Evan Engram signed a new 3-year deal with the Jaguars, which is great for his dynasty stock – but with the addition of Calvin Ridley, I’m not so sure that Engram can duplicate his TE5 fantasy finish from 2022 in 2023.
Take out that huge game last year against Tennessee where he put up 39 PPR points, and his per game average last year falls from 10.4 pts/game to 8.6. That would have tied with Greg Dulcich for 18th in the NFL, and it’s not that I want to hold that great performance against him, but it’s important to look at the whole season last year to get a better idea of the type of tight end he was in 2022.
Without that monster performance, Engram eclipsed the 12 PPR point threshold just five times, never scoring more than 18 points in a game. In the 9 games where he was targeted at least 6 times, he finished as a top-12 tight end eight times. But in the 8 games where he earned less than 6 targets, he never finished inside the top-20.
Engram’s production was bipolar for the entirety of 2022, and that was dependent on whether or not Christian Kirk was getting targets. And if you look at the target distribution, you see that in the weeks where Engram got four targets or less, Kirk had 9 or more:
Week 1: Engram 4 targets, Kirk 12
Week 2: Engram 8 targets, Kirk 6
Week 3: Engram 3 targets, Kirk 9
Week 4: Engram 1 target, Kirk 9
Week 6: Engram 6 targets, Kirk 5
Week 7: Engram 7 targets, Kirk 10
Week 8: Engram 6 targets, Kirk 7
Week 9: Engram 2 targets, Kirk 9
Week 10: Engram 4 targets, Kirk 12
Week 12: Engram 1 target, Kirk 9
Week 14: Engram 15 targets, Kirk 7
Week 15: Engram 10 targets, Kirk 10 targets
The bottom line is that if anyone is going to lose out on this offense because a teammate is having themselves a day, it’ll be Engram before it’s Kirk. And now that Kirk will playing second fiddle to Calvin Ridley, Engram could find himself without a slice of the target share pie even more often than he did in 2022.
Oh, and it’s no exaggeration when we say that when Engram isn’t scoring – he actually becomes a non-factor when the target share isn’t there. He had as many finishes outside the top-24 as Tyler Higbee (7).
If the disappearing act for Engram was happening with Christian Kirk and Zay Jones competing for targets, imagine the fluctuation with Calvin Ridley heavily integrated in the Jags offense. There’s just way too much instability to trust Engram right now, especially at his TE8 price off the board.