Challenge Contests — by Justin Eleff

A couple of weeks ago I asked if any of you had questions you wanted answered in this space. The downside to this approach is that you’ll occasionally have to read a whole column, like this one, about tight ends. The upside -- for all of us -- is that I can’t possibly write my usual 10,000 words about them.

In points games this season ...

One TE has been entirely indispensable: Dallas Clark, bearing just-higher-than-middling salaries, has outscored the field by roughly two points per week. The Colts win every game, so he starts with an edge on everyone other than Jeremy Shockey, and after the Week 1 injury to Anthony Gonzalez he’s been locked in as a top producer. Clark’s 768 receiving yards are exactly 100 more than Antonio Gates’ next-best total at the position.

Gates himself is the only player more expensive than Clark worth owning -- and only in addition to Clark, not instead of him. The one reason I’d consider Gates going forward (if I had lots of extra salary room) is that I expect his TD total to jump way up from where it sits now: 2. I figure Gates scores every week or two the rest of the way, finishing between 6 and 8.

More realistic for most challenge teams, salary considered, is to pair Clark with a much cheaper option -- but here, again, there aren’t so many to choose from.

The best players so far have been Vernon Davis ($1380 in the Fanball games) and Brent Celek ($1170), in that order -- but that order is more than a little misleading. Davis has scored more than 40-percent of his challenge points by catching 7 TD passes; as I wrote last week, his pace is certain to slow. I’ll go this far: Not only do I guarantee he won’t finish with 14, I’d be less surprised to see him finish under 10 than over 12. In my view, if you’re making a roster move that involves Davis, it ought to be because you’re dropping him, not picking him up.

Celek is rock-solid nearly every week. Only Week 7’s 3-for-8 was truly useless; since then he’s on a three-game TD streak. In fact, Celek’s 5 TDs make him nearly as good a candidate to lead the position as Davis.

The only other TEs I like at all in points games are Greg Olsen (but who knows what’s going on with the Bears?), Shockey (the Saints just keep winning) and Visanthe Shiancoe (obviously a preferred red-zone target for Brett Favre, but maybe the hardest name in the NFL to type). Problem: None of them are really cheap.

Q: Is there any reason to go away from the Clark / Celek exacta?

A: If you already own both of them, no.

And if you only own one?

For my money, Clark could work with any of Davis, Olsen, Shockey and Shiancoe; I probably wouldn’t burn to go away from any of them.

But if I happened not to own Clark, I’d at least consider him (still) rather than just plowing ahead with Celek and one of the others.

I really hope that the best advice I can give you won’t apply to most of you, but here goes: If you (a) own neither Gates nor Clark, and (b) have been using a cheaper player whose name does not appear above, it’s probably time to fix that. I assume no one’s eating DNPs with Jermichael Finley after he’s missed three straight games. But I did get a question about John Carlson last week.

Shiancoe’s essentially the same price as Carlson, but his team wins and he catches more TDs and Carlson’s one edge is receiving yards ... where Carlson hasn’t gone above 55 since Week 1.

Bottom line: Clark / Celek is ideal. Any combination of names mentioned above can work, but I’d really hesitate to go away from both Clark (or perhaps Gates) and Celek in favor of two of the no-man’s-land salary guys like Olsen and Shockey.

In categories games this season ...

Celek is indispensable as the one really premier cheapo. If you haven’t already noticed this it isn’t the sort of thing you’d guess: Celek’s receiving average (11.6) is actually higher than Davis’ (11.0), despite a significant speed deficit.

For the same reason, Gates (13.6) is as valuable as Clark (12.0), albeit at slightly higher salaries.

Shiancoe is probably useless because of how Favre is targeting him. Frequent looks in the red zone are good for one purpose, obviously -- Shiancoe (with 6) may actually be the favorite to lead this position in TDs -- but they’re killing his receiving average; he’s down at 9.8.

Shockey has been OK, but he obviously suffers where team wins don’t count.

Finley is worth holding here until you know for sure whether he’ll come back from his knee injury; he’s posted an eye-popping 15.3 yards-per-catch at the Football Challenge’s minimum salary. I could see using him heavily down the stretch to save the salary I’ll need at QB and RB ... if I hadn’t already dropped him.

Finally, Olsen is kind of a mystery to me. He’s one of the league’s fastest TEs, just a tick or two behind Davis, but even as Jay Cutler has started to use him more frequently (12-for-146 the last two weeks), he hasn’t really used him the way I expected. I thought Matt Forte would get the Bears’ short passes in 2009, and Olsen would mostly go long(ish) on the side opposite Devin Hester. Instead Earl Bennett has gotten a lot of short looks, Johnny Knox (despite incredible speed) has somehow gone 6-for-50 the last two weeks, and Olsen has been all over the place. Check his game log; his catches have bounced between 1 and 7, yards-per-catch (ignoring the two games in which he only caught 1 pass) have bounced between 6.0 and 14.2.

If that last paragraph makes the Bears’ passing game sound like a mess ...

Well, ask reader Peter DeBiase, who apparently watched last week’s game. Me, I think Thursday’s too good a TV night to bother with Bears-at-49ers.

Bottom line: Gates / Celek is ideal, as Gates balances Celek’s slight drag on your receiving average. That said, I wouldn’t hesitate to pair Clark with Celek and pay a little more attention to average at WR. If Finley comes back I might like Celek / Finley just as much as the other tandems, salary considered. Olsen strikes me as a feast-or-famine option in place of Celek; I definitely wouldn’t try to play matchups with him, would just use him and take the inevitable bad weeks with the (hopefully) inevitable good ones. Finally, if I’m right about Davis having scored most of his TDs already, he’s dead weight as long as his average stays where it is. You can definitely beat a chunk of the field by going away from him the rest of the year.

Unrelated closing note: I see the Ravens just dumped Steven Hauschka. If you have a backup, you might wait a week or two until you burn to replace him; it still seems possible that Garrett Hartley will displace John Carney in NO, and if so he’s the ideal add.

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