Jake Ferguson Is a Useful Tight End at the Wrong Fantasy Football Price

Jake Ferguson has become exactly the kind of tight end who can trick us in fantasy. He plays a full-time role, catches passes from Dak Prescott, operates in one of the league’s better offenses, and remains involved near the goal line. That is all useful. The problem is that George Pickens’ arrival pushed Ferguson further down the target hierarchy, leaving him more dependent on short-area looks and touchdowns than his current price suggests.

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Jake Ferguson’s Career

Entering the league as a mid-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, Jake Ferguson was selected to fill the void left by the recently released Blake Jarwin, but still had to contend with franchise-tagged Dalton Schultz as a rookie. While getting his feet wet, he was mostly deployed as an in-line run blocker, logging 311 of his 480 snaps in that role. With Schultz's subsequent 2023 departure into free agency, those numbers flipped in a hurry, as the sophomore would run a route on 72.5% of the Cowboys’ dropbacks, the 10th-highest mark in the league.

While that type of deployment would more or less stay steady over his third and fourth years in the league, exactly where on the field he was targeted in that role started to become a little less valuable for fantasy purposes.

*Out of roughly 40 qualifiers, depending on year.

In that breakout ‘23 season, Ferguson was acting as the de facto No. 2 pass-catcher, with an aging Brandin Cooks and a near-retirement Michael Gallup being the two biggest threats to his target share behind CeeDee Lamb. Injuries and some more looks to former second-rounder Luke Schoonmaker derailed the momentum in 2024, before the 2025 addition of George Pickens pushed Ferguson further down the weekly target hierarchy.

For fantasy managers, all was not lost, though, as his 8 touchdowns ranked 11th in the league despite his 59th-place finish in raw yardage (600). But even with that yardage-to-score disparity, there isn't much reason to expect a huge touchdown regression. Ferguson scored six of his touchdowns from inside the opponents’ 10-yard line on 13 such targets (46.1%), which is essentially the league average (41.1%) among all tight ends over the last ten years.

If he can hang on to that role this coming season (and if the Cowboys are an explosive offense once again), we might be able to look past his Witten-esque average depth of target.

The Cowboys’ Offense in 2026

Like many newly empowered offensive play-callers in recent years, Brian Schottenheimer introduced a number of wrinkles with his upgraded role as Dallas’ head coach, and the output was immediately felt. The switch from Mike McCarthy to Schottenheimer upgraded the 21st-ranked scoring offense to the 7th-best mark, while their yards per drive jumped from 23rd (29.46) to 1st (38.95), and their raw red zone drives ended up at 65, the fifth-best mark in the league. The predictable McCarthy offense had received an injection of movement that helped unlock Dak Prescott and the gang.

It's insane how almost every good NFL playcaller ranks highly in play-action rate, during-snap motion rate, or both.



This five-year chart definitely underrates a few guys (i.e., Kubiak has been way higher at times). But a solid snapshot of fantasy value added.@FantasyPtsData pic.twitter.com/EpdlTXDRO1

— Ryan Heath (@RyanJ_Heath) July 2, 2026

With the team’s play-action rate rising from 18.8% to 26.2%, Prescott's fantasy points per dropback increased from 0.40 to 0.50. Some of this could be attributed to the addition of a second very good receiver in Pickens, but the increased misdirection had a very clear positive fantasy impact on every Cowboys’ pass-catcher. Out of 134 WRs or TEs who ran at least 50 routes out of play action, the team had four players in the top 35 in fantasy points per route run, including Ryan Flournoy, Jake Ferguson, and CeeDee Lamb, all tying for 15th-best.

Most of these Ferguson looks were simple dump-offs (1.3 aDOT, 191 total yards), but 11 of his 24 red zone targets came on these plays, so it’s good to know there is at least a touchdown-driven floor baked into the role.

Projecting the Cowboys’ Pass-Catchers in Fantasy

There is a clear hierarchy in Dallas, and no matter what we might think of Ferguson as a player, there’s simply no way he will be the team’s No. 2 pass-catcher again unless we run into an injury to Lamb or Pickens. If we exclude Lamb’s Week 3 ankle injury and the following three games, as well as a Week 18 matchup in which the team pulled their starters early, we have a 12-game sample with all three players on the field in 2025.

Over that sample, Ferguson earned only 9.0% of the team’s air yards, a 14.4% target share, and averaged only 32.6 yards per game. His secure role around the end zone saved him from complete fantasy disaster, but his four touchdowns only propelled him to 7.38 half-PPR points per game, a mark that would have landed him as the TE20 on the season.

The numbers paint him as a streaming option behind two solid WR1 teammates, yet Ferguson is leaving boards as the eleventh tight end. And if Flournoy takes another step forward as a potential No. 3 option in his third year? It becomes even harder to justify paying a top-12 tight end price. Ferguson is still useful, but usefulness and value are not the same thing when the market already treats him as a low-end TE1.

Bottom Line

• Jake Ferguson remains a useful real-life piece of the Cowboys’ offense, and his red-zone role gives him enough touchdown equity to stay fantasy-relevant. Dallas should once again be one of the league’s better passing environments, and Ferguson’s usage on play-action looks gives him a path to efficient short-area production.
• The problem is that his weekly ceiling is clearly capped behind CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens. When all three were available last season, Ferguson’s air-yard share, target share, and yardage output looked more like a streaming tight end than a locked-in fantasy starter.
• According to 4for4’s Multi-Site ADP, Ferguson is coming off the board as the TE11 near the middle of the 10th round. At that price tag, Ferguson is being priced closer to his best-case outcome than his median projection. He is not someone we need to avoid entirely, but he profiles better as a matchup-based option or late-round fallback than a tight end we should aggressively target as a weekly starter.