Elite Fantasy Football Tight Ends: Best Fantasy TEs & Top Picks For 2025
For those familiar with this series, welcome back. For those just finding it for the first time, welcome in. Either way, you’re welcome. Because we spend countless hours scouring the stats, the film, and the narratives to give you the most comprehensive breakdown of the tight end position in the fantasy football industry. This is now the 8th edition of the Fantasy Alarm Ultimate Tight End Guide, and we could not be happier to help!
Here’s how things work for those just tuning in:
Article 1: What Makes An Elite Tight End - This is our “manifesto” of sorts that breaks down exactly what we are looking for in elite tight ends. If you read that first, the next few articles, including this one, are going to make a lot more sense to you. And you might not even NEED the rankings articles, because you will be so gosh darn smart when it comes to tight ends. But please still read them anyway.
Article 2: The Elite Tight Ends - These are the top picks for what we call “Standalone” tight end. You pick one guy, and that’s it; you just worry about his bye week or injuries. This is the article you are reading right now.
Article 3: The Tight Ends Fades - These are the guys we really don’t like at ADP to the point where we are almost next drafting them. People really love to hate this article, but for people who draft in a lot of leagues, it’s key to know where the landmines might be.
Article 4: Yin & Yang Tight End - This is a tight end “pairing strategy” if you wait on tight end. The end goal is not to have two tight ends all season where you dread your weekly decision, but it’s a system we use to find this year’s breakout tight end without losing too many games along the way. We’ll get to that soon enough.
2025 Elite Tight Ends for Fantasy Football
I want you to have the full picture. So, for each of these players, I’m going to give you three sections.
- The Good - the objective good things about the player
- The Bad - the objective bad things about the player
- The Advice - my subjective advice on whether this is a good player to draft at their ADP
It’s up to you if you want to make your own decisions based on whether you believe The Good outweighs The Bad or not. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. If you want to hear it, though, I will tell you how I’m living mine with The Advice. We’ve done pretty well with this position, and we did win some awards last year, but there is something special about making those final decisions on who to pick based on how YOU feel. My job is to arm you with the information you need to do that.
These guys are all in this section because, in most cases, you are drafting them early enough that you are committing to them as your starting tight end for 2025. It’s too “expensive” in terms of ADP to draft these guys, then also draft a second tight end with meaningful draft capital. If you are taking Brock Bowers where he goes, that is your guy. The placement of the tight ends in this article doesn’t mean that I am 100% drafting them at ADP, just that these are the elite options.
Now that you know What Makes An Elite Tight End and how the series works, let’s dive in!
Brock Bowers
The Good
Last year, we wrote about how special Brock Bowers is, saying that he’s “basically a stronger Jordy Nelson”. Well, as a rookie, he went out and had a Jordy Nelson-esque year with 112 catches on 153 targets for 1,263 yards and 12 TDs. That was not only good for the top tight end season in fantasy and the best season by a rookie tight end ever, but it was also the most catches any rookie at any position has ever had.
We have a lot to talk about in this article, so I don’t want to take up too much of your time on a guy we know is elite. Let’s just say this - he was among the top of the league in everything we care about. Target share (top 2), route participation (top 2) percentage of routes run from a WR spot (over 70%), yards per route run (4th), receptions vs man to man (4th), contested catches (1st). I don’t know what to tell ya, I guess I’d like it if he got more screens? He was merely 8th among tight ends in that category.
And here’s where it gets scary - he could get even better. He was a rookie after all. It was also his first season after having Tightrope surgery to repair a high ankle sprain, where we’ve seen guys like Tony Pollard, Darnell Mooney, and Mark Andrews take a full calendar year to be 100%. And Geno Smith is almost certainly a better quarterback than guys like Gardner Minshew, Aiden O’Connell, and Desmond Ridder. Regardless, Brock Bowers is clearly, once again, the top target on his team. And that is rare for tight ends.
The Bad
There’s going to be some sort of downside case for every player. There always is. The main one against Bowers is related to the offensive philosophy. Last year, this Raiders team was fourth in pass attempts, which is a difficult task to repeat. Especially with a new coaching staff and Pete Carroll preferring a run-first approach. Adding Ashton Jeanty is certainly going to help them run the football a little better - the Raiders were dead last in team rush yards last year by a wide margin. They ran for 1,357 yards, and the next worst team was at 1,561. That team was the New York Jets, who ran for 200 more yards. File that one under “Yikes”.
