0:00Tighten is basically the most difficult
0:02position to draft in fantasy football.
0:04There are very few options at the top
0:06that end up making a huge difference.
0:08We've also seen some crazy historical
0:10bust from first and second round tight
0:12ends. Mid-price tight ends are basically
0:14the most fraught and bust-filled area of
0:17the draft board in the history of
0:18fantasy football and trying to find
0:20tight ends in the later end of the draft
0:22is like trying to pin the tail on the
0:23donkey. But by the end of this video, we
0:25are all going to feel very confident
0:27with all this research I've done
0:29drafting a tight end in 2026, 2027, 2028
0:32in perpetuity. We are going to know how
0:35to draft tight end. So, let's go ahead
0:37and begin with the data, which is just
0:39the sheer truth, which is that you have
0:40to be on the field and you have to run
0:42routes. If you do not have a route share
0:44above 66%
0:46you are not going to be able to be an
0:48impactful fantasy football player. Route
0:50share, very simple, how often you are on
0:52the field and how often you are running
0:54routes. If you have a route share below
0:5666% you are not going to finish as a top
0:5912 tight end. Every top 12 tight end in
1:022025 ran at least 85% of their team
1:06routes. On average below 2/3, it's
1:08basically impossible to matter. We need
1:10to draft tight ends who are receivers,
1:12not blockers. Target share also
1:15incredibly important. This is a big part
1:17of Dwayne McFarland's analysis over on
1:18Fantasy Life, but you basically need to
1:20be a top two target on your team to be a
1:23breakout tight end. So, the very simple
1:26answer here is that in 2025 the top 12
1:29tight ends averaged a 19.9%
1:31target share, about one in every five
1:33passes, and all but one. This is really
1:36the key point.
1:37All but one of the 2025 top tight ends
1:40finished as a top two option on their
1:43own offense. Now, you will randomly
1:44find, I'm not saying it's impossible,
1:46you will find tight ends who are not top
1:49two options on their teams, and that is
1:50going to be driven by touchdowns. My my
1:52favorite example of this is a Julius
1:54Thomas season where he had 75 targets
1:57and finished with 12 touchdowns when he
1:59was a member of those crazy Denver
2:00Bronco Peyton Manning teams. But, the
2:03very important thing to remember is that
2:05touchdowns for tight ends basically do
2:07not repeat year-over-year. The
2:09correlation or the R squared between the
2:12relationship of touchdowns from one
2:13season to the next is point 11. So,
2:16basically noise. I mean, you can
2:17basically throw it out the window.
2:19Compare that to yards per game, the
2:21correlation there is point 71. That's a
2:24really fancy mathematical way of saying
2:26we can generally predict year-over-year
2:28tight end roles in terms of how many
2:30yards they are going to be able to gain.
2:32And the thing that ends up being quite
2:33noisy is tight ends. You know, maybe
2:35there's one year, the the famous
2:36example, I mean, there's Jordan Cameron.
2:38I think Gary Barnidge is my favorite
2:40personal example of this where he had
2:42the one crazy career season where he
2:44just scored a ton of touchdowns. He
2:46ended up being, I mean, basically the
2:47top option on his team and then was
2:49gone. The second-to-last year of his
2:51career he had nine touchdowns and 1,000
2:53yards at age 30 after being basically a
2:56no one in fantasy football. So, the
2:58thing that is important to remember with
3:00tight ends is you really don't want to
3:03pay for last year's touchdown spike. You
3:05want to pay for the role. The role is
3:07the most important thing. Now, where
3:10does this lead us in actual draft rooms?
3:13The dead zone. You guys know it, I know
3:15it, which is that the tight end 7 to 12
3:18every single year in fantasy football,
3:20these are basically the worst picks.
3:21It's not to say you can never take him.
3:23It's not to say, "Oh, you shouldn't take
3:24Tyler Eifert or you shouldn't take
3:25Tucker Kraft." because there are going
3:27to be hits from that range, but there
3:29are also going to be basically the
3:30biggest misses in fantasy football.
3:33Generally speaking, over the last 10
3:35years, the tight end 1 through 3 in ADP
3:38have a 63% chance of finishing as a top
3:41six tight end. The tight end 4 to 6 have
3:43a 44% chance, and the tight end 7 to 12
3:47have a 14% chance of a true breakout.
