Tight ends are one of the most frustrating positions in fantasy football. You’ve got your difference-makers up top, and then a very flat list of contributors beyond that. The key is to identify those league-tilting scorers before they break out. And while Brock Bowers and Trey McBride have already ascended atop the list, there’s been an influx of young talent coming into the league lately, reshaping the landscape as we know it. No longer is Travis Kelce the guy worth paying up for. And George Kittle, Mark Andrews, Evan Engram, Zach Ertz, and other stalwarts are starting to age out. This creates a unique opportunity to buy low on some promising young players while the former superstars still enthrall other managers.
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Hitting on a young and elite tight end will theoretically provide you with a decade-plus of production. Tight ends usually take longer to develop from the college game to the pros. But their peak doesn’t typically hit until age 28. And they can maintain production well into their 30s. Grading on that curve means this top tier of tight ends will hopefully provide elite output for the next ten years or so. Factoring in that longevity and the positional advantage you’ll receive, these are players worth moving mountains for.
Blue Chips
There’s no surprise here with Brock Bowers and Trey McBride atop the list of dynasty tight end rankings. In early best balls drafts, they’re being drafted as the TE1 and TE2, 30 spots ahead of the TE3, George Kittle. Bowers is just 22, and McBride is 25. With most elite tight ends peaking in their late-20s and maintaining production through their 30s, both players are incredibly safe to acquire.
Bowers gets the edge in dynasty rankings because of his age and rookie-season production, but McBride might have the better short-term profile. Last year, McBride led all tight ends with a blistering 29.3% target share. Only five wide receivers pulled a higher target share in 2024. Arizona’s passing game is centered around McBride. And his targets are layered throughout every level of the offense, providing a mix of easy gimmes and high-value downfield targets. Bowers had a similar 2024 in Las Vegas, working as the passing-game focal point. With a new coaching staff and the addition of Ashton Jeanty, he may come up short of last year’s position-leading target total. But an improved offensive environment with Geno Smith should allow for more scoring opportunities and increased efficiency. More than three years younger, he gets the edge in dynasty rankings over McBride. Additionally, he was an immediate producer, whereas it took McBride some time to find his footing in the NFL.
Of course, we’ve seen other young tight ends flash early in their career before falling down the ranks. It took Evan Engram six years to match his rookie-season production. After logging over 1,000 yards as a rookie, Kyle Pitts has come up short of 700 yards every year since. Sam LaPorta and Dalton Kincaid had very promising rookie seasons before cooling off in Year 2. There’s risk any time you’re holding onto players atop the rankings in dynasty. But Bowers and McBride have a clear path to volume-heavy roles in the near future, good prospect profiles, and NFL production. Their value should remain relatively insulated. But rather than paying up for these tight ends, I like looking for cheaper options with similar upside in the next tier…
Potential Stars
Putting Colston Loveland and Tyler Warren, who have yet to take an NFL snap, this high will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows. Remember, these are groups of similar players, not flat rankings. There’s a guy in the next grouping I’d prefer. But these are all young players with sky-high ceilings who have a ton of room to grow.
Simply put, Loveland and Warren both have profiles worth betting on. To start, the draft capital invested in them alone puts them in good company. Over the last 25 years, the list of tight ends drafted in the top 15 is pretty good. Jeremy Shockey, Kellen Winslow II, Vernon Davis, Eric Ebron, T.J. Hockenson, Kyle Pitts, and Brock Bowers. Ebron jumps out as the worst-case scenario, but he had an eight-year career and peaked as the TE4 in 2018. Pitts, another who many would say hasn’t lived up to his potential, set the Super Bowl era rookie tight end receiving record. If we’re looking at that floor with a Bowers/Hockenson ceiling, that’s a range of outcomes worth betting on. I dive deeper into rookie profiles in our Rookie Draft Guide, which you can download here, learning much more about this incoming class. LaPorta had a great rookie season, but it was buoyed mainly by touchdowns. His rookie-year target share ranked sixth among tight ends. While respectable, it wasn’t elite. His target share dropped from 21.1% in Year 1 to 17% in Year 2, 14th among tight ends. His touchdown rate regressed, and he finished as the per-game TE9. He’s a very good player with a year of proven production, but there were enough orange flags in 2024 to bump him a few spots down the rankings. He’s still a young and talented player, but his long-term value could still level out in dynasty markets, making him a risky acquisition at cost.
These players are listed in the order I prefer them. And with Loveland and Warren both being valued below LaPorta in consensus markets, it makes them primary offseason trade targets. You can trade LaPorta, who profiles as a mid-to-back-end-TE1, for rookies with league-tilting upside. And you can likely get additional picks and players on top. LaPorta isn’t a must-sell by any means. But his value has started to slip a bit and likely won’t ever ascend ahead of Bowers or McBride.