Many will point the finger at Chip Kelly and say, “ But the TEMPO, the TEMPOOO!!!”. Sure, Chip used to do that. But Kelly’s philosophy has changed from his nonstop no-huddle days of a decade ago, as he explained to reporters. Like most teams, he deploys speed when necessary, but now refers to it more as a “side order” than the main dish. His most recent UCLA and Ohio State teams did not operate at nearly the tempo that his Oregon and failed NFL teams attempted to.
Last year’s Ohio State team actually averaged only 61.9 plays per game, which was one of the slowest in the league (per Stephen Hawkins of KBTX News, that was good for 120th out of 134 D1 teams). That’s a far cry from his Oregon teams that once averaged over 80 plays a game in 2010.
So now with a little more emphasis on the run and rookies like Jack Bech, D’Onte Thornton, and Ashton Jeanty joining the mix, does Brock Bowers get 150 targets again like he did last year?
The Advice
Well, he better. Because this guy is going early in drafts. Early ADP data from the Fantasy Alarm Composite ADP Tool shows him going pretty squarely in the second round - there is no platform where he falls outside the top 20 picks on average. On Sleeper, he’s creeping towards the swing with an ADP of 13.7. It doesn’t get much hotter than that for a tight end.
I did a full write-up on positional scarcity in regards to the tight end position this offseason so I encourage you to take a peek at that. Excluding tight end premium (which is a niche format still), here is my general philosophy on very early tight ends. A tight end has never finished as the number 1 overall FLEX player. We all understand positional scarcity, but you still need to score the points to win. The best ever tight end season is Rob Gronkowski’s 2011, when he scored 18 touchdowns. That’s not even in the top 100 best fantasy seasons for a WR, RB, or TE. Kelce’s best season ranks 176th on that list. Yes, you get that positional scarcity, but then you still need to turn around and find high-end players at the other positions to really take advantage.
My advice to you is to make a list of players you think can be the number one FLEX player in fantasy football. The best ever tight end season we just mentioned was ~331 PPR points. Ja'Marr Chase last year scored over 400 fantasy points. So did CeeDee Lamb the year before that. Once you have exhausted that list, feel free to draft a tight end or quarterback. For me, however, that list of RBs and WRs typically lasts longer than Brock Bowers does on the board. So, despite all the nice things I just said, I don’t often find myself drafting him where he goes. If you can get him in the third, that’s a smash because he COULD put up elite WR-level numbers. But the higher you take him, the scarier it gets.
Trey McBride
The Good
Pretty much any of the stats I said Brock Bowers was number two in above, Trey McBride was number one. He led the league in target share and route participation. He only blocked on 1.4% of his pass plays, which led all qualified tight ends. That basically means he was hardly used like a real tight end at all, which is true - Tip Reiman was their inline blocking tight end. McBride was second only to Mike Gesicki in receptions vs man to man (Mike Gesicki? What?), and he had the third most forced missed tackles at 14. He also caught 16 screens, which was 7 more than Brock Bowers. So that is something.
We all know that Kyler Murray likes to take off and run at times, but he also loves getting it out of his hands very quickly. As we pointed out in our Marvin Harrison Rookie Year Study, Kyler Murray was a top-three quarterback in getting the ball out of his hands in under 2 seconds per Fantasy Points Data Suite. And the main beneficiary of that was Trey McBride, who had a 34.5% first-read target share.
We want certainty with our early picks. The Arizona Cardinals have the same coach and offensive coordinator. They have the same quarterback. They didn’t add any major new weapons - it’s still basically just Trey McBride, Marvin Harrison Jr, Michael Wilson, Greg Dortch, James Conner, and Trey Benson. Times are good, right?
The Bad
Well, times actually weren’t that good. They had a losing record and obviously didn’t make the playoffs. When you are a dominant team, you keep doing what you are doing. When you are losing, you need to make changes. If defenses are letting you dump the ball down and you are taking the low-hanging fruit over and over while your drives stall, is that really something you want to keep doing year after year? Perhaps not.
As we pointed out in that article, breaking down Kyler Murray’s tendencies, he actually had one of the highest completion percentages throwing to the second read. He just wasn’t getting through his read progressions. Maybe Drew Petzing cannot get Kyler Murray to buy into the playbook, and trust guys like Marvin Harrison and Murray will just keep doing the same things. But maybe they actually get him to buy in and hang in the pocket a little longer. That and Kyler’s talk about “getting better at off-schedule plays” could translate to more passes at the secondary level to guys like Marvin Harrison Jr and Michael Wilson, which would naturally come at the expense of targets for McBride.
