Tight end is a tough position in fantasy football drafts. And that goes double for dynasty fantasy football drafts. Between the late breakouts like Delanie Walker, the late-round breakouts like George Kittle, or the early round busts like Eric Ebron, it can be a little frustrating to say the least. The good news for you is that I’ve done extensive research on What Makes An Elite Tight End and also What Conditions We Need For Young TE Breakouts. So, we’ve got a leg up on the competition when it comes to breaking down my tight end prospect rankings leading into the 2024 NFL Draft in a couple of weeks!

2024 NFL Draft Prospect Rankings: Top 10 Tight Ends

One thing to keep in mind here is that, historically speaking, draft capital is the number one indicator of success in fantasy football. Not just in my analysis/models but, if you look around the industry to guys like JJ Zachariason or Dwain McFarland, it’s the number one factor in theirs as well. So, we’re going to come back and re-asses this after the draft, no question. For now though, we’ll do our best to examine the top tight end prospects and break them into tiers based on their profiles for fantasy football.

Check out scouting reports, strengths, weaknesses, and possible landing spots in our below NFL Draft tight end prospect rankings and tiers!

Don't miss Dan Servodidio's positional previews on the top NFL Draft prospects!

 

 

 

TIER ONE - The Chosen One

#1 - Brock Bowers, Georgia

Brock Bowers is, without a doubt, the top tight end prospect in this class. That doesn’t mean that he will have the best career of any tight end from the class, as Eric Ebron once taught us. But he has the best odds. You’ve probably been inundated with Brock Bowers love so far this offseason so we’ll give you the short and sweet of what makes him such an incredible prospect.

He broke out as a true freshman and never stopped being great. He won the John Mackey Award for the best tight end in college football - twice. Over the last decade, Brock Bowers is the top college tight end per PFF in receiving grade, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, receiving yards after contact, and missed forced tackles. He even registered FIVE rushing touchdowns including one of 75 yards. 

He’s basically a WR that plays WR, blocks better than WRs, and you can start him at TE in fantasy football. If he were to land with the Los Angeles Chargers, whether it be at five overall or via trade back, he might be my number 1 dynasty tight end before playing a game. That offense just lost its top FOUR pass catchers and the offensive coordinator, Greg Roman, has already orchestrated a top five tight end season of all time with Mark Andrews.

TIER TWO - The Pure Pass Catchers

#2 - Jaheim Bell, Florida State

There are a number of players who could be the TE2 in this class - and that includes virtually all of Tier 3 as well. And, as we mentioned in the intro, the draft will help us sort that out. For now though, we are focusing on the profiles we like which skew pass catching at the next level. And it’s hard to have Brock Bowers at TE1 without Bell in the TE2 conversation. The one “big” knock on Bell is his size but is that really a problem? Let’s look at his combine measurements vs. Brock Bowers…

PLAYERHEIGHTWEIGHTHANDARMWINGSPAN
Brock Bowers6’3”2439’6”32’68”78’28
Jaheim Bell6’2”24110’33’78’68

Does that one inch and two pounds really make a huge difference, especially given the length advantage for Bell? Bowers is clearly the better prospect but right now Bell has to be second for us with his elite yards per route run (his 2021 YPRR of 3.67 was the best season for a TE since 2015 per Scott Barrett of Fantasy Points) and his ability after the catch (36 broken tackles over his last three years and a 9.2 YAC/REC). The concern for guys his size is that he could end up as a part-time player out of the slot like a Cameron Brate or Anthony Firkser but, if he goes early to a team that plans to use him primarily in the slot, he could have big fantasy upside.

#3 - Ja’Tavion Sanders, Texas

 “Long speed”, typically measured by 40-yard dash time, is more important for TE than other positions. After draft capital, it’s arguably one of the most predictive metrics. There’s a reason George Kittle can do less with more in terms of targets and that’s his 4.52 40 time. And, unfortunately, that’s the one flaw we see with Sanders as he ran a disappointing 4.69 at the combine. But that’s not the end of the world. A tight end like Zach Ertz (who ran in the 4.7s) was able to have a 1,000-yard season at age 28. He just needed 156 targets to do it.

And that’s the path we need for Sanders. The good news is that this guy has a lot of similar traits to Ertz. He’s a precision route runner, creating separation and making himself an “easy” target. And what makes business even easier for his QB is his great hands as he did not drop a single pass on 67 targets in 2023. 