Ultra-Productive Veterans
Both of these players probably deserve being in buckets of their own, as there’s a pretty significant age disparity that skews their respective values. T.J. Hockenson will play this year at age 28. George Kittle will be 32. Where you can probably expect half a decade of continued production from Hockenson, Kittle will start trending down soon. The ages make it difficult to rank these players alongside the tier above. I sandwich that tier between these two players in a startup, preferring Hockenson over the “Potential Stars” and Kittle just after them.
Hockenson is coming off a down 2024 campaign after sustaining a torn ACL late in 2023. Another season removed from the injury, we hope that he’ll return to the target hog he’s been throughout his career. Hockenson doesn’t have the game-breaking athleticism many of the tight ends high in rankings do. But he’s a well-rounded player who can be a key part of a passing game. His usage in Kevin O’Connell’s pass-heavy offense has been great. He works underneath while Justin Jefferson commands the defense’s gravity. That allows Hockenson to be open often and with space around him. Assuming J.J. McCarthy can keep the ship afloat in Minnesota, Hockenson still hasn’t reached his prime years. George Kittle is probably the best tight end in football. He can put his hand in the dirt and play as a sixth lineman. He can gash defenses up the seam for downfield chunk plays. He can run through a defender after a short pass and has the speed to break away for a long touchdown. There isn’t a flaw in Kittle’s game. Just last year, he was fantasy’s top-scoring tight end. And with Deebo Samuel Sr. in Washington and Brandon Aiyuk on the mend, Kittle will be the offensive focal point to start the year. But he’s about to be 32. We’ve seen tight ends maintain production into the back half of their 30s: Travis Kelce, Jason Witten, Antonio Gates, and Tony Gonzalez. But the downward trajectory is near. Kittle could be the TE1 over the next few seasons. He could also quickly fall off the age curve. The likely scenario is another season or two of elite output before a steady decline over the next few seasons.
Hockenson, while a bit older than the rest of the highly-ranked tight ends, still hasn’t reached the peak of the tight end age curve. While he lacks some of the upside others might due to his athletic shortcomings, he’s been instrumental in the passing game since entering the league. His current trajectory isn’t much different than the start of Zach Ertz’s career. Kittle is a tougher player to recommend acquiring. For contending teams that have a glaring need at tight end, he’s the perfect target. Most managers will peg him as a hold and hope to ride out the next few seasons of elite production. But check your leagues to see if Kittle is sitting on any rosters heading toward a rebuild. Those managers may be eager to move him for cheap.
Short-Term TE1s
All of these tight ends will play the 2025 season at age 29 or older. David Njoku, the youngest of the bunch, turns 29 in July. Evan Engram, the oldest, will be 31 when this season ends. That puts them all atop the dreaded age curve. As alluded to many times throughout this article already, tight ends play longer than most other positions and age with a relatively graceful downslope. All of these tight ends, while unlikely to grow in value, are still valuable.
The last time we saw Mark Andrews, he had a brutal goal-line drop that ended the Ravens’ season. He had a down 2024 campaign. A preseason car accident coupled with the breakout of Isaiah Likely allowed for the fewest fantasy points per game since Andrews’ rookie season. Still, he finished as the TE5 in fantasy. David Njoku was an exciting prospect. Off-the-charts athleticism and good college production pushed him into Round 1 of the 2017 NFL Draft. However, the production to start his career wasn’t great. But in 2022, he set a career high in receiving yards per game. He’s bested that number in each of the last two seasons. Suddenly, he’s been a per-game top-ten fantasy tight end in three straight years. And going into his age-29 season, there’s reason to believe he can maintain that production over the next few years. Engram had a similar trajectory to Njoku. He was another first-round pick who flashed early in his career, but didn’t put it all together until his age-28 season. But he’s been a target magnet over the last three seasons, and is set to continue that path in Denver. Jonnu Smith didn’t have the draft capital like Andrews or Engram, but it is another late-career breakout. He set career bests across the board in 2024, making his first Pro Bowl and finishing as the TE4. His involvement as a short-area-of-the-field weapon on Miami could continue to produce similar production going forward.
This tier perfectly exemplifies why you must exercise patience with tight ends. All of these players had good profiles coming into the league. All flashed early. Andrews was the only one who provided immediate elite production. Njoku, Engram, and Smith all broke out in their late 20s. Remember these career paths if Colston Loveland or Tyler Warren get slow starts out of the gate.