Fantasy Football TE Underdog Draft Rankings

McBride's 2025 campaign was about as dominant as a tight end season gets. He finished as the overall TE1 for the second consecutive year at 15.2 points per game—up from 11.9 per game in 2024—with 126 receptions, 1,239 yards, and 11 touchdowns on 163 targets. The underlying metrics back up every bit of it. McBride ranked in the 93rd percentile in PFF pass route grade and 88th in yards per route run (1.78 YPRR) among tight ends with meaningful playing time. He ran 62.8 percent of his routes from the slot—95th percentile—which explains the volume; he's a mismatch nightmare in the middle of the field. His ESPN OVERALL score (86th percentile) confirms the production, even if his OPEN score (45th percentile) suggests he's not consistently beating coverage so much as leveraging his positioning and Jacoby Brissett's trust to generate catches. He also did damage with the ball in his hands, avoiding tackles at an 88th percentile rate. The one area that doesn't pop is YAC per reception (50th percentile), but with 126 catches, he doesn't need to be a run-after-catch threat to dominate fantasy. He's going as a top-two tight end and has every metric to justify being the consensus TE1.

Bowers has the tools to be the best tight end in fantasy football. He finished TE2 in 2024 and TE4 on a per-game basis in 2025 despite missing five games. His 12.0 points per game over those 12 games were essentially identical to his rookie production. The underlying metrics are elite: 88th percentile PFF pass route grade among tight ends, 81st percentile in YPRR (1.70), and a 72nd percentile contested catch rate that reflects his physicality when the ball is in the air. His ESPN OVERALL score (89th percentile) is among the best in the sample. The limitation has always been team context. The Raiders are one of the worst offensive environments in the league, i.e. fewer touchdowns scored, and Bowers has had to absorb that drag on his production. He's going as the consensus TE1, likely due to the belief that Fernando Mendoza will turn the Raiders’ offense around.

Fannin's rookie season was one of the more quietly impressive debuts at the position—he finished TE5 overall in 16 games while playing for one of the least functional offenses in the league. He caught 72 of 103 targets for 731 yards and six touchdowns, and his PFF pass route grade (80th percentile) and YPRR (1.68, 78th percentile) both suggest he was doing real work as a route runner despite playing through significant QB instability. The standout metric is his avoided tackle rate—0.31 per reception, 97th percentile among tight ends—meaning Fannin is a legitimate YAC weapon who can turn short throws into meaningful gains even when the quarterback can't push the ball downfield. The issue with his profile is the ESPN receiver scores. His OPEN score (16th percentile) and OVERALL score (22nd percentile) suggest he isn't consistently winning clean against coverage. He compensates through YAC rather than pure separation. David Njoku's departure makes Fannin an every-down player, and a Browns team expected to trail most weeks means the volume should be there. The quarterback situation is the entire ceiling question. Shedeur Sanders, Deshaun Watson, and Dillon Gabriel are vying for the starting job, with Sanders in the pole position. The good news there is that Fannin’s numbers–4.7 catches for 52 yards and 0.67 touchdowns–were much better with Sanders at quarterback. Fannin should develop into an every-week weapon if the quarterback situation settles. He's going as a top-six tight end, and that price is defensible on volume alone. Whether he's an elite TE1 or a target-share mirage depends almost entirely on the passer.

LaPorta's underlying metrics in 2025 were some of the best in the tight end sample despite playing just nine games—his 93rd-percentile YPRR (2.00), 92nd-percentile route grade, and 90th-percentile YAC per reception all reflect a player operating at a high level when healthy. He caught every contested target thrown his way and didn't drop a single pass. The per-game production tells the same story. He was theTE7 on a per-game basis in both 2024 and 2025, at 9.0 and 9.7 points respectively. The Lions' spread-it-around offense limits how high his ceiling goes. Detroit leans heavily on Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jahmyr Gibbs, and the rushing game, which means LaPorta operates in an environment where targets are shared and touchdowns are the primary path to big weeks. He's going as the TE7, and the value proposition is a player who has been quietly elite from a per-game standpoint in limited action and should be fully healthy entering the season. LaPorta is a midrange TE1 with enough upside to function as a weekly starter when the Lions give him opportunities in the red zone.

Pitts finally delivered on a fraction of his draft pedigree in 2025, finishing as the overall TE2 with 88 receptions, 928 yards, and five touchdowns on 114 targets. The PFF metrics confirm the underlying talent is real: 86th-percentile route grade and 83rd-percentile YPRR among qualified tight ends. The ESPN receiver scores tell a more nuanced story—49th percentile in OPEN, 71st percentile OVERALL—suggesting that Pitts wins through size and athleticism rather than pure separation, which aligns with the trajectory of his career. The concern is the volatility that shadowed him even in a TE2 season: only six of 16 games went over 10 points, and five went under five. Both Bijan Robinson and Drake London will continue to act as a volume ceiling. In fact, Pitts’s scoring output doubled in the five games that London missed (7.4 vs. 15.5). Pitts is going as the TE7, which reflects the 2025 output without fully pricing in the inconsistency. He's a legitimate every-week starter who will frustrate you in the weeks when the touchdowns don't come.