Pre-Draft 2025 Rookie Rankings

As well as some additional thoughts on the TE class and where they fit

Hey folks,

First of I just want to say I was completely overwhelmed by the response to my WR article from a couple days ago. It seems you folks really enjoyed it, and based off that article Thinking About Thinking hit the #1 fastest rising Substack in the ‘sports’ category this weekend. So truly I cannot thank you all enough for reading and responding to that piece.

Here it is if you haven’t yet had the chance to check it out:

Second of all, I’m not going to write a full-length TE article pre-draft. I’m sorry to give them the short shrift but I will discuss the major players in this introduction and give you some thoughts on the position as a whole. What I can do that will help you substantially more than anything I will write about TEs myself is direct you to the best TE resource imaginable:

NFL Draft: Remember The Tight Ends 2025 Class Rankings

Max Toscano has rapidly become one of my favourite analysts in the space. You’ll recall how much I leaned on Noah Hills’ work at the running back position, and while I hope he’s enjoying a thriving law school experience free of fantasy football, I feel like I have a replacement for that level of analysis in Max.

He’s well-versed and experienced evaluating each position, but his Substack focuses exclusively on Tight End analysis. So you’re getting a level of depth and understanding of the position and the 2025 prospects in particular I do not think you can get from any other source — certainly including myself.

The one word of caution is that Max’s rankings are for an NFL perspective not a fantasy one. However, I think so long as you actually read the content beyond the ranking list you’ll find a ton of applicable analysis to fantasy football.

Fortunately, we were able book Max on DynastyPoints this year to explicitly discuss his dynasty rankings at the position, which you can check out here:

Evaluating Tight Ends for Fantasy

My thoughts on the Tight End position for fantasy football have changed dramatically in recent years, and I think the NFL’s view of the position has too.

Over a decade ago NFL defenses played primarily in ‘base’ personnel — seven defensive linemen / linebackers and four defensive backs. Against this backdrop, passing the ball was substantially more effective than running, and pass-rates continued to climb over a number of years, and offenses improved their efficiency as a result.

Naturally, offensive play callers weren’t the only ones to figure out that passing was dramatically more efficient than running. Defensive play-callers did too, and in response to the rise in pass-rate, defenses got faster, smaller, and played more defensive backs even on early downs. This has made passing the ball on early-downs far less of a cheat code than it was 5-10 years ago and brought balance back to the perpetually cyclical game that is football.

These days, the most efficient offenses come in several forms. But you need to be proficient in both the run and pass game. Passing is still — for most offenses — more efficient per play on aggregate, but the gap has narrowed to a point where it is necessary to maintain a credible threat on the ground in order to sustain an efficient passing game.

It is extremely difficult in the modern NFL to pass the ball efficiently if you’re staring into defensive looks crafted to take away explosive pass plays on every down. It’s impossible if you don’t have an elite QB such as Joe Burrow or Patrick Mahomes. You need to be able to punish teams on the ground for tilting their entire defense toward stopping the pass in order to force the defense to give you more favourable looks to throw against.

So how does all this effect TEs in fantasy football?

Well in the hay day of the pass-first, pass-always NFL meta, teams could — as Max often puts it — “eat candy for dinner.” Defenses were not appropriately adjusting to the gap in efficiency between early-down passes and runs, so you could thrive offensively by playing a non-blocking threat TE and running 5 eligibles on every play. From a fantasy perspective, the upside of Mike Gesicki, Jared Cook, or Coby Fleener types far exceeded that of a ‘traditional’ TE because in effect these players were just ‘big WRs.’

But if you play Mike Gesicki as the sole-TE in 11-personnel you’re effectively playing 10-personnel. Gesicki cannot credibly block defensive ends from in-line in the run or pass-game. If you play a TE of this ilk as your primary in-line TE in 11-personnel in all situations, you just won’t have an effective run-game. Not going to happen.

If you put him out there in-line only on called pass plays, defenses will know you’re passing the football and can match your personnel by selling out against the pass with small personnel and wide-aligned pass rushers. Yes, you might have your best 4 pass catchers on the field, but the defense has counter-acted this advantage by playing their best pass defenders.

Your offense will be better off playing an inferior pass-catching TE in a vacuum, but one who can provide value in the run-game, and force the defense to stay honest on pass plays.

Another — arguably more important — change in this period is the evolution of the slot-WR. 5-10 years ago the platonic ideal of a slot-WR looked something like Cole Beasley or Julian Edelman — undersized, agile ‘jitter bugs.’

Lately however things have changed. As mentioned in the WR-column I wrote, there is a new meta taking over at slot-WR. Yes, we still have counter-examples such of elite, undersized slots such as Josh Downs — but while players like him used to be the norm, that’s now shifted toward players like Amon-Ra St. Brown, Chris Godwin, Drake London, Jauan Jennings, Khalil Shakir, or Cooper Kupp.

These WRs — called ‘F-WRs’ — are bigger, meaner, and play a high % of slot snaps. While each is a highly proficient WR, the increased size of these players relative to a more traditional slot-archetype means teams can take advantage of their proximity to the line-of-scrimmage and activate them as secondary blockers in the run-game.

As I said earlier, playing a Fleener or Gesicki type as your inline TE is effectively playing 10-personnel. Therefore, we’ve often seen these players find success in 12-personnel based offenses where they are effectively the slot-WR while another TE plays in-line. When the Bills drafted Dalton Kincaid, the theory of the case was to play base-12 personnel with him and Dawson Knox, using Kincaid’s versatility to force defenses into a difficult position: match heavy with heavy and get diced up in the passing game, or stay light and get gashed on the ground.