Folks probably expect me to talk about the lack of touchdowns here, but to be honest, touchdowns can be fluky. Yes, some guys have more endzone prowess or are bigger than others, but McBride is good vs. man to man, so I think he’s capable of it. I guess we do have to mention that he only had 6 total touchdowns in three seasons, which is absurdly low for a guy getting 292 targets over that span.
The Advice
Trey McBride doesn’t go all that far after Brock Bowers in drafts. The potential changes to the offense are enough that I can’t just pencil him in for 150 targets again, just like it’s hard to say Bowers is a lock for 150 targets. And the are WRs out there where you CAN pencil them in for that kind of volume who also have the upside of 1500+ yards. The are simply too many opportunity costs for me to routinely take a tight end this early.
We mentioned the opportunity cost of taking a tight end vs. other star players above. Ryan Heath of Fantasy Points shared some interesting data regarding the “league-winning” type players that are heavily featured on ESPN playoff teams. Basically, Travis Kelce is the only tight end drafted in the top 40 picks in terms of ADP to deliver.
The other sneaky part of the opportunity cost that we lose is the leverage you can create from your TE spot. You typically only have one dedicated TE spot. So, when you draft a player early there, it kind of blocks you from using that spot to generate value late. And a tight end has come from TE18 or later in ADP to finish top five in 13 straight years. It’s the entire reason we do this Yin & Yang thang. So, if you can get a good price on Bower or McBride, I say go for it. Especially if that’s in the fourth round outside the top 40 picks. But it rarely shakes out that way.
George Kittle
The Good
The secret to George Kittle’s success is his athleticism. He can do “more with less” for a number of reasons. The fact that he can block well as an inline tight end sets him up perfectly to fake out defenders on play action and screens, putting himself in the open field or in matchups against linebackers and safeties. Then his absurd athleticism, with 97th percentile speed for the position, allows him to rip off big chunk plays. Here’s a look at his workout metrics per PlayerProfiler.
And rip them off, he does. George Kittle and Travis Kelce lead all tight ends with 18 career plays of 40+ yards, and the next closest player is Jonnu Smith with only 9. No other tight end has multiple plays of 70+ yards besides George Kittle, and he also has an 80-yard touchdown. This dude belongs in a cage.
And he’s been putting up these top-five seasons while competing with guys like Brandon Aiyuk, Deebo Samuel, and Christian McCaffrey, all while on a team that is towards the bottom of the league in pass attempts. It works because the 49ers use a fullback and blocking tight end for so many snaps that it highly consolidates the targets among the top couple of guys. They brought Kyle Juszyzck back and signed Luke Farrell to a big deal, so that shouldn’t change. It will be Jauan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall until Brandon Aiyuk gets back from injury, so the path is clearer than ever for a guy who can make his own path anyway.
The Bad
If we were to draw up the ideal role for a tight end for fantasy football, it would not look like George Kittle’s. It would look like Brock Bowers or 2021 Mark Andrews, where they are basically just playing wide receiver. George Kittle plays inline tight end with his hand in the mud, which leads him to only run 40.8% of his routes from a WR spot - that’s good for TE45 out of the 60 or so we looked at with at least 20 targets last year.
In that role, he often has to block more - and not just on run plays. He’s blocked on over 10% of his pass plays in every season, which routinely keeps him out of the top 10 for routes run. Last year, he played on 500 pass plays but only ran 422 routes because of the blocking. That put him at TE16 in routes run, just ahead of Mike Gesicki and Juwan Johnson. If he ever loses a step and stops breaking off big plays, that’s a problem. He turns 32 this season and, someday, that’s going to happen.
The other concern is that he’s not necessarily CLEARLY the top target. Yes, it is consolidated. But Jauan Jennings actually led this team in targets last year. First-round pick Ricky Pearsall might actually be pretty good. Christian McCaffrey is back as well to get his targets. And, even if he misses time, Brandon Aiyuk is expected to be ready to rock for the end of the season and fantasy playoffs, when it matters most.
