Fantasy Football Week 8 TE Preview: Robert Tonyan a solid streamer with Packers depleted receiving corps

The Green Bay Packers have placed both Davante Adams and Allen Lazard on the COVID-19 IR this week, making it unlikely either will play on Thursday night against the Arizona Cardinals. Also on IR is Marquez Valdes-Scantling, who the team is hoping can return from a hamstring injury that has cost him a month. This is not a particularly good situation for Aaron Rodgers. But it may be a great situation for Robert Tonyan.

Tonyan scored four touchdowns in two games without Adams in 2020 and also had a season-high 98 receiving yards in one of those games. While we expected touchdown regression for Tonyan this season, there’s little doubt he’ll be one of Rodgers’ first looks in the red zone on Thursday. Basically everyone outside the top 10 at tight end is touchdown dependent, so you might as well go with the guy playing with Rodgers, who has one of the highest touchdown rates in league history.

The one caveat I must add is that the Cardinals have been exceptional against tight ends this year. They still haven’t allowed a touchdown to the position. But they also haven’t yet played a tight end who ranks inside the top-12 in Fantasy points per game this season. I’m pretty skeptical of defense vs. tight end numbers in the first place, these are particularly dubious.

Here’s everything else you need to know about tight end in Week 8:

Week 8 TE Preview

The following players are not being projected to play Week 8 at this time. Here’s what it means:

• 14.3% — Robert Tonyan’s career touchdown rate, which dwarfs Rob Gronkowski’s career rate.
• 20% — Noah Fant’s target share so far this season. We’ll see what Jerry Jeudy does to that.
• 29.3% — Kyle Pitts‘ air yards share, comfortably the highest amongst tight ends this year.
• 19.5 — Rob Gronkowski’s 19.5 Fantasy points per game leads all tight ends. He could return soon.
• 7 — Jared Cook has seven targets in two of his past three games.
• 12 — Ricky Seals-Jones is averaging 12 Fantasy points per game in his three starts.