Fantasy football expert Pat Fitzmaurice shares his draft strategy and advice for how to approach the tight end position. Fitz shares his tips for standard and tight end premium fantasy football formats. For all of his advice, check out his fantasy football tight end draft primer.
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2026 Fantasy Football Draft Advice: How to Approach Tight End
Fitz shares his advice on how to approach tight ends in standard and tight end premium drafts.
How to Play the TE Position in 2026
The question is how to attack the position now that it has become a buyer’s market with appealing draft targets at a variety of price points.
There are elite options such as McBride and Bowers. There are compelling midrange options such as Sam LaPorta and Kyle Pitts. And spending down at the position might mean drafting one of the tight ends who were the standard-bearers at the position just a few years ago – Travis Kelce, George Kittle, and Mark Andrews.
Pretty wild that punting tight end might mean drafting Travis Kelce, huh?
I’m not committed to a single TE strategy for 2026 fantasy football drafts, and I don’t think you should be, either. The behavior of your rivals during the draft should steer your approach to the position.
There will be drafts where the top tight ends fly off the board early. If that’s the case, you should probably wait, because the thirst for elite tight ends is letting top players at other positions slide further than they normally would.
There will be drafts full of avowed TE punters – fantasy managers who believe spending down at the position is the way to go. If you’re in such a draft, you might be able to grab an elite tight end below his average draft position.
It’s a good idea to be price-sensitive at tight end. My goal at tight end is simply this: to get one of the tight ends I like at a price I like. (More on my preferred TE targets in a minute.)
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 encourages 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 last season’s leading TE scorer, Trey McBride, as an example. He scored 315.9 PPR fantasy points last season. In TE-premium, where he gets an extra half-point for each of his 126 receptions, McBride scored 378.9 fantasy points. That’s a 19.9% value boost.
Now, let’s try the same exercise with Dallas Goedert, who matched McBride’s 11 touchdowns but had only 60 receptions. Goedert scored 185.1 PPR points last season. His 60 catches gave him an extra 30 points in TE-premium for a total of 215.1. Goedert only got a 16.2% 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.
You can often scoop up value at other positions while your rivals are overdrafting tight ends. If you can figure out a way to get adequate TE production later in the draft, you’ll be ahead of the game.
Tight Ends to Target
Top Early-Round TE Targets
Top Mid-Round TE Targets
Top Late-Round TE Targets
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