 1,456 tight ends since 1987!

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Very capable seam stretcher: Good luck leaving the middle of the field open against this dude. Sadiq's immediate acceleration and long speed make him a constant threat to pierce the middle of any defense. Overall, he was targeted at least 20 yards downfield when aligned from the slot or inline on 12 occasions throughout his career … and Sadiq caught 10 of those targets for 260 yards and 5 scores. Not too shabby!

This is a tough man to tackle: Naturally, all these athletic gifts make Sadiq a handful for any  mere mortal to get to the ground once he has the football in his hands. Overall, Sadiq's rate of forcing 0.25 missed tackles per reception is good for the 10th-highest mark among 74 Power Four tight ends with at least 100 targets since 2000. His hurdle move in particular is VERY nicey.

It's not all roses: Sadiq's 74 Production Rating was tied for just eighth in this class, and a whopping 34% of his career targets were screens (although that actually leaves him in pretty great company). There are also some tweener concerns for the 6-foot-3, 241-pound 21-year-old—especially with rising second-year TE Mason Taylor (6-foot-5, 251 pounds) being a bit more of a traditional inline option at the position. Throw in an offseason surgery to repair a hernia, and a Year 1 boom is far from a certainty (especially considering the overall meh track record of rookie tight ends).

Ultimately, Sadiq is a perfectly solid mid-round rookie draft tight end target, but it's tough to be too optimistic about his Year 1 upside in a fairly crowded, likely bad offense that could easily choose to lean on the run game. He's a speculative LATE-round pick in re-draft land.

Players Mentioned in this Article

  1. KenyonSadiqQ
    TENYJNYJ
    Proj
    112.7

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