Mark Andrews has been in the upper echelon of tight ends for the past 4 seasons. He’s been at least PPR TE6 each of those seasons. He’s a valuable target to former MVP QB Lamar Jackson but today I’m here to argue that his importance will be decreased going into the 2023 season and is in danger of being a bust for the 2023 season.
According to Fantasy Football Calculator, Andrews is being drafted around 17th overall, Sleeper has him being selected around 25th overall, and FantasyPros have him around 34th overall. If being selected around 25th overall, that puts him generally at the beginning of the 3rd round of 10-12 team leagues. The one constant among these three entities is that Andrews is consistently drafted as the #2 tight end. Being drafted as a top 5 tight end at a position which lacks production consistency brings high expectations.
The high expectations likely stem from his monster 2021 season where he had 154(!) targets and caught 107 of them for 1,361 yards and 9 touchdowns. Fantasy owners salivated over how Lamar Jackson favorited sending the football towards Andrews constantly. With how the offense is changing around them, it’s hard to see Andrews even sniffing that same production from two seasons ago. Last season he had his next closest target total at 113. The remainder of his career he hadn’t seen over 100 targets and it’s hard to see his targets reach that value when the Ravens brought in Odell Beckham Jr and drafted Zay Flowers to a pass-catching room that lacked depth.
While I see Andrews as a valuable tight end in fantasy football, I cannot value him at the consistency of being drafted as early as people are drafting him as the far-and-away TE2. Travis Kelce has been consistently ultra-productive and people just clamber to the fact that Andrews beat out Kelce during that one season.
My advice is simple: Andrews is a bust when you draft him that high and only gives you a fraction of the production you are expecting from him. Realistically, you can draft him as a Top 5 TE option but will fit on the same tier as your other Tier 2 TE’s with the likes of George Kittle and TJ Hockenson but don’t think of him on Kelce’s tier: he’s on his own there.
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