You can knock the blocking prowess of is archetype of TE all you want, but there is no debate who the better blocker is between Dalton Kincaid and a Cole Beasley-type slot WR.

Unfortunately for Kincaid, Beasley is no longer the Bills slot WR. Khalil Shakir is. Kincaid is probably the more versatile blocker than Shakir, but the difference is not that large from a slot-WR deployment. More importantly, the difference in their blocking utility is far less than the difference in their pass-catching utility.

This is the basis of what Max Toscano calls the ‘WR’ test. If a TE can’t play primarily as an in-line ‘Y-TE,’ they are competing now against a brand of slot of WR which on most teams provides comparable blocking utility to a ‘move-TE.’ So in order to be worth playing, they need to be as adept as those slot-WRs in the receiving game. That’s an extremely high bar which most TEs do not clear.

As such, TEs like Kincaid, Pitts, Gesicki, Greg Dulcich, Chigoziem Okonkwo etc. have seen their roles reduced compared to what similar TEs (or in some cases even these TEs themselves) have had in years prior. If you can’t pose a credible threat in the run-game as an in-line blocker, your role will be limited to 11-personnel in-line snaps in obvious passing downs only (3rd and long, two-minute drill, etc.), plus occasional 12-personnel snaps at a rate which depends on the relative strength of your team’s slot-WR.

So all this brings us to the method I think you should take when evaluating rookie-TE prospects:

1. Does this TE have the blocking capability to play in-line?

2. If not, can this TE provide receiving capability equivalent to an NFL slot-WR? (and/or equivalent to the slot-WR on their specific NFL team)

Similar to our discussion of easy button targets at WR, this mode of analysis is reliant on whether the TE in question can meet a given real-life utility threshold in order for you to target the most fantasy friendly aspects of their profile.

For an NFL team, blocking should be evaluated on a linear scale even among those who hit the in-line capability threshold. You’d rather have an elite blocker than a passable one. But for fantasy, all that really matters is the threshold. If a TE is capable enough as a blocker that their team will play them as an in-line TE you can lock in the 80%+ route rates we need for elite fantasy TEs. From there, it matters very little to us how far above that threshold their blocking is, and we should focus almost entirely on what they can do as receivers.

This elongated introduction should give you an idea by now of how I feel about the top-three TEs (in current dynasty value) in this class.

Tyler Warren is by most (but not all) accounts the best blocker among the top-TEs in this class. But most draft analysts I trust have deemed Colston Loveland a sufficient blocker as well. However, I’m reasonably confident Loveland is the more advanced receiver.

Warren was incredibly productive in 2024 and poses a major YAC threat at the next level. But I do think his skillset is a touch limited athletically and his route-running is un-defined. There are not a lot of reps where he’s won down-field as a separator. Loveland may not be as rugged in either facet as Warren, but he’s far more technically sound and though neither has athletic testing, profiles to me as the superior mover on tape. He’s also the younger prospect with more time to develop his game which I think is already more advanced.

You also have to consider that Loveland’s raw production was held back by a run-first offense — especially in his final season when Michigan rotated through several non-viable QBs. His production profile is quite strong when adjusted for team-context.

I like both Loveland and Warren, and would not be surprised if I wind up over market on both players. Dane Brugler has both ranked ahead of any non-Travis Hunter WR on his big board. This is a common sentiment among draft analysts even if it’s possible they will be drafted later due to positional value concerns and Loveland’s shoulder injury.

But to me we’re getting two full-time players in Loveland and Warren who are similarly productive to the WRs in this class and (in the leagues I rank for) getting additional points per reception, and providing higher value over replacement given TE scoring. I think it’s odd we’ve seen them projected as late-Round 1 picks in dynasty rookie drafts, and both are under-valued. But if I had to choose just one, I’m going with Loveland.

The other player I want to touch on is Harold Fannin Jr.

He’s the most productive TE in this class (arguably ever) but has significant limitations in his game which make him a polarizing prospect. He ran a 4.71 40-yard dash and weighs just 241 pounds (though I suspect his play speed is a tick faster and play weight is a tick smaller). Fannin does not project to be a capable in-line blocker in the NFL, which means he’ll need to succeed as a slot-WR first and foremost. Whether he can do so given his athletic profile is up for debate.

His production profile suggests he can. But this was done in the MAC, and most importantly — it was primarily done from an in-line alignment vs. linebackers where his athletic limitations had less effect. He won’t get those matchups with his plausible deployment in the NFL.

Here’s where I ultimately stand on Fannin. I think an NFL team is going to over-draft him. If I were a GM I wouldn’t take him until Day 3. You’re not accessing any upside at TE with a Fannin pick so you’re effectively drafting a slot WR — and I think there are better WR bets with more paths to hitting on Day 2 of the draft. I wouldn’t take Fannin meaningfully higher than say, Xavier Restrepo. You don’t get any bonus points on Sundays because your slot WR has a ‘TE’ next to his name.

In fantasy of course, you very much do.

The upside case of Fannin in fantasy is so much higher because on the chance he does ‘pass the WR test’ and play as a full-time NFL slot WR, he will provide elite production relative to his TE position in fantasy.

If I had to bet on an outcome, I think his athletic limitations catch up to him and he plays as a 40-60% route share rotational TE who plays in-line on 3rd and longs, and mixes in for an additional 8-10 routes per game from 12-personnel packages. But my ranking needs to account for all possible outcomes, and I want to acknowledge the intense fantasy upside in the case that I’m wrong.

Pre-Draft Rookie Rankings