In 2025, there’s one tight end that, to me, sits above the rest, that maximizes fantasy draft value and maximizes potential upside as well. That man’s name is Brock Bowers, and he’s the consensus top tight end in fantasy football for 2025. Sure, there’s Trey McBride and George Kittle that round out the top of tight end ADP and present two of the best bets for elite production at the TE position. No doubt, both of them have excellent fantasy draft value this season. However, the Brock Bowers fantasy outlook is fantastic without having to hit the top of his ceiling. And the top of the ceiling? The BEST tight end season we’ve ever seen at the position. We’re going to get deep into Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025.

Let's dive into the entire thesis behind drafting Bowers this season and what we can expect this season as the strongest TE profile for 2025.

 

 

 

Brock Bowers’ Prospect & Collegiate Profile

Before we get into Brock Bowers’ rookie production in 2024 and then into what we can expect for Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025, we have to go back to when Bowers was an 18-year-old freshman at Georgia. On a team with FOURTEEN other NFL players, including wide receivers like Ladd McConkey, George Pickens, Adonai Mitchell, and Jermaine Burton, Bowers led this group in every meaningful receiving statistic en route to leading this 2021 Georgia team to a National Championship.

His sophomore and junior seasons saw Bowers continually improve, as well as lead the Bulldogs in all receiving statistics again, with the same wealth of NFL talent in the Georgia offense in 2022. His freshman and sophomore seasons both ended with National Championships for Georgia, and Bowers played 15 games in both. In his third and final season for the Bulldogs, Bowers played just 10 of a possible 14 games, yet STILL led Georgia in all receiving categories.

Oh, and he scored five rushing touchdowns and averaged over 10 yards per rush on the ground, too.

We want production early and it’s clearly better if that level of production continues on through his college career, and we have that with Bowers. In fact, it got better and better across all three seasons at Georgia and against arguably THE best competition in college football.

It’s abundantly clear that Bowers has a sterling resume that pops everywhere you look. At Player Profiler, this rings true in many metrics, including Breakout Age, College Dominator rating, plus his 40-yard dash and Speed Score. That 40-yard dash time of 4.53 was conducted at a private pro day after the NFL Combine, where Bowers did not run due to a hamstring injury.

The entire pre-draft thesis for Bowers can be summed up in two words: “can’t miss.” The Las Vegas Raiders thought so and selected him with the 13th-overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. For fantasy, he’s one of the best tight end prospects of all time. I don’t think that can be disputed.

 

 

 

Brock Bowers Rookie Production And New Scheme Fit

In his rookie season, Bowers hit the ground running and then some. All he did was break Sam LaPorta’s rookie record for most receptions (86) by a rookie tight end. He then bested Mike Ditka’s record for most receiving yards (1,076) and most receptions by a rookie at any position, beating Puka Nacua’s 105 catches last season. To give you more context on how good Bowers was as a rookie, Bowers’ 112 receptions were only behind Ja'Marr Chase (127) and Amon-Ra St. Brown. Did I mention Bowers was a rookie tight end?

Bowers had six games of double-digit targets, just one game below 80-percent routes per dropback after Week 3, a massive 26-percent target share, 25% targets per route run, over 2.00 yards per route run, over 28-percent first-read target rate (per Fantasy Points Data Suite), a whopping EIGHT top-five fantasy finishes at tight end… should I keep going? In 2024, Bowers was basically Amon-Ra St. Brown, Puka Nacua, and basically your favorite first-round target-earning wide receiver who happens to play tight end. If Bowers were a wide receiver, he would have finished as WR9 in PPR, less than a fantasy point away from CeeDee Lamb.

The fact that Bowers produced the best rookie tight end season we’ve ever seen with Gardner Minshew, Aidan O’Connell, and Desmond Ridder as his quarterbacks is staggering. Imagine what Bowers could do with a REAL quarterback? We had this chart before with just his college statistics, but when you add Bowers’ rookie season? Some pretty mind-melting things here. And that really has us excited for Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025.

 

 

 

Expected Role As A Sophomore Tight End

It’s not exactly out-of-the-box thinking to assume that a player could continue to improve from his rookie season to his second season. But that’s apparently crazy talk when you look at Bowers’ rookie season and trying to project him in 2025. That’s where having a “TE” designation is a negative, because he’s not what anybody has seen before. Bowers is closer to a Puka Nacus than your average, run-of-the-mill tight end. He has a second-round average draft position (ADP), and while that’s very high and still requires serious fantasy draft capital to retain his services for 2025, it still feels like Bowers is being unfairly unpunished for the misfortune of others. And by others, I mean players like Kyle Pitts and Sam LaPorta.

