Fantasy Football 2025: When Should You Draft An Elite Tight End? - Positional Scarcity

It’s an exciting time in the tight end world. Young stars like Brock Bowers, Trey McBride, and Sam LaPorta are in the midst of breaking out. Yet the elite veteran producers like George Kittle, T.J. Hockenson, Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews, Evan Engram, etc., aren’t necessarily done yet. You’ve got a lot of options at the high end of the tight end position, and they all come at varying ADP points.

Many fantasy gamers look at the fickle and unpredictable nature of the tight end position and opt to draft one very early. Get someone elite and “get it out of the way”. When it works and you hit on a star, you can gain some leverage over the field via positional scarcity, as there are only so many elite tight ends. But exactly what does our tight end need to accomplish for the positional scarcity to outweigh higher raw point totals scored by running backs and wide receivers? And is an elite tight end necessarily that much scarcer than elite players at other positions? 

Fantasy Football 2025: What Is Positional Scarcity?

The concept of positional scarcity starts with the pool of available players at each position. Depending on your format, some positions have a deep pool of fantasy-relevant players while others only have a few truly consistent options that also offer upside. In theory, if the pool of players is deep, then it is easier to find replacement level or even high upside value. If the pool is shallow, it is more difficult to find these guys, and you can gain a big advantage by securing one.

Kicker is a good example of a position where it’s easy to understand the concepts of positional scarcity. That’s because we don’t see huge variations in the per-game totals from the high-end kickers to the low-end kickers in most instances. If you take the kickers that played in at least 10 games, the top kicker was Chris Boswell, who averaged 10.8 points per game. The 10th was Will Lutz, who averaged 8.8 points per game. That’s only a 2-point difference. There were also at least 20 kickers who averaged at least 8 points per game. It is relatively easy to replace your single kicker position in most leagues. And that, along with them not scoring an elite number of points, is why folks wait on them in drafts. The pool of viable fantasy football kickers is not only fairly flat, but it is also deep. 

Tight end is typically an example of the opposite end of the spectrum. The top tight end in points per game, George Kittle, averaged 15.8 PPR points. That’s a full 5.4 points more than the 10th tight end in Dallas Goedert. The TE20 was Isaiah Likely, who overaged 7.7 points per game - literally half what Kittle averaged. The pool of viable starters is not as deep, and there is a gap between the top options and the backend options. 

The prevailing thought is that, despite even the top tight ends generally scoring fewer points than the top wide receivers, running backs, and quarterbacks, it is worth it to spend up to get top tight ends because of the additional points you are getting vs. the backend TE1s. The idea is that getting an elite tight end while maintaining good players at the other less scarce positions will give you an advantage over teams with good players at other positions but a bad tight end, of which there will be a few teams because of the small pool.

Tight End Positional Scarcity vs. Other Positions

One of the key aspects of this theory that is often misinterpreted is format. Specifically, the number of teams in your league and starting positions. The positional scarcity equation changes depending on how many spots you need to actually fill at each position. Consider these two leagues.

In both formats, there is one tight end spot. And the difference in PPR points per game from the TE1 (15.77) to the TE10 (10.44) vs. the TE12 (10.04) is negligible. So, the assumption that most make is that positional scarcity at the tight end position is about the same in both formats. But what we really want to look at are the other positions where we are sacrificing high-end talent to take a top tight end, as those high-end options are expected to score more points than the tight ends.

Let’s consider the average of the top 6 tight ends vs the average of the backend TE1s in the 6-12 range. We are looking at a difference of 3.52 points. When you consider the difference between the WR1s in average points per game and the WR2s, we are looking at 3.22 points. That’s not far off from the TE2s. It’s also likely easier to replace WR2 value, meaning you are likely benefiting from TE positional scarcity in leagues with only two WR spots. Here is how the positions fared in average PPR points in a 12-team league (so WR1 = top 12 WRs, WR2 = WRs 13-24, etc.) 

It’s in the 3 WR formats where the high-end WRs actually become scarce themselves. When we look at the average PPR points per game of the WR1s vs the WR3s, we are talking about a difference of 5.12 points per game. Filling three WR spots in a 12-team league, especially with a flex or multiple flexes, actually makes the high-end WRs and RBs more scarce. More players are also drafted and rostered, making it even more difficult to find upside at the position. In that sense, securing more high-end WRs and RBs early on in drafts can give you a positional advantage over other teams, as each team needs to start a WR3 and a flex. Your TE spot by nature is also a smaller percentage of your weekly points as you are starting more players overall. 
 

Tight End Upside vs. Other Positions

Another key aspect that is lost in the positional scarcity discussion is the pure upside of players drafted in the early rounds at various positions. Yes, it benefits you to have better players than your opponents at a position considered scarce. But you still need to score the raw points to win your matchup. You can’t go out there and score 20 fewer points than your opponent, then claim you should win based on positional scarcity because you have a better tight end. Even if you have an elite tight end, you are still going to need to find elite wide receivers and running backs that score the volume of points you need.

The top tight end season of all time was 330.9 PPR points by Rob Gronkowski in a year he scored 18 touchdowns. Which is obviously a lot. However, if you look at the all-time FLEX seasons (WR, RB, and TE combined), that’s not even in the top 100. The all-time WR season is 439.5 points, just a few years ago by Cooper Kupp. Since then, guys like CeeDee Lamb and Ja'Marr Chase have also scored 400+ PPR points over just the last two seasons. The season by the top tight end last year, Brock Bowers, would rank 625th on that all-time FLEX list. Even just last year, he would have been a FLEX player 35 in points per game.

