As part of our 2026 Fantasy Football Draft Kit, let's take a look at tight end ADP using a historical lens to identify any trends that can help in 2026 fantasy football drafts.
Every year, we have nearly eight full months to prepare for the draft, but just how good are we at setting the market for the season?
That is the goal we are out to hash out to carve out some signals.
Be sure to check out my tight end rankings and tiers for more player-specific analysis:
Don't Miss Out on The Best Fantasy Football Coverage in the Business
Like the NFL, fantasy football never sleeps.
From rankings to the best draft strategies, Sharp Football has everything you need to get ready for the fantasy season in our Fantasy Football Draft Kit, powered by premier fantasy football analyst Rich Hribar.
Save more by bundling the Draft Kit with our in-season fantasy package that features Rich's comprehensive “Worksheet” preview of every game, every week of the NFL season.
Click here for more information about our fantasy coverage!
Tight End Fantasy Football ADP: Historical Data
The tight end position is ahead of only the quarterbacks in terms of the relationship between average draft position and points per game.
When you combine that with the position scoring the fewest points among all positions, you can see how frustrating and lopsided this position can be for gamers.
This is why unique elements and caveats are incorporated into scoring for tight ends in some leagues.
I would argue that those are half-baked measures that fail to achieve the intended results, but gamers are tweaking scoring for tight ends more than for other skill positions.
Just two tight ends since 2010 have averaged over 20 PPR points per game in a season.
Over the same span, we have seen 45 wide receivers and 52 running backs reach that threshold.
There is a separate conversation to be had for position leverage, but this is the blanket reason why it is so hard to use premier draft capital on a tight end in leagues without scoring adjustments for the position.
When you factor in that you outright need more roster allocation for running backs and wide receivers, there is just too fine a needle to thread in having front-end TE picks pay off.
They just do not have the same isolated upside as a wide receiver or running back.
One of those tight ends to average 20 points (Rob Gronkowski in 2011) was a value pick (TE9 in ADP that season).
The other was 2020 Travis Kelce, who was the first pick at the position and had an ADP of 16.7 overall.
We are coming off a season in which Trey McBride provided the largest gap in scoring to the TE2 in league history (which does say more about the field than McBride himself), and he was the 11th-best player in scoring per game.+
The Best TEs Are Usually Drafted Early
The tight end position shares traits with the other positions we have covered.
If you have been following this series at each position, we have covered that season-long weekly winners rarely come from the bottom of drafts.
The tight end position is no different.
Even if we lower our arbitrary high-scoring bucket down to 15 or more points per game (only one tight end hit this mark in 2025 compared to 13 running backs and 10 receivers), 86.7% of the tight ends to achieve that mark were also selected as a TE1 (top 12) that draft season.
Only two of those four players drafted outside of TE1 ADP were drafted lower than TE14: Julius Thomas in 2013 (TE21 in ADP) and Jordan Reed in 2015 (also TE21 in ADP).
It has been extremely rare to find weekly league winners at tight end deep in drafts.
Even more interesting is that 21 of those 30 tight ends to score 15-plus PPR points per game were selected as the TE6 or higher that season.
More than half (17) were selected as the TE3 or higher.
Of the 16 tight ends to finish TE1 overall in points scored, only one (Sam LaPorta in 2023) was selected outside of the top 12.
Since 2010, only 10 tight ends have finished top three at the position in points scored that season and were selected outside of the top 12 that season.
This is the push and pull within the position.
Tight ends do not score as much as early-round running backs and wide receivers, but the best way to get positional leverage within the position itself has been to pay up for premier picks.
If you want to land that positional leverage, you have most often had to pay for it.
Top-24 TE in ADP & Correlation to PPR Points Per Game Since 2010
| Year | R2 |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 0.2622 |
| 2024 | 0.2341 |
| 2023 | 0.5342 |
| 2022 | 0.4352 |
| 2021 | 0.5662 |
| 2020 | 0.4611 |
| 2019 | 0.2061 |
| 2018 | 0.2937 |
| 2017 | 0.2829 |
| 2016 | 0.3013 |
| 2015 | 0.0963 |
| 2014 | 0.0852 |
| 2013 | 0.4326 |
| 2012 | 0.3163 |
| 2011 | 0.2461 |
| 2010 | 0.2865 |
Outside of a few top picks, we have collectively had a tough run at the position in recent seasons.
Average draft position and performance for tight ends had the sixth-lowest correlation in our 16-year sample.
The past two seasons have been the worst years at setting the market for the position since 2019.
Remember, this is on per-game output, so we are accounting for missed time.
Tight ends are scoring more fantasy points these past two seasons, which makes that seem counterintuitive.
I touched on some ideas as to why I believe that happened in our tight end trends piece.
The transition to more tight ends playing on the field at once has diluted scoring.
We saw this happen to wide receivers on the front end during the 11-personnel boom.
The top 12 tight ends in ADP had an even lower correlation (.2403) when cutting out the TE2 picks.
Out of the top-12 picks at tight end last season, only McBride, Travis Kelce, Tyler Warren, and Colston Loveland matched their positional ADP in overall scoring.
Outside of McBride, the other three players were not consistent full-season scorers.
While we covered in the open that if you want a truly elite tight end that makes a difference, you will have to pay up, the door has opened for landing a TE1 scorer at a cheaper cost with more tight ends logging opportunities than ever.
In 2025, seven tight ends were drafted outside of the top 12 and finished the season as top-12 scorers.
In 2024, that number was six.
