Fantasy Football Draft Strategy, Rankings & Tiers: Tight Ends

Let us raise our glasses and toast the rejuvenation of the TE position for fantasy football.

Tight end was long a source of frustration for fantasy managers. The pool of reliable tight ends only went a few players deep.

Travis Kelce was the standard-bearer at the position after Rob Gronkowski retired. George Kittle and Mark Andrews were solid fallback options. Beyond that … good luck.

But a wave of talented young tight ends has washed over our arid shores.

Let us raise our glasses and toast the rejuvenation of the TE position for fantasy football.

Tight end was long a source of frustration for fantasy managers. The pool of reliable tight ends only went a few players deep.

Travis Kelce was the standard-bearer at the position after Rob Gronkowski retired. George Kittle and Mark Andrews were solid fallback options. Beyond that … good luck.

But a wave of talented young tight ends has washed over our arid shores.

Fantasy Football Draft Strategy

Rookies have led all tight ends in fantasy scoring the last two years. First, it was the Lions’ Sam LaPorta in 2023, then the Raiders’ Brock Bowers in 2024. Kelce hasn’t hung ’em up yet — he just had 97 catches last year in his age-35 season — but Bowers looks like the new standard bearer at the TE position.

Trey McBride is coming off an 111-catch season and is only 25. LaPorta’s second NFL season wasn’t quite as successful as his first, but he still finished TE7 in half-point PPR fantasy scoring.

Two tight ends were selected in the top half of the first round in this year’s NFL Draft. The Bears took Michigan’s Colston Loveland 10th overall, and the Colts took Penn State’s Tyler Warren 14th overall.

The Packers’ Tucker Kraft is another promising young tight end. And we’re still lighting prayer candles in hopes that Dalton Kincaid and Kyle Pitts will start living up to their early-career hype.

Mix the young tight ends with the quality veterans — Kelce, Andrews and perhaps a handful of others — and suddenly the TE position looks pretty fertile relative to years past.

Tight end is now a buyer’s market, giving fantasy managers a number of different ways to attack the position. There’s solid value at a variety of price points.

Want to spend up for Bowers, McBride or Kittle? I think you can justify it.

Would you prefer to wait a bit and grab LaPorta, Kelce or T.J. Hockenson? OK, cool.

Wait even longer and try to get value on Andrews, Evan Engram or David Njoku? Sounds good.

Or punt the position until the double-digit rounds and gamble on Kincaid, Pitts or some other bargain-basement tight end? Hey, as long as you’re building advantages at other positions in the early rounds, go for it.

I’m not wedded to a single approach to the TE position in my 2025 drafts, but I’m more amenable to drafting a tight end in the early rounds than I used to be. That said, there will be at least a few drafts in which I punt the position and go dumpster-diving in the later rounds.

TE Premium Formats

Tight end premium has become a popular variation of fantasy football. In TE premium, tight ends are awarded more points per reception than wide receivers or running backs. In most TE-premium leagues, WRs and RBs get 1 point per reception, and TEs get 1.5. In some leagues, tight ends get 1.75 or 2 points per reception.

The format seemingly requires you to spend up at tight end. With the greater rewards for TE receptions, there is an incentive to aggressively draft a top tight end in the early rounds.

But drafting a tight end early in a TE-premium league isn’t always an optimal strategy.

A lot of fantasy managers believe that in TE-premium leagues, where tight ends get 1.5 points per catch, tight ends are 50% more valuable than they are in non-TE-premium leagues. That’s not the case.

Yes, tight ends get 50% more for their receptions than wide receivers and running backs do. But tight ends aren’t only scoring points on receptions. They’re also getting fantasy points for yardage and touchdowns.

Let’s use Brock Bowers as an example. He scored 262.7 PPR fantasy points last season. In TE-premium, where he gets an extra half-point for his 112 receptions, Bowers scored 318.7 fantasy points. That’s a 21.3% value boost.

Let’s try the same exercise with Mark Andrews, who scored more touchdowns than Bowers but had far fewer receptions. Andrews scored 188.8 PPR points last season. His 55 catches give him an extra 27.5 points in TE-premium for a total of 216.3. Andrews only got a 14.6% value boost in TE-premium formats.

I’m actually less likely to take a tight end early in a TE-premium draft because of the way my competitors overvalue the scoring boost.

Since tight ends come off the board so early in TE-premium drafts, good players at other positions are often available a half-round or a full round later than they would be otherwise.

If you decide not to draft a tight end early, you can scoop up value at other positions. If you can figure out a way to get adequate TE production later in the draft, you’ll be ahead of the game.

Fantasy Football Targets & Avoids

Here are some of the tight ends I’m targeting and avoiding this year:

Target: Brock Bowers (LV)

Bowers finished third among all pass catchers in receptions, behind only Ja’Marr Chase and Amon-Ra St. Brown, and he did it as a 21-year-old tight end playing with bad quarterbacks. His new quarterback is Geno Smith, who threw for 4,320 yards last year. Bowers’ phenomenal rookie season was no fluke. He had 882 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns in 15 games as an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Georgia, playing in the SEC, the toughest conference in the nation. Bowers is a unicorn. I think he’s worth drafting as early as the Round 1/Round 2 turn.

Target: George Kittle (SF)

Kittle continues to amass outstanding seasons. He cleared 1,000 receiving yards in 2024 for a second straight year, finishing with 78-1,106-8 despite missing two games. Since his second NFL season, Kittle has finished TE3, TE2, TE3, TE4, TE2, TE5 and TE1 in half-point PPR fantasy points per game. Kittle turns 32 in October, and his violent style has led to some injuries over the years, but he has shown no signs of slowing down, and he has a bright 2025 target outlook for a 49ers offense that might not have a clear alpha wide receiver.