The Advice
For fantasy football analysts, a “unicorn” is a player who consistently defies conventional logic. They ruin the spreadsheets. And guys like George Kittle are unicorns, just like Rob Gronkowski before him. Because of how George Kittle’s usage looked on paper, I even faded him a couple of times to my own detriment. My eyes watching the games were telling me something different than what the spreadsheets were saying. And I just couldn’t believe it would continue to translate to fantasy.
For instance, George Kittle, Rob Gronkowski, and Julius Thomas are the only three tight ends I’ve ever seen finish top five while pass blocking on more than 15% of their snaps. And Peyton Manning threw an all-time record 55 TD passes the year Orange Julius did it. As the kids used to say, but probably don’t say anymore now that the dads like me are saying it, George Kittle is just “built different”.
So this is the first tight end I’m considering in drafts at or even slightly ahead of ADP, especially in half PPR and standard. Folks are starting to figure out that he should be going closer to Brock Bowers and Trey McBride than he does to Sam LaPorta and T.J. Hockenson, so his ADP is creeping up, but he does currently go outside the top 40 picks, sometimes even in the fifth round. That feels pretty good for the current situation for Kittle. You have the green light from me to draft the unicorn if you get a good value.
Travis Kelce
The Good
Travis Kelce just caught 97 passes while not even playing the final regular-season game. He was literally a top 10 player in receptions per game - ahead of Justin Jefferson even. Here are the other top 15 players in receptions per game. As you can see, Travis Kelce is the only guy currently going outside the top 100 picks in early best ball and one of only two going outside the top three rounds. Maybe the worst 100 catch player ever, I guess.
Everyone thinks that NFL careers end in some sort of linear progression every time, like slowly sinking into a lava pit. Or worse, falling off a cliff completely. But that’s not always how it goes, especially for Hall of Fame caliber players. Tony Gonzalez, for instance, had a down year at 34 years old then came back and put up back to back to back top-five fantasy seasons to end his career. How many times did that one guy in your league keep drafting Larry Fitzgerald and Steve Smith? Adam Thielen, when he returned from injury last year, was WR13 through fantasy playoffs.
Kelce is still playing with Patrick Mahomes in an Andy Reid offense. They also might not be able to sleepwalk their way through the season again to a 15-1 regular season record, where they can skip the final game. Kelce was just a top-five tight end on a team that was scoring 10 fewer points per game than a team like Detroit, so he could easily have another big season if the Chiefs end up in more challenging games. The Broncos, Chargers, and Raiders are all trending in the right direction.
The Bad
The targets were there for Kelce, but he didn’t quite look like the Kelce we’ve grown accustomed to. Sure, his ability to get open and catch the football was fine as he had similar catch rates, contested catches, etc., as we’ve come to expect. But he was significantly less elusive than he’s been in the past. He only broke five tackles after breaking 20 or more in the three previous seasons. That saw his yards after the catch per reception plummet from 5+ over that season to under 4. And, because of that, his yards per route run was the lowest it’s been in over half a decade.
Since he had 998 yards, he probably would have cracked 1,000 had he played the final game of the regular season. But this is a guy who has not had fewer than 1,336 yards in the six seasons leading into this one. I would never be the one to blame the sweet angel Taylor Swift for anything, but he does seem a bit like a guy who has one foot out the door. His brother Jason sure looks like he’s enjoying retirement.
On top of that, there’s reason to believe they might not lean on Kelce as heavily. Over the first three games last year, Kelce was actually only averaging 4.3 targets per game. Then Rashee Rice got hurt, and all of a sudden, he was thrust back into the spotlight, where he averaged over 9 targets per game for the rest of the regular season. With Rashee Rice, Hollywood Brown, and Xavier Worthy, 100 catches for Kelce might not be necessary.
The Advice
Does Travis Kelce actually need to catch 100 passes to be worth his current ADP? No, he doesn’t. For the first time in a long time, Travis Kelce is actually going at a reasonable price. The consensus industry rankings for Kelce have him going at 80 overall, as the TE7. Our composite ADP also suggests that he goes in that round 6-7 range on most platforms.
I actually considered being out on Kelce - until I got started with my best ball drafts and early mock drafts. The ability to start your draft with some sort of build, like three running backs and three wide receivers, and THEN take a guy like Travis Kelce just creates too strong of a build. If he does what he did last year, that is all you need in this world. If he has a bounce-back year, you just created a ton of leverage.
