Fantasy Football Week 7 TE Preview: O.J. Howard is a viable stream with Antonio Brown and Rob Gronkowski out

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers ruled out Antonio Brown and Rob Gronkowski on Friday. This is an offense that is deep enough to handle that type of loss, so you don't need to worry about Tom Brady. But you might want to show a little more interest in O.J. Howard.

Howard has split tight end targets evenly with Cameron Brate since Gronkowski went down, but he's a far better athlete, and he flashed that ability in Week 6 when he caught six of seven targets for 49 yards and a touchdown against the Eagles.

The last time the team was without Brown, Week 3, Gronkowski saw a 14% target share and the tight ends as a group saw 26% of the targets. I've projected Howard and Brate for a 13% target share each, which makes Howard the better option because of his downfield ability, but puts both in play as streamers. They both project better than Ricky Seals-Jones, but my updated rankings will have it Howard, then Seals-Jones, then Brate. I would start all three ahead of Zach Ertz this week.

Here's everything else you need to know about tight end in Week 7:

Week 7 TE Preview

The following players are not being projected to play Week 7 at this time. Here's what it means:

• 15 -- Targets for Ricky Seals-Jones the past two weeks.
• 25.8% -- Kyle Pitts has accounted for more than a quarter of the Falcons air yards this season. No tight end has a higher rate.
• 16.7 -- Mike Gesicki has scored at least 16.7 PPR Fantasy points in three of his past four games.
• 14.2 -- Dalton Schultz is averaging 14.2 Fantasy points per game, which is fourth-best among tight ends, and better than Darren Waller.
• 149.1 -- Jalen Hurts has a near perfect passer rating when targeting Dallas Goedert; hopefully the departure of Zach Ertz means more targets for Goedert.
• 334 -- Mark Andrews leads all tight ends with 334 completed air yards.
• 7.9% -- Arizona has thrown just 7.9% of their passes to tight ends. That will need to change a lot for Zach Ertz to matter in Fantasy.

So who should you start and sit this week? And which surprising quarterback could lead you to victory? Visit SportsLine now to get Week 7 rankings for every position, plus see which QB is going to come out of nowhere to crack the top 10, all from the model that has out-performed experts big-time.