Ryan Heath of Fantasy Points recently did a study on The Anatomy of a League-Winner. And he specifically looked at leagues with 10 teams, 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 TE, and 1 flex. I encourage you to read the article, but the short and sweet is that the vast majority of difference-making players over the last few seasons were WRs and RBs, with only 11% being tight ends. And, Travis Kelce was essentially the only one drafted in the first four rounds to deliver on ADP. If you are going to draft someone like Trey McBride or Brock Bowers at the spots where prime Travis Kelce was drafted, you are expecting them to perform at that level. 
 

Availability of Late Upside Tight Ends

The reason Brock Bowers was such a great pick last year was not his raw point totals or even the positional scarcity advantage. It was the fact that he was drafted as the TE11, sometimes outside of the top 100 picks. You already got a good value on him, and then the Raiders traded Davante Adams, a player who has averaged 10 targets a game over the last five years. Then he became a great value. But the breakout for Bowers not only isn’t unique to him, but we have seen much later TEs break out virtually every season. As we point out in our Late Round Yin & Yang Tight End article, at least one tight end each year for 13 straight years has come from outside the top ~17 in ADP to finish top 5 at the position. 

Not only is it one of the easier positions to find a backend TE1 in fantasy, but it’s historically one of the easier positions to find a breakout as well. You can create a lot of leverage by finding a breakout tight end. If you can find a top 5 tight end by any means, then you have that positional advantage over the rest of your league - you don’t have to draft them early to find them. Doing it with a later pick or of the wire creates even more value because you don’t need to sacrifice those early round picks where the best RBs and WRs are often taken. 

The other thing to consider is that filling your TE spot early closes off an additional source of breakout potential. With 3 WR spots and a flex, you can still find a spot for someone like Brian Thomas Jr or Puka Nacua that breaks out late. Tight ends are often outscored by RBs and WRs, which rarely makes them your best option at the flex, so if you fill that TE spot early in drafts, it makes it difficult to create leverage by adding breakout TEs late in drafts or off the wire. RBs and WRs, by nature, are easier to find a spot for in the lineup and easier to trade. 

When Should You Draft An Early Tight End?

The data is telling us a couple of things here. First, if you are going to draft a tight end early at all, it makes more sense to draft elite tight ends early in shallower leagues with fewer starting positions, especially if there are only two WR spots. In those leagues, positional scarcity is more of a factor as the difference from the WR1s to the WR2s is similar to the difference from high-end TEs to back-end TEs, but WR2 value in a shallow pool is easier to replace.

Second, if you are going to draft a tight end within the first few rounds, you need to believe there is a high probability that they can produce at an elite level. Per the research linked from Ryan Heath above, Travis Kelce has essentially been the only tight end in recent years to deliver on ADP in the first four rounds - you have to go all the way back to the prime days of Rob Gronkowski and Jimmy Graham to find tight ends that were drafted early and also returned elite value.

When we just consider the raw points scored, in 2024, the players that finished in the FLEX ~20 or so range were putting up ~250-260 PPR points. Brock Bowers is currently being drafted around ADP 18 or so in drafts, and last year, on 153 targets, he scored 262.7 PPR points. Anything north of 260 PPR points is a top 20 all-time tight end season in fantasy, and anything 280 or higher is top 10. The best three seasons of prime Travis Kelce were 316.3, 312.8, and 294.6 points, so averaging a bit over 300 points. That would not have him in the running for FLEX1 overall (which a TE has never been), but it would easily be in the mid to backend of the top 12 FLEX players. What does that all boil down to? When you take a tight end in the first few rounds, especially in a 3 WR league, you are essentially predicting that they will have an all-time great TE season.

How I Handle The Position

When I draft a player in the second round, it’s not because I am hoping they deliver second-round value. I’m hoping they can be one of the best players in fantasy football, period. If Bowers at his current ADP were to come out this year and have the season he had last year, where he was the FLEX player 35, that would not be the ideal pick from the 18th draft spot. Positional scarcity does not cover that much ground. Baked into his ADP is the notion that he will enter the realm of prime Travis Kelce in terms of production. Which he certainly could.

What I typically do is make a list of the players I think can truly have difference-making upside, easily clearing 300 PPR points and possibly scoring upwards of 400. When that list is exhausted, I will consider drafting a tight end or quarterback. That list this year is easily 30+ players long, meaning I’m not considering TE or QB until the back half of the third, regardless of who is there. If Bowers or McBride were there at that point, I would obviously take them, but based on ADP, they usually are not.  The earliest tight end I typically consider is George Kittle if he is there in the fourth round. Kittle averaged higher PPR points per game than McBride or Bowers last year, anyway, but his ADP is also starting to creep up as we get closer to August.

With respect to Bowers and McBride, we have not seen them take the leap into prime Travis Kelce territory yet. And, unless they actually SURPASS what guys like Kelce and Gronk were doing, they aren’t going to offer the fantasy points that elite RBs and WRs can offer. If they do at least take a step forward to that 280-300 PPR point range, we will have many years to come where we can feel good about using a second-round pick on them in fantasy. 

This article is just a quick, free look at the very top of the tight end position - if you want all of my research on the position and my exact game plan for 2025, grab your copy of the Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide now! The following articles are included in there with advice on every fantasy-relevant tight end - who to draft, who to fade, and how to deploy our late-round Yin & Yang tight end strategy! Here are the links to those articles, which are available along with a ton of other content once you buy your copy of the guide!

• Elite Tight Ends
• Tight Ends To Fade
• Yin & Yang Tight End
• Tight End Rankings