Rookies have become a much bigger part of the fantasy football landscape in recent seasons, especially at running back and wide receiver. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for tight ends. They’ve been the “black sheep” of the offensive skill positions, at least as it pertains to players looking to make a fast impact.
Does that mean we’ll see similar outcomes from the 2023 class?
The list of top prospects at the position is deep, with at least one and possibly even two projected to come off the board in the first round of the NFL draft. Michael Mayer out of Notre Dame and Utah’s Dalton Kincaid are the most likely to be first-rounders with Georgia’s Darnell Washington, Luke Musgrave from Oregon State and Tucker Kraft out of South Dakota State rounding out the projected top five.
So, will this class be able to dodge the trend and make some noise in fantasy? Well, let’s take a look at the past to see what we can learn for the future. For our research purposes, we’ll go back 23 seasons to 2000 and examine all of the data.
The top 10 rookie tight ends who fit our criteria include just three who scored over 170 points. That trio is Kyle Pitts (2021), Evan Engram (2017) and Jeremy Shockey (2002). Two others, Rob Gronkowski (2010) and Pat Freiermuth (2021), scored 150-plus points. The other five scored between 147.7 and 123.1 points.
Think about that for a minute. Just eight rookie tight ends have scored more than 140 fantasy points in the last 23 years! The good news is that four of them have occurred in the last six seasons, including Pitts and Freiermuth back in 2021.
There’s also a similar trend to the rest of the offensive skill positions, and it’s not a surprising one. Eight of the top 10 rookie tight ends since 2000 were first or second round picks. Just two, Aaron Hernandez (Round 4, 2010) and Timothy Wright (undrafted, 2013), were exceptions. There is more round diversity in TEs 11-20, though, as six of the 10 players were selected in the third or fourth round.
Aside from Wright, who had one good fantasy season and fizzled out, no other rookie tight end in the top 20 has been drafted beyond Round 4. The next such player came in 2017, when George Kittle (No. 21) was a fifth-rounder.
From a statistical perspective, eight of the top 10 tight ends had at least 64 targets. Just two, Pitts and Engram, had over 100. Seven players had at least 54 catches, and Pitts is the lone tight end to finish with 1,000-plus receiving yards as a rookie.
That leads us to yet another trend.
In the last 23 years, four of the 10 best fantasy seasons among rookie tight ends resulted in a top-10 finish. Gronkowski was close at TE11 (2010), and Wright was the TE12 (2013). Freiermuth (TE13), Hernandez (TE14), Jermaine Gresham (TE16) and Hunter Henry (TE19) finished as high or mid-tier No. 2 fantasy tight ends.
Here’s another little tidbit to wrap your fantasy football brain around, and it won’t endear you to rookie tight ends. Since 2000, 51 tight ends have been picked in the first or second round. The majority of them did next to nothing in Year 1.
Among the 50 tight ends who played at least 12 games in their first NFL season, all but three averaged fewer than 10 points. That list includes players who went on to become fantasy assets, including the likes of Mike Gesicki, Hayden Hurst, Todd Heap, Cole Kmet, Dallas Goedert, David Njoku, Zach Ertz and T.J. Hockenson.
Based on the data, fantasy fans looking for a potential breakout (or even startable) tight end in this year’s class will likely be disappointed. Mayer and Kincaid could pop with the right teams (imagine one with the Las Vegas Raiders and the other with the Detroit Lions), but chances are neither will be regular fantasy starters.
At least, not as rookies (I do like Mayer and Kincaid long term in dynasty formats).
Since most rookies drafted beyond Round 3 have failed to make an impact at the position since 2000, be sure to keep tabs on who is drafted when (and of course where). Opportunities are huge to the success of players, rookies or veterans, and teams like the Raiders, Lions, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints or Washington Commanders (to name a few) have a need at the position heading into the draft.
Overall, no rookie tight end will be worth more than a late-rounder in redrafts.
Michael Fabiano is an award-winning fantasy football analyst on Sports Illustrated and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA) Hall of Fame. Click here to read all his articles here on SI Fantasy. You can follow Michael on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram for your late-breaking fantasy news and the best analysis in the business to help you win a fantasy championship!
