The Tight End position was top-heavy again in 2022. Unless you drafted Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews, George Kittle or T.J. Hockenson, your fingers were crossed every week. Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert were also productive, but each missed a significant number of weeks due to injury.
If the big names go off the board before you’re ready to draft them in 2023, you may be better off waiting than grabbing the “next best bets.” Last season, following the stars listed above, 14 TEs averaged between 6.0 and 8.3 PPG (Half-Point PPR, minimum 20 receptions). Here are four of these 14 players who rank outside the top ten in our early 2023 Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) and have the upside to be a Top-Five TE in 2023. Below we take a closer look at Cole Kmet.
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TE2’s with Top-Five Potential: Cole Kmet
If you end up waiting on the position in drafts this summer, this player has the potential to pay off big.
Cole Kmet (TE – CHI)
Kmet was a Top-Ten fantasy Tight End in 2022, but he’s ranked just outside TE1 territory at this point of the offseason. Kmet is hard to trust as he did most of his damage last season in two games – Weeks 9 and 10. Many expected his targets would go up in 2022 with the departure of Allen Robinson, but they actually dropped from 93 in 2021 to 69. The good news is that his target share was still a solid 19.4%, and he scored seven TDs after being shut out of the endzone in 2021.
So why the optimism? For starters, the Bears only attempted 377 passes in 2022, the fewest in the league. Even so, QB Justin Fields took a step forward last season, increasing his completion percentage, TD percentage and passer rating. If Fields continues to improve and Kmet maintains a healthy target share, especially in the red zone, the latter could shoot up the fantasy rankings. He finished as TE7 last season (16th in points-per-game), so any improvement in the Bears’ passing game in 2023 would boost his value.
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