As we mentioned, we need to paint some sort of path for Sanders to be a top two target on his team to have elite upside and even then, we need to be sure the volume will be high. Hunter Henry is another player with this profile-type (good route runner, productive vs man to man, doesn’t have difference-making speed) and he has never quite gotten the opportunity needed to crack the top five tight ends in fantasy. So, landing spot/situation may matter more for a guy like Sanders than other prospects.

TIER THREE - The Draft Will Sort Them

#4 - Ben Sinnott, Kansas State

Ben Sinnott falls into the “well-rounded” category. Even at ~6.4, 250 he might be slightly undersized for prototypical tight ends but he’s bigger (and plays bigger) than the first three tight ends we listed. He’s been a big winner in the pre-draft process as the numbers he put on paper translate to a 9.73 Relative Athletic Score which ranks him TE57 out of 1,105 tested over the last 35+ years, per Kent Lee Platte. With his size/athleticism, he not only played more inline tight end than the top three, but he was incredibly versatile, both playing snaps at WR and lining up in the backfield for fullback. That’s appealing to NFL teams.

Like Sanders, Sinnot ran a 4.68 so he’s just inside the acceptable speed range (anything 4.55 or below is “difference-making”, 4.55 to 4.7 is acceptable, and anything above that is fairly slow so tough to produce at a high level).  Sinnott will fit with teams that utilize a “two way” tight end the way the 49ers use George Kittle, and that scheme is increasingly popular as the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree continues to land jobs. The Texans already have Dalton Schultz, but Bobby Slowik could get a head coaching job next year. The Dolphins would be a nice landing spot and, with Klint Kubiak as the new OC, the Saints could also use a two-way inline tight end that is proficient both blocking and running routes.

#5 - Erick All, Iowa

We might be talking about Erick All differently right now if it wasn’t for health issues. Obviously, film is crucial, but we also look at some underlying metrics to figure out what kind of player we are working with. And even those small sample sizes, Erick All checks virtually all the boxes. He was utilized at WR for more than half of his snaps and he was only asked to pass block on 2.5% of his snaps. His 2.62 yards per route run was second only to Brock Bowers among tight ends that we expected to be drafted. He can break tackles, he can make contested catches, and he’s one of the better tight ends vs. man to man (3.74 YPRR vs. man is even better than his overall 2.62).

The concerns? Well, first off, he did have to transfer out of Michigan due to competition. But the health is the major concern. In 2022 he had what was described as “life-changing” spine surgery due to back issues. Then, in October of 2023, his season ended with an ACL injury. With relative unknowns like All, the draft is going to play a HUGE factor in how we view them. If a team takes an early shot on the man coming out of the Iowa Tight End Factory, we’ll be willing to take that chance as well.

 

 

 

#6 - Theo Johnson, Penn State

Brock Bowers is about as close to perfect as we are going to get. After that, we’re going to have some flaws so we might as well lean into athleticism where we can. That’s the great difference maker at a position that asks a lot of its competitors. There are a lot of different ways to view athleticism but one metric, Relative Athletic Score, sure loves Theo Johnson.

That’s a massive sample size that includes freak athletes like Vernon Davis and Kyle Pitts. One caveat I do want to mention is that the 40 time as 4.57 is nice but we’ve got guys like Evan Engram (4.42) and Kyle Pitts (4.49) running sub-4.5s. In this case, the score high because it factors “size-adjusted speed” that accounts for his 6’6” 260-pound frame but that doesn’t necessarily stop defensive backs and linebackers from chasing him down and preventing a touchdown. 

Guys like Rob Gronkowski and Travis Kelce would have to fist-fight guys down the field whereas some of these faster tight ends are simply off to the races. Johnson only broke two tackles last year and his inability to truly break away explains why his longest play was only 34 yards despite leading this group of tight ends with a 10-yard aDot. In fact, besides the seven touchdowns, Theo Johnson was asked to block on more pass plays than we like to see and his yards per route run is 15th out of the 20 or so tight ends we looked at. As with the rest of this tier, where he gets selected will be crucial to our final ranking.

