Tyler Warren Is Ready to Join Fantasy Football’s Elite Tight End Tier

Tyler Warren’s rookie season was good enough that we probably shouldn’t let the ending ruin the story. Before Daniel Jones’ Achilles injury sent the Colts’ passing game into the ground, Warren looked like an immediate difference-maker at tight end, earning first-read looks, red-zone targets, and designed touches in one of the league’s most efficient offenses.

Now, with Michael Pittman Jr. out of town and the Colts’ receiver room still unsettled, Warren may already be priced like a top-five tight end, but the path to an even bigger Year 2 role is very much alive.

Click here for more 2026 Player Profiles!

Tyler Warren’s Rookie Season

With the 14th-overall selection in the 2025 NFL Draft, the Indianapolis Colts made Tyler Warren the second tight end off the board, trailing fellow classmate Colston Loveland by only four picks. The Colts were heavily tied to the former Penn State Nittany Lion throughout the Draft process after the team finished the previous season with a league-low 39 receptions at the position. Warren would eclipse that number all by himself roughly halfway through the season, exploding onto the scene with over 150 yards receiving in the first two games alone.

The worries about the team’s offense as a whole felt blown out of proportion through the initial three months of the season; they were 8-4 coming out of Week 13, having scored 30+ points in seven games. Daniel Jones was 8th in the league in passing yards per game (253.4), Jonathan Taylor led the league in rushing (106.8), and even Warren himself was on pace to bump up against a 1,000-yard first season. But then things fell apart.

While Jones had been successfully powering through a fibula injury as the end of the season approached, a torn Achilles in the first quarter of Week 14 proved to be a little too much to tough out. The four-and-a-half games that would follow saw a combination of Riley Leonard and a 44-year-old Philip Rivers muscle their way to 217.8 yards per game and 4.6 adjusted yards per attempt as the passing attack melted down amid relative dysfunction.

While Warren’s target rate essentially stayed the same, managers watched him fade into obscurity, scoring chickenscratch throughout the fantasy playoffs.

But today’s a new dawn, and that early-season optimism might be back in the cards as we head into 2026.

The Colts’ Offense in 2026

The first step in reacquiring that 2025 magic is getting Daniel Jones healthy again. And apparently, that seems to be a foregone conclusion.

Reports say that Jones was already throwing back in April, working in individual periods in May, and participating in seven-on-seven drills near the end of OTAs. Presumably, that will mean he’s ready to go for training camp, and if that’s the case, we shouldn’t have anything to worry about regarding his Week 1 availability. Now, that’s not to say he’ll be in the MVP conversation again just because he’s on the field.

Over his final four non-Achilles starts, Jones posted a -1.4% completion rate over expected (27th/38 qualifiers), four interceptions, and seven fumbles, in a month in which he looked as if he may have reverted to a below-league-average quarterback. Luckily, the team is bringing back the Shane Steichen/Jim Bob Cooter pairing that squeezed those initial games out of Jones in the first place, and still finished top-10 in passing yardage, points per drive, and touchdowns per drive despite that late-season quarterback rotation.

What they will not be bringing back is Michael Pittman Jr., whom they shipped off to the Steelers back in March, and there are still serious questions about whether Alec Pierce will be ready to suit up by Week 1 due to a March ankle cleanup. This leads to a potential early-season focus on Warren, yet again.

Projecting the Colts’ Pass-Catchers in Fantasy

In terms of the Downs vs. Pierce vs….Ashton Dulin (?) debate, there has already been digital ink spilled from both Stephen Hoopes and myself on the subject, so you can check out either of those articles if you’d like to see who is going to win out on the outside in Indianapolis.

Instead, let’s use this space to highlight where Warren has won, and how we can project him out in Year 2. As far as where on the field he was utilized in Year 1, he was much closer to the line of scrimmage than, say, Loveland or Oronde Gadsden, but he was still far from an afterthought. The 256-pound rookie was schemed up to the tune of the sixth-highest first-read rate (22.2%), and his 145 yards were second only to Trey McBride’s 182 on “at the line of scrimmage” routes (i.e., screens, leaks, chips, and check & release).

Though no one would classify Warren as a burner, he was fourth in the league in yards after catch (6.50) due to his bowling-ball nature, which led to a 12th-place finish in first-downs per route run (0.09), even though he finished 23rd in aDOT (5.8). It would come as no surprise that his ability to get to the line to gain also translated into his easily leading the team with 21 red-zone targets (fifth among tight ends). The 5’9”, 171-pound Downs (15) narrowly beat out the 6’4”, 223-pound Pittman (14) in red-zone targets, while the 6’3”, 211-pound Pierce had only 9. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Warren not only led the team again, but also grew it to a near league-high mark if the offense is nearly as efficient as it was last year.

Not only could losing Pittman equate to more usage near the end zone, but we could also see a few more Warren looks in the quick game. Over Steichen’s three seasons with the Colts, they have finished in the top 4 in RPO pass attempts twice (2023, 2025). In those two seasons, Pittman ranked 1st (26) and 3rd (14), respectively, in targets earned on RPO looks. There’s a chance that Downs and Pierce simply soak up much more of those, but something tells me they’ll enjoy the big-bodied Warren boxing out secondary defenders when defenses cheat up for the run more than putting their slim receivers in harm’s way.

There’s not much further Warren could sneak up in positional ADP, as he’s already the TE4, but he could very easily make the case that we have a new “elite” tier of tight ends beginning as early as this season. Brock Bowers and McBride are locked into an “obvious” tier above both Warren and Loveland in the fantasy psyche. The latter two might be making the case for themselves, jumping up multiple rounds by this time next year.

Bottom Line

• Tyler Warren already looked like a featured piece of the Colts’ offense before Daniel Jones’ injury cratered the passing game. His first-read usage, red-zone role, and yards-after-catch ability give him a much stronger profile than a simple “rookie tight end flashes late” breakout.
• The environment still comes with some moving parts, namely Jones’ Achilles recovery and the reshuffling of the wide receiver room after Michael Pittman Jr.’s departure. But those changes may ultimately help Warren more than they hurt him, especially if he absorbs more quick-game and red-zone work while Alec Pierce ramps back up.
• According to current Underdog ADP, Warren is coming off boards as the TE4 in the middle of a very crowded Round 6. He’s going comfortably before TE5, Tucker Kraft, but five or six quarterbacks are also going in this range, making it prime real estate for teams looking to fill a onesie position. Brock Bowers and Trey McBride are still the clearest “elite” options, but at a three or four-round difference, we’re still looking at a piece who could lead his team in targets, even if the field-stretching usage doesn’t give him quite as limitless a ceiling.