I’m not going crazy reaching for Kelce because of the values in that range this year, but I’m willing to take him around ADP or if he slides. I have a hard time believing that, if you draft Kelce where he goes, you are going to find yourself scouring waivers so that you can move Kelce to the bench. Every year, the tight end landscape ends up a bit more bleak than we imagine, no matter how much wishing dust I sprinkle on the position.
Sam LaPorta
The Good
Sam LaPorta is a good football player. No doubt about that. He disappointed a bit last year at ADP, but folks might have just gotten over their skis with where they were taking him - he was still the TE8 both in overall points and points per game. He flashed his redzone prowess with a 7 TD season, following up on his 10 TD rookie debut.
The personnel for the team didn’t change much from year one to year two, or even now going into year three. His usage also didn’t change dramatically as he had a similar slot percentage, similar pass block rate, similar aDot, similar YAC, and similar missed tackles. He actually increased his YAC per reception, and his drop percentage decreased as well. None of that changed from his TE1 overall debut.
We also need to mention that LaPorta was not nearly as healthy in 2024 as he was in 2023. He suffered a hamstring injury in August that slowed the start to his season. He then hurt his ankle in early September, which he played through while it was clearly bothering him. And then he sprained his AC joint in Week 10. There’s reason to believe that a healthy Sam LaPorta comes out in 2025, and it’s back to business as usual.
The Bad
The problem with “business as usual” for Sam LaPorta is that business has actually not been ideal behind the scenes for him this entire time. We mention how his usage didn’t change from 2023 to 2024 when he was the TE1, but his usage and alignment haven’t been ideal for fantasy football.
In both seasons, he primarily played inline. His slot rate for both years was only around 26% (that’s what happens when you have the Sun God, Slot King in Amon-Ra St. Brown). And his WR rate outside actually decreased a bit in 2024 with him picking up a few more inline snaps (he plays about 50% of his snaps inline). That also led him to pass block on over 9% of his pass plays - as we discuss in our Elite Tight End Manifesto, we want that number as low as possible, but at least around half of what he’s doing. You cannot catch the ball on a pass play if you are not going out for a pass.
Amon-Ra St. Brown is a superstar. Jameson Williams is emerging. Tim Patrick is pretty darn good against zone and is an annoyingly large red zone threat. And Jahmyr Gibbs deserves more and more targets. On top of all that, the defense continues to get better. A guy like Patrick Mahomes used to have to throw 50 TD passes for the Chiefs to win 12 games. Now they set it in cruise control and lock up a bye week with him throwing 26-27. As DJ Khaled might say, the Lions are such a well-built team that, statistically, some of their pass-catchers might be “suffering from success”.
The Advice
As we know, it’s fairly rare for three players all on the same team to get 100+ targets (data on that is available in What Makes An Elite Tight End) . And the third target on the team usually doesn’t fare that well in fantasy. Per Pro Football Focus, the top scoring players to finish third on their team in targets were tied with 174.6 fantasy points. They were Rashod Bateman, who finished as the WR40, and Sam LaPorta, who finished as the TE8. That’s not what we want.
You can’t really make an argument to fade the role or targets of Amon-Ra St. Brown (trust me, I tried early in his career, and that was a mistake). So, you really need to believe that Sam LaPorta deserves more targets than Jameson Williams to be bullish on LaPorta. I actually ran a little poll recently, and it looks like about half the people favor Williams, half favor LaPorta.
And therein lies the problem. If I’m going to draft a tight end as the TE4 off the board, I need a little more certainty. I need to know this guy is a top two target on his team - ideally, THE top target. So LaPorta is the first guy of this bunch that I’m not really interested in drafting. He goes in the “Standalone” group of my rankings simply because he’s so expensive in drafts that you cannot afford to spend up on a second tight end, and you should just ride it out with LaPorta. But I’m trying not to do that unless he seriously slides from where he’s going. If you are in the 46.7% that thinks he is a top 2 target on the team and can easily clear 100, draft away!
Mark Andrews
The Good
Mark Andrews just finished up another season where he finished as the TE6 overall in fantasy football. It was his second double-digit touchdown season - he and Travis Kelce are now the only two tight ends in the league with more than one season with 10 or more touchdowns. He ran nearly 80% of his routes at a WR spot, he was top five in the league in receptions vs. man to man, he led all qualified tight ends with a 10.8 yard aDOT, and he rarely blocked on pass plays. Just typical Mark Andrews stuff there.