3:50And get this, only a 44% chance of a top
3:5312 finish, whereas all the tight ends
3:55past that, so all the sleepers, all the
3:57guys who are not drafted every single
3:58time in your 12 team league, have a 39%
4:01chance of finishing as a top 12 tight
4:03end, and an 11% chance of a top six
4:06finish. And I think it's really easy to
4:08see why this is the case. I mean, if we
4:10just look at any given year of tight end
4:12ADP, generally speaking, you are going
4:15to be drafting guys, you're going to
4:16have to pay up for guys who produced
4:18last year. So, for example, let's look
4:19at 20 26. You've got I mean, I think the
4:22key examples here are going to be Tucker
4:23Kraft and Kyle Pitts. Again, not saying
4:25they're bad players, but you are paying
4:27for a performance from last year. Uh
4:29Kyle Pitts scored 12 points per game.
4:32Compare that to guys going significantly
4:34later than him. George Kittle, who's
4:35coming off an injury, 14.7 points per
4:38game. Or Kelce, 11 points per game. But,
4:41generally speaking, I don't expect the
4:43role for a lot of these guys who are
4:45tight end seven to tight end 13. Like,
4:47how different is Isaiah Likely's role
4:50this upcoming year going to be from
4:52someone like Gunner Helm or Greg
4:53Dulcich? That's really what I'm asking
4:56you is when you're looking at tight ends
4:57that you have to pay a significant price
4:59for, are you paying for talent? Are you
5:01paying for athleticism? Are you paying
5:03for the role? Because, basically
5:04speaking, the role is the most important
5:07thing when we look at why tight ends
5:09fail. There are multiple reasons for it.
5:11So, the first is that the bust history
5:13in this study and the study that I did
5:15using
5:16fantasy data ADP, and then also I ran
5:19this against the PFF data from the last
5:2110 years. And then this research was
5:23also corroborated by my friend Rich
5:25Rebar over at Sharp Football, which is
5:27that you do get some bust who are on the
5:29field, but they end up not being top two
5:31options in their passing offense. So,
5:33you look at guys historically, like I
5:35think I have this 2021 data pulled up.
5:38You have guys like Dawson Knox, guys
5:40like Pat Freiermuth, guys like Mike
5:43Gesicki, guys like Cole Kmet, or Robert
5:45Tonyan.
5:46Tonyan, a great example of paying for
5:48the touchdowns, who did end up playing a
5:50ton of snaps, but they didn't generate
5:53the targets. They were lower in targets
5:54per route run. The target share of the
5:56busts on average was 11.5%. The target
5:59share of the hits was 17.9%.
6:02So, you are going to have some guys who
6:04do run a ton of routes. They do hit the
6:05first requisite, which is that 70-ish to
6:0880% route share, but they don't have the
6:11ability to earn targets, which is why I
6:12like to look at targets per route run.
6:15Generally speaking,
6:17these guys are being You know, why was
6:18Dawson Knox ever a top-10 fantasy
6:21football tight end? That was the market
6:22losing its mind at the time, and that's
6:24the market You know, we should be better
6:26than that. We should know better than
6:27that right now.
6:29So, the big conclusion here, I think, is
6:31pretty simple, which is that there are
6:33two options you have in a given draft.
6:35You can pay up, so you can take your
6:36Bowers, you can take your McBride, you
6:38can take your Jimmy Graham, you can take
6:41your Travis Kelce back in the day, you
6:42can take your Rob Gronkowski. These are
6:44true differ makers. Historically,
6:46they're going to go in rounds two,
6:47three, or four. Crucially, they do have
6:50to have a true receiver workload. Like,
6:52I don't want you guys to be paying Like,
6:54let's say for example, this upcoming
6:56season, Kholston Loveland gets
6:59104 targets, but he just runs crazy hot
7:02on touchdowns. Let's say he scores 12
7:04touchdowns for the Chicago Bears, and he
7:05ends up being a second-round pick in
7:072027. I like Kholston Loveland. That
7:09performance would be good for me. I
7:11probably would not be paying that price.
7:13The roles that Bowers and McBride have
7:15right now are so unassailable in terms
7:17of the target volume. And the same was
7:19true of Jimmy Graham. The same was true
7:21of Rob Gronkowski. The same was
7:22certainly true of Travis Kelce, because
7:24they were clear high-end options on
7:26their team. And the main reason why they
7:29make such a difference is it's not the
7:31season-long points, it's the weekly edge
7:33in redraft. Getting a 22-point
7:36performance from tight end is just so
7:38massive in terms of actual weekly
7:41head-to-head matchups.
