Fantasy Football Draft Guide 2025: Tight End Battle Royale

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  • By Jon Mosales

    Last Updated on August 14, 2025 12:58 pm by Jon Mosales | Published: August 14, 2025

    If you have been following me for a day, a week or a year you know I don’t just love going TE early, it’s like a natural law.  I get why people punt the position because the difference from TE4 to the TE12 was only 3.5 FPPG.  I get it even further if you want to go QB early and ignore one of the “onesie” positions, but I would argue that if you are going to pick which position to shot gun, it’s clear as night and day that it should be QB.  The difference between Brock Bowers aka the TE1 and the TE12 Hunter Henry was 6.4 FPPG.  The difference between the RB1 Jahmyr Gibbs and the RB12 and Jonathan Taylor was only 3.8 FPPG.  Players can make the leap at most positions as we saw with WR last season, three rookies in the top-12 in overall FPs.  RBs can be even more volatile and while the top-10 TE is a revolving the door, the upper echelon is much harder to crack.

    The question is which of the top-three do you go after because they are all have reasons why they could finish as the TE1, but it’s all about value and getting the TE2 in round three is more valuable than getting the TE1 in round 2.  Brock Bowers is leading the pack with an ADP of 20, with George Kittle climbing to 21 and Trey McBride at 31.  If all things were equal, it’s still almost impossible to make any declarative statements, but we are going to try nonetheless and see if ADP is the deal-breaker when establishing the hierarchy or is there is a more analytical approach to breaking them down.

     

    Brock Bowers – The headline is the 112-catch, 1,194-yard, five-touchdown rookie season that obliterated the rookie TE wall that Sam LaPorta had weakened and catapulted him into the Alpha-TE conversation.  Most people would take that season again from him, but it’s all about projecting forward and the goal is Travis Kelce’s 2022 season where he averaged 18.6 FPPG and dusted the TE2 by 5.1 FPPG.  Vegas was 4th in passing attempts, but 28th in passing TDs and if Bowers is going to make that penthouse leap, he’s going to need to closer to Kelce’s 12 TDs than his rookie four.

    There is still room to grow and while Bowers led the position in YAC, he was only the TE10 in red zone targets (14) compared to 25 for Kelce and 5th in yards per route run (2.11).  Bowers has the full bag.  He gets solid separation, can catch balls in traffic and can run nearly every route on the board.  The key though is always opportunity as we saw George Kittle be an elite TE who wasn’t getting an elite target share for several seasons.  He got 25.8% of the team’s targets last season and LV didn’t add anyone to eat into that number.  Only 118 of his 154 targets were catchable, compared to Kittle who 80 of 94.  Not to bury the lead, but the upgrade from the incompetent trio of QBs to Geno Smith, who was 4th in passing yards just last season is incomparable.  If you need more convincing check out this six minute clip of Bowers beasting

    https://x.com/NFL/status/1932150707085258786 

     


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    August 14, 2025, 12:58 pm