Fantasy Football 2026: Preliminary tight end rankings and tiers

Welcome to the second installment of my preliminary rankings and tiers for each major position for fantasy. Today I’m hitting everyone’s least favorite position: Tight end. OK fine, some people like kicker even less. In most leagues, you must start a tight end, so you can’t just ignore it.

You can find all my preseason fantasy content, including my other rankings and tiers, here. I’ll update rankings in late August. Hopefully, these initial looks will help you to start thinking about player values and draft strategies.

Before we get to the rankings, here are three observations on the TE position.

1. As usual, TE is top-heavy. In the quarterback rankings column, I talked about how deep that position is with quality. Tight end is deep too, but with mediocrity. Yes, we’ve seen a nice influx of young talent in recent seasons and especially last season. Still, in all six seasons of this decade, no more than six tight ends have averaged more than 10 fantasy points per game (FPPG) in Half PPR scoring. Last season, only four TEs hit that number, while a dozen averaged between 8-10 FPPG. It’s easy to find a decent fantasy tight end who will score a handful of TDs and give you a few good spike weeks, mixed in with a lot of “3 for 32, 0 TD” games. Finding one who will help you win multiple weeks is much harder.

So, if you want to differentiate at this position, you’ll need to pay up for one of the top-tier players, or get lucky. Tight End is a “onesie” position – in the vast majority of leagues you only start one, and it’s not a position where you’re likely to flex. That pushes the top guys up the rankings even more, but trust me, there will be some waiver gems. There always are.

2. *Rookie tight ends smashed in 2025 …*Tight end has traditionally been a position where rookies have little value for fantasy. It’s a hard position to learn, for obvious reasons. Travis Kelce didn’t have his first 1,000 yard season until he was 27. Then along came Kyle Pitts in 2021, Sam LaPorta in 2023, Brock Bowers in 2024, and Tyler Warren, Colston Loveland, and Harold Fannin, Jr. in 2026. This year’s class won’t be like that, but maybe it’s time to retire the ironclad premise that tight ends can’t produce as rookies.

3. Can the old guys still bring it? Let’s visit the flip side. Travis Kelce is 36, and George Kittle, Mark Andrews, and Dallas Goedert will all be at least 31 when the season kicks off. The good news is that none of these players – any of whom could still turn in a Top-5 TE season this year – will be expensive this draft season.

I’ve organized the TEs into tiers, as I do at every position. You should do the same. To reiterate, everyone wants the best players, and a tiered approach allows fantasy managers to have a...