7:42And it's a reason why the mid-tier of
7:45tight ends tend to be an area that we
7:47want to miss. So, our lane two is wait
7:50and take darts. We want to skip the
7:52elite tier, we want to skip the dead
7:53zone, and then we want to wait until
7:55round 10, round 11, round 12, and quite
7:58often take two late upside swings to
8:01double our hit odds because the key
8:03thing with tight ends is as the NFL is
8:06changing, teams are playing more 12
8:07personnel, teams are playing more 13
8:09personnel. I think there are legitimate
8:11breakout arguments for Brent Strange,
8:13for Gunner Helm, for
8:15Greg Dulcich, for Terrance Ferguson. And
8:18then I look at guys right here. Like, I
8:20don't really think there is much of a
8:21difference between Isaiah Likely and
8:24Dalton Schultz in terms of their
8:25expected routes, in terms of their
8:27expected targets. I do not think someone
8:29like Likely is going to end up being
8:30second on his team in terms of target
8:33share. And I think that Gunner Helm
8:35could probably end up third or fourth.
8:37And so, I think they're going to score a
8:38very similar amount of fantasy points
8:40per game. And then the key element after
8:42that, let's look at someone like Jake
8:43Ferguson and their 2025 season. He did
8:47have some huge spike weeks, right? So,
8:48we had the 21-point game, he had the
8:5023-point game, the 21-point game. Jake
8:53Ferguson was ended up being a pretty
8:55good pick in 2025. The issue is
8:59you're paying for that ceiling that was
9:01with Lamb and Pickens off the field, and
9:03you're really not getting a whole lot
9:05else after that. And you're the same is
9:07kind of true with a lot of these guys. I
9:09mean, Dalton Kincaid only had one
9:1120-point game. You are paying for a
9:12ceiling that is really not there in
9:15fantasy football. But, none of this is
9:17really about these specific players.
9:19These specific players are not the
9:21important point of this. It is the
9:23archetypes of players that we want to be
9:25drafting. So, this is your late round
9:27dart checklist. These are how you find
9:29guys who are about to explode. You want
9:32to see, can their routes go up from the
9:34year before? So, someone like Likely,
9:35someone like Dalton Kincaid could apply
9:37to
9:38Can they be a top two target on their
9:39offense? Generally speaking, they need
9:42to play like a real receiver role for
9:44these teams. Another very helpful hint
9:47is going to be earning it per route. 1.2
9:51yards per route run or 1.2 targets per
9:53route run ends up being about average.
9:551.5 is quite good. 1.75 yards per route
9:58run is awesome. We want to look for
10:00these guys who have had strong yards per
10:02route run samples in a smaller amount of
10:05routes and see them trend up as they get
10:07more playing time.
10:09And then, of course, the tight end
10:11position is defined by touchdowns. And
10:13it is particularly defined by touchdowns
10:15with the cheaper option. So, if you are
10:17taking a guy, you need to think that
10:19they have legitimate spike week
10:20potential in terms of the touchdowns.
10:22You know, I would not be taking someone
10:24that I thought would like max out at
10:25like five touchdowns. That's generally
10:28what we are looking for in a true
10:29late-round sleeper at tight end. Across
10:3212 seasons, elite tight ends sit on a
10:34cliff above everyone else in terms of
10:36points per game. The scoring goes flat
10:38through the middle, and this is I mean,
10:39this is basically the key argument. The
10:41tight end six, on average over the last
10:4310 years, has scored 11.6 points per
10:46game. The tight end 12 has scored 9.7.
10:48The difference between the tight end 12
10:50and the tight end 18 is basically
10:51nothing, 1.7 points per game. So, that's
10:55why I say you really want to pay up at
10:57the absolute top, get yourself your
10:59Gronk, get yourself your Bowers, get
11:01yourself your McBride, or tend to wait
11:03because that true spike league-winning
11:05potential is just really not found in
11:08the middle rounds. The drop from a
11:09streamable tight end 12 to a tight end
11:1218, 1.7 points per game. You want to
11:14stream your way into it for free. Also,
11:17just a very important to remember, the
11:18top very small
11:21On average, there's 1.8 tight ends per
11:23season over the last 10 years who score
11:2515 points per game. In a 12-team league,
11:28you can create a huge advantage being
11:30the only one who has that. So, as we are
11:32drafting tight ends, it's very simple.
11:35If you want to apply a heuristic to your
11:37fantasy football draft that you can
11:38follow every single year, if you're not
11:40taking one of the guys at the very top,
11:42and there are great arguments against
11:43taking the guys at the top, you need to
11:45wait and be the value buyer at the tight
11:48end position in your league. Don't get
11:50trapped in the middle. If this was
11:51helpful, make sure to like the video.
11:53Make sure to subscribe to the Maddex
11:54Fantasy Football channel, and uh you can
11:56check my stuff out over at
11:57flockfantasy.com.
11:59Link to that is in the description. Link
12:01to that is in the comments as well. Sign
12:03up using code Davis, and you can get all
12:05of my fantasy football content over
12:06there, and I will be back with you guys
12:09very soon.