Both Pitts (2021, TE6) and LaPorta (2023, TE1) had awesome rookie seasons and were selected incredibly high in drafts the following season. Both Pitts and LaPorta were drafted at the beginning of the third round, and both disappointed relative to expectations. Pitts finished TE33 and succumbed to injuries toward the end of the season, while LaPorta finished TE8, but that finish was largely due to a slow start and a strong finish. The public remembers those seasons and uses that baseless reasoning to toss an anchor onto Bowers’ Year 2 production. Some of the criticism seems to revolve around the fact that “well, Bowers just had an outlier season in his rookie season, and how can he get better?”

I’m here to tell you this: Brock Bowers is meaningfully and demonstrably different, in the best way possible, than Kyle Pitts, Sam LaPorta, or any other tight end you can think of.

Bowers’ role is as secure as it gets as a near-50-percent slot snap player that moves around the formation, a YAC monster (third in the NFL among pass-catchers behind Ja'Marr Chase in 2024), and the clear top target in an offense that added unproven pieces. Jakobi Meyers is a nice second target in this Raiders’ offense that will be a lot better thanks to the team putting some adults in charge with new head coach Pete Carroll, offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, and first-round pick Ashton Jeanty at running back, who should earn the respect of defenders so they can’t just hover around where Bowers is lined up. Newly signed Amari Cooper isn’t going to matter for Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025.

Oh, and the most accurate quarterback in the league last season, Geno Smith, comes over from Seattle to assume the starting quarterback duties in 2025. Smith isn’t a world-beater, but compared to Gardner Minshew, Aidan O’Connell, and Desmond Ridder, Smith looks like Joe Montana. He’s a meaningful improvement to the quarterback play in Las Vegas and will turn some of the uncatchable targets into accurate ones. Keep in mind Bowers’ 82.7 percent catchable target rate in 2024 was 29th of 51 qualifying tight ends with at least 150 routes. In fact, that inaccuracy with three replacement-level quarterbacks plagued the entire pass-catching room last season.

Brock Bowers is just too big and strong Watch on @nflnetwork Stream on @NFLPlus

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— NFL (@nflbot.bsky.social) August 16, 2025 at 3:28 PM

 

 

 

Fantasy Projections And Draft Value

Fantasy projections have Bowers ticketed for a ton of targets, receptions, and improvement in touchdowns this season. Let’s take a look at what the projections have across the industry for Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025:

Bowers scored 262.7 fantasy points last season, so the majority of sites outside of Ben Gretch’s Stealing Signals newsletter have Bowers for a slight dip this season. Projecting players is incredibly tough and requires a lot of work and fine-tuning. Most of these projections (besides Ben’s, who has been on record saying he has juiced them a little bit closer to the higher range of outcomes) are median projections, so even when you factor that information in, the fact that five reputable sites have Bowers for an average of 143 targets, 104 receptions, 1,114 yards and seven touchdowns is incredibly bullish. I cannot stress enough that you get to put him at your tight end spot.

When you factor in Bowers’ counting stats from last season and then put that in comparison to his 2025 projection, I understand that projecting him to improve in his second season is a tough needle to thread. 

Some slight pushback on Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025 is that the Raiders were fourth in overall pass attempts last season, and with new head coach Pete Carroll and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, the Raiders could pass less. That’s certainly true, but anything lost by pass attempts can be made up for by player improvement and progression from Bowers, plus stronger efficiency in his second season. The Raiders know what they have in Bowers. We’ve seen nothing but positive things from Bowers every step of the way. If we have no problem projecting a wide receiver who puts together a massively productive rookie season (ex: Brian Thomas and Malik Nabers into the first round), why do we have a problem projecting that with Bowers? Because he plays tight end? Bowers pretty much plays wide receiver anyway and shouldn’t be compared to in-line tight ends, because that’s not his archetype at all.

The averages vs. Bowers’ 2024 production basically wash out the receptions with the difference in yards, but add a slight touchdown bump. Let’s talk about the touchdowns while we’re here: what did we expect here from touchdowns on the Raiders? Las Vegas was an awful team in 2024, having the fourth-fewest touchdown passes and scoring the fourth-fewest total points in the NFL last season, while being quarterbacked by three different replacement-level quarterbacks and coordinated by now two-time OC flameout Luke Getsy, whose Raiders were 25th or worse league-wide in every meaningful offensive category. And yet Bowers STILL produced the greatest tight end rookie season ever, despite his surroundings.

Touchdowns are one of the most volatile and least predictive statistics you can find, but Bowers is so dynamic not just at the catch point, but with the ball in his hand, that it’s football malpractice not to want to get the ball in his hands almost every time. Remember, Bowers has rushing chops too, dating back to his time at Georgia, and had five rushing attempts for 13 yards last season. That number could come up a bit, and with Bowers’ elite ability after the catch, he could easily eclipse the five scores he had last season.