Player | Pos | Team | aDot |
TE | BLT | 10.8 | |
TE | NO | 10.3 | |
TE | BUF | 10.2 | |
TE | IND | 10.2 | |
TE | LAC | 10.1 | |
TE | MIN | 9.2 | |
TE | SF | 8.9 | |
TE | BLT | 8.8 | |
TE | ATL | 8.7 | |
TE | BUF | 8.2 |
What wasn’t typical was how the offseason and year progressed for Mark Andrews. There is a procedure to fix high ankle sprains called Tightrope surgery that is fairly invasive but gets you back on the field quickly. The short-term benefits seem to have some long-term downside, as multiple players reported that it took a long time to get back to 100%. Tony Pollard and Darnell Mooney both had the procedure in 2022 and struggled in 2023, with Pollard citing that he “didn’t feel like he was back to his old self” until Week 11 of 2023. Add in the car crash that Mark Andrews was involved in before the season, and it’s no surprise he got off to a slow start. Over the first four weeks, he was the TE38 in fantasy, and over the remainder of the season, he was top 5.
The Ravens didn’t really make many additions in terms of weapons in 2024, so the configuration might not change much. They added DeAndre Hopkins, but he’s been a part-time player over the last few years, so he should continue at that pace. We have to ask what is most likely - that they switch up the offense that got them within inches of the AFC Championship game, or that they lean on Zay Flowers, Mark Andrews, Rashod Bateman, and Isaiah Likely in that order again?
The Bad
Some folks do believe that switching things up is likely. Isaiah Likely, in fact (yeesh). Yes, Mark Andrews outperformed him for fantasy purposes in 2024, but Andrews is another year older now and certainly looked it last year - especially on the tough drop to end the season. Isaiah Likely certainly looks the part when given the chance, and he was better with the ball in his hands, recording more broken tackles and higher yards after the catch per route run last year. To hurt the upside for Mark Andrews, we don’t even need to see a changing of the guard - all it would take is for the split to continue to get worse. Yes, Likely is going to miss a little time after off-season foot surgery. But, unless they are set to miss the whole year, we have to assume the player will be back during fantasy playoffs when it matters most. Likely missing a little time helps Andrews some but we cna't bank on it.
Not to mention, these other weapons in general are a bit more threatening than we’ve seen in years past. This isn’t the 2019 Ravens where Willie Snead is leading the team in snaps. Or even 2021, when Mark Andrews had his all-time great season, when it was Hollywood Brown and then not much else. Zay Flowers is a great player, Rashod Bateman has finally gotten healthy and emerged as servicable, and Hopkins is still something. Plus, this team wants to run the ball with Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry anyway.
Mark Andrews “got it done” last year in fantasy, but he did it in a touchdown-dependent way. We don’t cut other players slack for that, like the year we correctly faded Robert Tonyan coming off a TD-dependent season. We are worried about those issues with Sam LaPorta. So why would we cut Mark Andrews any slack?
The Advice
I actually will cut Mark Andrews some slack. Not because we plan to chase touchdowns. But because I believe Mark Andrews can bounce back at a high level in 2025. We have to remember that this guy is still 29 years old. The great Travis Kelce didn’t have his first 1,000-yard season until he was 27. Zach Ertz didn’t until he was 28. Both those guys are still playing now, and they are, like, a million years old. Mark Andrews could easily just get healthy, get focused, and get back to the guy we’ve come to expect. And that’s exactly what he’s been doing this offseason.
For a brief period there early in the season, he was not getting the deployment we expected. But, as the season rolled on, he was back to a high snap share and route participation, running a ton of routes from a WR spot as usual. No one around the team cares about the dropped pass in the playoffs the way Twitter does. And even Isaiah Likely said he’s “still All Pro Mark,” and he expects him to bounce back.
What has not bounced back yet is his ADP. The way the season ended, coupled with the spring trade rumors, has Mark Andrews going the latest he’s gone since his breakout in year two. If he were still being drafted as a top-five option, we might be out. But he currently goes as the TE7 off the board around where Travis Kelce does and sometimes as late as TE9 or TE10 after Jonnu Smith, Evan Engram, and David Njoku. That basically makes him a guy you can draft as a backend TE1 that has top 5 upside - in a down year, he was just TE6. Like Kelce, I’m not saying reach for him, but if you get a good price, go for it. Especially if you can stack these guys with Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson and create some extra leverage.