Before that, the average number of TE1 scorers coming at TE2 or lower costs was 3.2 per season.
Guys such as Juwan Johnson, Dallas Goedert, Hunter Henry, Jake Ferguson, Harold Fannin, Kyle Pitts, and Dalton Schultz did not carry you to a title in isolation, but they were able to get you on the dance floor at a low-bar position for next to zero opportunity cost.
Pitts did at least have that massive Week 15 performance that propelled many gamers into the first round of the postseason.
If you are not going to pay a premium for McBride, Bowers, or Loveland this season, let’s explore some avenues that can lead you to value.
Target Tight Ends High in Team Pecking Order
One of the things we hammered on in the tiers at tight end is that you want to target a player who is the first or second option in his passing game.
Since 2010, 58.2% of all TE1 scorers have been either the first or second pass catcher from their team.
There have been 81 tight ends selected as the first pass catcher from their team since 2010.
56 of them (69.1%) have ended the season as a TE1 scorer.
This season, we have Trey McBride, Brock Bowers, Colston Loveland, Tyler Warren, and Harold Fannin as the top pass catchers in drafts from their team.
We also have a unique one here with Greg Dulcich.
Dulcich is currently the TE25 in ADP, which would be by far the lowest pick for a tight end going as his team’s first pass catcher we have seen in this sample.
In 2019, Mark Andrews was selected as the first Baltimore pass catcher at TE16 overall.
We have only had eight tight ends go as their team’s first receiver in fantasy drafts who were also not top 12 picks at the position.
Only 2019 Andrews delivered a TE1 scoring season from that group.
Only 18.9% of all tight ends selected after their team’s WR2 have finished the season as a TE1 scorer.
Only 45 of those players were selected as TE1 options, however, so expectations were already low.
But of those 45, less than half (20) were TE1 scorers, and just 10 ended the season as a top-six scorer.
Of all of the tight ends to beat their ADP and finish as a top-12 scorer the same season, 63.8% were selected ahead of their team’s WR2.
Only one time (Gronk in 2011) has the TE1 in overall scoring been selected after the first two wide receivers on his team.
This season, Sam LaPorta, Travis Kelce, and Jake Ferguson are being selected as TE1 players, but are going after the top two wide receivers on their team.
A few players who go as the second pass catcher on their teams are Tucker Kraft, Kyle Pitts, George Kittle, Isaiah Likely, Mark Andrews, Dalton Kincaid, and Kenyon Sadiq.
Target Young TEs
This one is more of a recent trend, but the increased use of tight ends has allowed players to contribute earlier in their careers.
There used to be an old dynasty adage that you had to give tight ends a few seasons to get acclimated to the NFL, since their assignments were so vast and they had to do so much at the next level.
But with the position more compartmentalized than ever, younger players can just come in and do what they do best.
Harold Fannin was a great example of this last season.
To a lesser extent, we had a hot pocket of the season from Oronde Gadsden.
With this transition in recent seasons, rookie tight ends have been among the biggest values in fantasy.
Fannin and Gadsden are more extreme examples who had almost no draft cost, but this has allowed players like Sam LaPorta, Brock Bowers, Tyler Warren, and Colston Loveland to excel in their strengths right away.
Players Trey McBride, Jake Ferguson, Tucker Kraft, and AJ Barner all made significant jumps in their second season over the past three years.
Over the past three years, we have had some of the biggest hits at the position come from first- or second-year players.
Over the past three seasons, there have been eight tight ends who have bested their ADP within the position by 20 or more spots in seasonal scoring.
Six of those players were in their first or second season.
McBride was the best value pick in 2023 compared to ADP.
Kraft was the top value pick in 2024 compared to ADP.
Fannin was the second top value pick in 2025 (Juwan Johnson just barely edged him out).
We are coming off a draft in which 22 tight ends were drafted.
It was the most tight ends selected in a draft since 2002.
All of these guys are cheap, too.
Sadiq has the highest ADP at TE19.
Loveland, Warren, and Fannin are more expensive Year 2 tight ends, but Gadsden (TE18), Terrance Ferguson (TE29), Gunnar Helm (TE30), and Elijah Arroyo (TE41) are all discounted swings to take.
Be Wary of Elite Wide Receivers
In our sample, 127 tight ends have been attached to a WR1 being selected in the first two rounds of fantasy drafts.
Just 37 of those (29.1%) ended the year as TE1 scorers.
While those are dire numbers overall in turning in a TE1 season attached to a front-end receiver, 22 of those 37 seasons were from tight ends who were picked ahead of the team's WR2 that season.
Kyle Pitts is the lone tight end right now who fits that bucket, but I would not be surprised to see Isaiah Likely qualify by the end of the summer as Malik Nabers‘ ADP increases.
The majority of other wide receivers who cost first- or second-round draft picks are attached to tight ends who come with lower draft capital.
The other relevant tight ends who register here as the third pass catcher on their teams and are attached to a top receiver pick are Sam LaPorta, Travis Kelce, and Jake Ferguson.
What to Know:
- Like other positions, you have to “pay to play” to have the best odds at elite season-long production, but those players score significantly fewer points than top wide receivers and tight ends.
- If you miss out on that group, you would be better off waiting to take lower-end TE1 and TE2 options instead of the mid-range TEs that follow the expensive tight ends.
- Average draft position and performance for tight ends have gone down despite the position scoring more points in recent seasons.
- The surge in more tight ends playing has opened up more late-round hits at the position.
- First- and second-year players have been among the best values under this trend.
- Target tight ends that are the first or second pass catchers selected from their teams.