The fact that we have now FOUR seasons of elite production from Bowers, with three for a Georgia team with NFL players around him (that he was better than), and his rookie season with the Raiders where he continued and was an undeniable star that became the focal point of his offense in his rookie season, I’m not sure how you can nitpick about ADP. You GET to select him in the second round; that’s one of the most confounding things about the entire thing. Bowers’ ADP has actually fallen a little bit from the Round 1/Round 2 turn, and he’s routinely drafted in the middle of the second round now. The ADP almost universally assumes that Bowers has hit his ceiling with no room for improvement, seemingly because he has the scary scarlet letter of “TE” as his positional designation. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s very easy to dismiss Bowers’ rookie season as a ceiling outcome, but when you have a multiple-season track record of production as strong as his, you need to take it at face value. In sports, we’re faced with anomalies that look like they can’t continue. Wayne Gretzky and his historic run in the 1980s with the Edmonton Oilers, where he looked like he was playing a different sport than the other players on the ice. Shohei Ohtani was (and still is) a freak of nature who can hit for power, run with the best in baseball, and pitch like a dominant ace.

The similarities with those players and Bowers are that they showed in multiple seasons that they were capable of elite, difference-making production, with Gretzky’s formative years playing junior hockey before the NHL and Ohtani pitching in Japan before making the jump to MLB. Bowers has done that in three seasons at the highest college football competition, proving that he was the best player on the field when he was on it.

The draft value for Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025 is immeasurable. You get to play him at tight end, where he will put up stats comparable to the elite wide receivers you’re drafting a round later. I was talking with Andrew Cooper, the famed tight end guru, in a group chat about who was the easiest pick on the draft board. I, of course, said Bowers. Coop said that Bowers needed to have a top-10 all-time season at his current second-round ADP. The only thing separating Bowers from a top-10 overall season last year was a 31-yard touchdown. Bowers has improved every single season since he was 18 years old, and I cannot imagine getting off this ride now. This is a generational (I hate that word, but it fits) tight end that will be in the first round for the next decade.

His draft price sets up perfectly with how drafts line up from a value standpoint. Take whoever you want in the first round, come back in the second round to take Bowers, take a wide receiver or a running back, then grab some wide receivers (and potentially an elite quarterback) in the fourth through seventh rounds. It would be more of a question to draft Bowers at his current ADP if there were more options there across running back and wide receiver. The receivers in the second round dry up quickly after Drake London, Ladd McConkey, and A.J. Brown, who represent a sort of sub-tier between two distinct receiver types. The running back tiers are more third-round picks masquerading as second-round picks with Josh Jacobs, Jonathan Taylor, and Kyren Williams. What about Trey McBride, at Bowers’ own position? Does Bowers have the strongest TE profile for 2025?

McBride put up comparable stats and was just 13 points shy of Bowers, and also averaged .1 more fantasy points per game than Bowers, as he missed a game. My concerns with McBride are related to the target competition with Marvin Harrison. Harrison’s utilization was incredibly weird, with a 14.2-yard aDOT, and he wasn’t moved around the formation like some other top receivers. If Harrison’s aDOT shortens up to the 10.0-11.0 range that is typical for heavy target-earning top receivers, that will siphon a little bit of the target-earning upside from McBride. Bowers shares nothing close to those concerns, with Jakobi Meyers a solid, productive receiver, but not somebody who’s going to command attention from defenses.

Look, at the end of the day, any fantasy football article can tell you to draft Bowers this season. I’m telling you that Bowers is an anomaly in his position group and in fantasy football. What his skill set brings is not something that can be replicated. Not even by McBride. Bowers’ TE profile for 2025 is as clean as it gets.

 

 

 

Dynasty vs. Redraft Outlook For Bowers

For dynasty, every single service that puts out dynasty rankings has Bowers as the TE1, and with good reason. His stellar three-year collegiate profile and production as an early-declare were backed up by the 13th-best fantasy season ever recorded by a tight end in 2024. As a 22-year-old rookie who’s more than three years younger than McBride. Seems good!

Bowers and McBride will be the top two dynasty tight ends for the foreseeable future, and I think that even McBride can hold off young risers like Sam LaPorta, Tyler Warren, and Colston Loveland. 

For Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025 in redraft, Bowers is mostly TE1 across the industry, with some stragglers ranking McBride as TE1 and even some contrarian rankers putting George Kittle over Bowers. As far as the tippy-top range of outcomes for Kittle, if he saw Bowers’ target volume and retains the efficiency, you could make that case. But that’s at the absolutely top range, and Kittle, who will turn 32 years old this season, hasn’t shown the consistent health or the gaudy target numbers to support that he could put up a season like that. 

Simply put, Brock Bowers, unlike almost any other player in fantasy football throughout the last few seasons besides Christian McCaffrey or Travis Kelce, could absolutely lap the field at his position and be an undeniable smash that you absolutely NEEDED to have on your team to win a fantasy championship. Remember: we’re less than 12 months away from drafting the guy you needed to have last season, Saquon Barkley.

Brock Bowers in fantasy football for 2025 thesis is that he’s the “1 of 1” league-winner that you are going to wish you had on your fantasy team if you don’t draft him.