Evan Engram
The Good
With so much information out there these days, it’s hard to get an advantage. But there is one remaining front we can take advantage of with regard to ADP. Stigma. Much like Jonnu Smith last year, Evan Engram was released. That makes fantasy gamers think he must be “washed”. They’re hesitant to trust this player if he’s been cast off. But, much like Jonnu Smith, there was a specific reason that happened - he didn’t fit the scheme.
Liam Coen developed his scheme working under Sean McVay with the Rams. It uses three wide receiver sets and a two-way inline tight end. You then move wide receivers around the formation with a lot of pre-snap motion that finds your best/most versatile one, often ending up in the slot. Think Cooper Kupp on those Rams teams or Chris Godwin last year for Coen’s Buccaneers. Because of that, you don’t need a “big slot” tight end, you need someone like Tyler Higbee or Cade Otton who can play inline and block as well as dabble in the pass game. That’s not Evan Engram, that’s Brenton Strange.
So Evan Engram was cast off and, just like Jonnu Smith landing in a good scheme fit with the Dolphins, Engram found the perfect scheme fit with Sean Payton. Payton loves using guys “out of position” to create mismatches, like using running backs or tight ends out wide to run routes where opposing defenders aren’t used to covering them. He calls these players “jokers”. Immediately after signing, Evan Engram posted a GIF to his Twitter account of Heath Ledger’s iconic role as The Joker. Where do you think he got that idea?
The Bad
Now, it is worth mentioning that the Jaguars also got rid of Christian Kirk because he didn’t fit the scheme. The Houston Texans opted to trade for Christian Kirk. No one opted to trade for Evan Engram. Perhaps there is something to be said there about how the league views him. He is a pretty niche player after all, as an undersized tight end at 6’3”, 235.
There’s also no guarantee that Engram will be an every-down player for Sean Payton like he was for Doug Pederson. Last year, Courtland Sutton played ~85% of the snaps, and the only other skill player to play more than 50% of the snaps was blocking tight end Adam Trautman at 52%. Sean Payton has put guys in the doghouse before for drops, like Greg Dulcich last year, and Engram did have a bit of a drop issue in New York. There’s a possibility that Engram just finds himself in a rotation with a bunch of other guys where no one is actually producing at a meaningful level for fantasy. Or, even worse, someone like Marvin Mims or Pat Bryant carves out a full role, and now Engram is the third target on the team at best, a proverbial death sentence for tight ends.
It’s also worth mentioning that, even though he did have the second-most receptions in a season a tight end has ever had, Engram was a bit of a screen merchant under Doug Pederson. He led all tight ends with a full 21 receptions on screens, which is nice in PPR, but there is a reason that he had 114 catches but didn’t even crack 1,000 yards. We always cite the 4.42 forty time, which is one of the fastest ever for a tight end, but he hasn’t had a 40+ yard play in four years now. And he hasn’t scored more than 4 touchdowns since his rookie season. Makes you wonder if maybe all the injuries early on turned him into more of a dink and dunk guy at 30 years old.
The Advice
At tight end 9 off the board based on our composite ADP (and sometimes outside the top 10, depending on where the rookies go), we are MORE than happy to draft Evan Engram. Especially in PPR leagues. The Broncos did live tryouts all of last year to find someone for this “big slot” role all last year:
- They tried Greg Dulcich, who dropped 3 of his 8 targets in Week Two and was never heard from again
- They tried Lil’Jordan Humphrey, who has the most deceiving name ever at 6’4” 225.
- They tried Devaughn Vele, but 27-year-old rookies only work in baseball or hockey.
- They tried Lucas Krull, The Warrior King, who never caught more than three passes in a game.
The Broncos were top candidates to draft someone like Colston Loveland this year, but as luck would have it, the perfect player for their scheme fell right into their lap. And, like the Dolphins with Jonnu Smith, they immediately threw a bag at him to make sure he didn’t get away. The two-year $23M deal gives him the highest AAV at $11.5M of any free agent tight end this offseason, and $16.5M of that is guaranteed. I expect this guy to be featured.
Heck, at his ADP, you can even go Yin & Yang tight end with him. Given his profile as a low aDOT type player that gets a lot of targets, I wouldn’t mind taking Engram as the TE8-10 off the board, then circling back for another super high-risk, high-reward option with a bench spot. Maybe you could even double-tap the tight end position with this next player, who offers a little more risk but quite a bit of upside.