#7 - Cade Stover, Ohio State

Again, this tier is pretty fluid. The “seventh” tight end could easily end up being the TE2 when all is said and done. Cade Stover to me is a guy who isn’t really exceptional in any one category but he’s pretty solid in all of them. He’s got decent size at 6’4”, 247 and he ran a 4.65 forty at the combine which is acceptable. His yards per route run is just over two which is top five for this class, and he has a solid aDot and YAC to go with it. The one metric he did really impress with was an 80.4% catch rate which is even better than the 78.9% from Brock Bowers.

The narrative in favor of Cade Stover is simple. Ohio State is one of, if not the best, schools at producing wide receivers. They are consistently STACKED. That’s partially why Stover was asked to block on 12.6% of his pass plays which is a little high. And he still managed to run over 50% of his routes from a WR spot, despite the competition. It didn’t help him that many scouts skipped the Ohio State Pro Day once Marvin Harrison Jr. said he wasn’t competing but, hopefully, a team already had their eye on Stover regardless.

TIER FOUR - Deeper Upside Plays

#8 - Devin Culp, Washington

As we’ve been harping on, the draft is going to reshape this entire landscape. For fantasy football, we don’t care which blocking tight ends get drafted. If Tip Reimann gets drafted and Devin Culp doesn’t, who cares? So, we aren’t going to rank blocking tight ends like Reimann. As for Culp, there have been three tight ends over the last decade to weigh over 230 pounds and run a sub 4.49 40-yard dash. Evan Engram. Darren Waller. And Devin Culp. That’s obviously a rare group in terms of size speed combinations.

And here’s the picture we are painting. Washington had a big-armed QB that liked to air it out in Michael Penix. He had three wide receivers that are all expected to be selected in this draft, one of which in the top three. They also had an inline tight end in Jack Westover that split the snaps. This wouldn’t be the first time we saw a player that didn’t produce much in college but had raw traits that the NFL likes. If a team takes him high, we are very much in. And, if they don’t, we are out. That’s the beautiful thing about dynasty rookie drafts - we don’t need to finalize our rankings until after we get the final, and most important, piece to the puzzle.

#9 - Dallin Holker, Colorado State

It’s incredible how far we’ve come in terms of analytics and metrics. Because there was a time where we would simply look at the base stats for a player like Dallin Holker, and how he led all tight ends with 64 receptions for 766 yards and call him the top guy. And, honestly, there is something to be said for that which is why he makes our list here. Maybe he simply does have “the knack” and that might translate to the next level.

But there are certainly some red flags here. First off, a 4.78 forty-yard dash is well outside what we like to see. The most successful guys in that range at the NFL level are guys like Jack Doyle. They’re also typically bigger blocking tight ends at that speed but Holker is only 6’3”, 241 pounds. 

He honestly wasn’t even particularly efficient on his absurd 105 targets with only a 61% catch rate. Draft capital could save him here if a team truly believes but I think the reality was that Jay Norvell’s Rams weren’t really loaded with pass-catching talent this year and Holker was simply peppered with targets against Mountain West defenses by default.

#10 - Johnny Wilson, Florida State

You can call this cheating if you want. Because he’s technically a wide receiver. But look around the tight end landscape. Guys like Antonio Gates and Jimmy Graham were basketball players. Logan Thomas was a quarterback. Darren Waller and Juwan Johnson were wide receivers. There aren’t going to be ten fantasy relevant tight ends from this class - there might not even be two. So, we need to think outside the box.

Johnny Wilson at the combine said that he wants to play wide receiver, not tight end. And why wouldn’t he - wide receivers get paid a lot more money. But sometimes that is out of a player’s control. If the team decides your path to making the team is to go over and join the tight end group, working with the tight end coach, what are you going to say? No? We’ve seen this time and time again. 

Just last year Stanford wide receiver Elijah Higgins was converted to tight end at the NFL level. Former quarterback turned wide receiver turned tight end Stone Smartt scored a 50+ yard touchdown for the Chargers. If a team takes the 6’7”, ~240-pound Johnny Wilson and makes him a tight end, that would be fantastic for us for fantasy football. If he had TE eligibility from day one, he’d honestly be the TE2 behind Brock Bowers.

Honorable Mentions: Jared Wiley, McCallan Castles, Isaac Rex, Tanner McLachlan, Tip Reiman, Jack Westover