Avoid: T.J. Hockenson (MIN)

Hockenson had a mid-June ADP of TE5, 85th overall. That’s too rich. The veteran tight end tore his ACL and MCL late in the 2023 season and didn’t make his 2024 debut until Week 9. From that point on, he was TE19 in PPR fantasy points per game. Granted, Hockenson was unlucky not to score a single touchdown last season, but it’s not as if he’s been a TD machine at any point in his career. Hockenson has never scored more than six touchdowns in a single season. Hockenson will be sharing targets with stud WRs Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison.

Avoid: Jonnu Smith (PIT)

After seven NFL seasons without a TE1 fantasy finish, Smith hit career highs in catches (88), receiving yardage (884) and touchdowns (8) last year to finish TE4 in fantasy scoring. The Miami offense was heavy on short passes last season after QB Tua Tagovailoa returned from a concussion, which meant target bumps for Smith and RB De’Von Achane. Smith is now in Pittsburgh, and he’s not the only tight end in town. The Steelers also have veteran Pat Freiermuth. The narrative is that Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith loves Jonnu — they’ve previously been paired together in Tennessee and Atlanta. But Jonnu had never seen more than 70 targets in any season with Arthur Smith as his playcaller.

Target: Zach Ertz (WAS)

If I don’t take a tight end early in my drafts, I’ll wait until the double-digit rounds and grab Ertz. The 34-year-old Ertz had 66 catches for 654 yards and seven touchdowns last year, finishing TE7 in PPR fantasy scoring. Ertz and rookie QB Jayden Daniels really clicked late in the season, with Ertz scoring six TDs in his last seven regular-season games. The veteran tight end wrapped up the season with 11 catches and 104 yards in a playoff loss to his old team, the Eagles. Ertz’s age will scare away a lot of drafters, but he showed last year that there’s still gas in the tank, and the price is right.

Tight End Rankings & Tiers

Here are the top 25 tight ends in my redraft rankings, sorted into tiers, with thoughts on some of the players from each tier.

Tier 1

Trey McBride’s 147 targets were the second-most among tight ends and the eighth-most among all pass catchers. A second-year leap for WR Marvin Harrison Jr. could nick McBride’s target volume, but the Cardinals added no significant pass catchers in the offseason. Despite drawing 20 red-zone targets last season, McBride scored two TDs. If he can improve his touchdown luck, he could challenge for an overall TE1 finish.

Tier 2

After a sensational rookie year, Sam LaPorta had a slight dip in production in 2024. LaPorta actually improved year over year in yards per catch (12.1) and yards per target (8.7), but after averaging 7.1 targets per game in 2023, he averaged only 5.2 targets per game in 2024.

Five games into the 2024 season, Mark Andrews was TE32 in fantasy points per game and hadn’t scored a touchdown. From Week 6 on, Andrews scored 11 touchdowns in 12 games and averaged 3.8 catches and 46.1 yards per contest. A downturn in target volume and yardage suggests that Andrews’ days as an elite fantasy TE may be over, but he remains an important cog in the Baltimore offense and a solid fantasy option.

After an injury-marred 2024 season in which he lost eight games to hamstring and shoulder ailments, Evan Engram could be poised for a rebound fantasy season in 2025. Broncos head coach Sean Payton has said he plans to make Engram the “joker” in his offense. That’s been a key role in Payton’s offenses over the years, filled by players such as Jimmy Graham, Reggie Bush and Alvin Kamara.

Tier 3

Tucker Kraft turned in a solid season in 2024, finishing with 50-707-7 to rank TE9 in half-point PPR fantasy scoring. The 24-year-old Kraft seems to be on an upward trajectory, and it helps his cause that the Packers don’t have a proven target hog at wide receiver.

Kyle Pitts has disappointed a great many fantasy managers. After finishing TE6 in PPR fantasy scoring as a rookie, he hasn’t had a TE1 season in any of the last three years. But Pitts is only 24, so there may still be hope. He had to acclimate to new offensive coordinator Zac Robinson’s system last year, and Falcons QB Kirk Cousins was a disappointment. It’s possible Pitts clicks with talented young QB Michael Penix Jr. and turns out to be a fantasy value.

Tier 4

Tyler Warren posted absurd numbers for Penn State in 2024, with 104-1,233-8 receiving, along with 218 rushing yards and four TD runs. He has an angry playing style reminiscent of George Kittle. However, Indianapolis seems like a suboptimal landing spot given the Colts’ uncertainty at quarterback.

In his ninth NFL season, Hunter Henry established new career highs in targets (97), catches (66) and receiving yards (674). He scored only two touchdowns but still managed to finish TE12 in half-point PPR fantasy scoring. Henry quickly developed chemistry with rookie QB Drake Maye, who leaned heavily on the veteran tight end. If Henry has better luck with touchdowns in 2025, he has a chance to return low-end TE1 value.

Tier 5

Now that Evan Engram has gone from Jacksonville to Denver via free agency, former second-round draft pick Brenton Strange sits atop the Jaguars’ TE depth chart. The possibility of an enhanced role makes the 24-year-old Strange an intriguing TE sleeper.

When Buccaneers WRs Mike Evans and Chris Godwin sustained injuries in a Week 7 loss to the Ravens last year, Cade Otton stepped up in a big way, with 30-293-3 over a four-game stretch. But in Otton’s other 10 games, he had 29-307-1. With Evans and Godwin healthy and the Bucs spending a first-round draft pick on WR Emeka Egbuka, there may be little opportunity for Otton to make much of an impact in 2025.