David Njoku
The Good
David Njoku is an absolute physical specimen. I could show you his workout metrics from Player Profiler that display his 97th percentile burst score, but instead, I will just show you this picture of him with no shirt on in a scary mask.
And that badass fella there has been a target machine as of late. Over the last three years, he has 300 targets, which is fourth behind only Travis Kelce (406), T.J. Hockenson (318), and Evan Engram (305). He was getting peppered with targets at an especially high level in 2023 when Joe Flacco was the quarterback, and he got 45 targets over only a five-game span. That’s a pace of over 150 targets for a full season. Did I mention that Joe Flacco is the current favorite to start Week 1 for this team?
He doesn’t necessarily need Joe Flacco either. Even without Flacco, Njoku got 97 targets in 11 games last year, which is about a ~150 target pace. The target competition is Jerry Jeudy and Cedric Tillman, with no Elijah Moore this year. Jeudy will get his looks, but Tillman isn’t necessarily an insurmountable obstacle. Njoku looks to be a featured part of that Browns offense once again.
The Bad
The Browns and quarterback carousel nightmares go together like peas and carrots. In 2023, they had five different quarterbacks start a game, each one worse than the last. Guys like PJ Walker, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, and Jeff Driskel are all just out there giving it the college try and getting destroyed. Same with last year - even Bailey Zappe got in the mix. And they are once again setting themselves up for a similar tragedy.
The problem for Njoku hasn’t been games when guys like Joe Flacco start. It’s the risk of seeing the other guys. And it often happens at the worst possible time for fantasy football. The Browns could easily once again start Flacco this year, then, when it’s clear they don’t make the playoffs, in comes the revolving door of Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel, and Shedeur Sanders. Even if they are throwing the ball in the general direction of Njoku, it can be ugly, like last year when Jameis Winston threw 30 targets at Njoku over a two-game span and he didn’t have 100 total yards. In the game before that, Winston threw him five targets, and he caught one for nine yards.
There’s a reason Njoku has averaged fewer than four touchdowns a season for his whole career - the Browns are not a good franchise. And they could easily be terrible once again. I mean, Vegas has its over/under win total set at 4.5 at books like Bet MGM. That’s my main concern with drafting David Njoku as my only tight end. Things could start out all fine and dandy, and then the wheels fall off down the stretch when it matters most.
The Advice
The upside for me is just too tantalizing. There are too few athletic tight ends. There are too few tight ends who have a chance at being a starting tight end on the team. There are too few tight ends who could ever dream of a 150-target pace. That’s basically reserved for guys like Brock Bowers, Trey McBride, and Travis Kelce. And we don’t have to pay that price for Njoku.
The backend TE1 range is fairly interesting right now because, depending on where you are drafting, the orders are shaken up. Our composite ADP pulls sources from a number of places and, on average, Njoku goes as the TE10. But on Yahoo, Tucker Kraft (composite TE11) goes ahead of him. On RT Sports, Colston Loveland (composite TE14) goes ahead of him. So there are discounts to be had. On ESPN, Njoku goes super early at like TE7. So you may need to consider your platform when deciding how to navigate here.
For me, I have no problem taking Njoku at or around his ADP (except maybe on ESPN). And you can play it a number of ways with him if you go Yin & Yang. You can grab him as the Yang “high risk, high reward” option. Or, if Joe Flacco is set to start, you can grab Njoku to start right away and then throw another high-risk, high-reward guy on the bench in case Flacco gets benched for someone who isn’t targeting Njoku as much. Or there’s a real chance you draft Njoku and he’s just locked into your lineup all year, which is why he’s in this section.
2025 Tight End Rankings
This article has a lot to digest. The good news is that I provide a color-coded version of this strategy as part of the Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide. It not only groups the players into sections and ranks them, but it highlights the players in green if I like them at or above ADP, yellow if we are considering them at ADP, or red if we are only taking them if they slide drastically. That can help you visualize all of the Advice given here.
If you want access to the full early Yin & Yang Tight End Rankings that have the standalone tier, Yin & Yang Tier, The Rest, and The Handcuffs, just pop on over here to the Tight End Dynamic Tier Rankings. We do something similar to this for each position, in fact, but the tight end ones are what you are going to want to check out if you are deploying this strategy!