Fantasy Football – Tight End Leaders, Recap, and Data (2023)

The 2023 NFL season is behind us. The Kansas City Chiefs have been recrowned as Super Bowl Champions. Before becoming fully immersed in the upcoming 2024 season, let’s take a moment to reflect on the fantasy football season that was. As Winston Churchill said, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.” 

This is the tight end portion of the series. You can check out the quarterback, wide receiver and running reviews here. Keep an eye out for the tight ends reviews coming soon! 

Before diving in, a word of caution. With any attempt to look back, we will be met with hindsight bias. Once we know Puka Nacua had a phenomenal season, it is difficult not to look back and see the clues while what you were seeing in the moment gets ever more foggy. Sprinkle in a little confirmation bias – “I knew it! See, here are all the ‘definitive’ clues I’m finding now that I’m looking back.” I will attempt to expose my own biases through this exploration and highly encourage anyone reading to think through their biases as well. 

Fantasy Football Top-15 Tight Ends

Yes, I know people love their standard 12-team leagues and want an easy TE1 label. However, that’s rarely the case and I enjoy the additional context of total fantasy points in conjunction with mean and median values. More on the QB1 and other labels in the Fantasy Football Data and Stats section at the end. For now, enjoy the top 15 tight ends with at least 8 games (50% of the season played)!

Overperformers

This section is dedicated to the guys who outproduced their ADP most significantly. 

Sam LaPorta – LaPorta set records and fantasy leagues a blaze by finishing as the TE1 as a rookie. He tied for the most games above the TE1 weekly threshold as well as tying steadfast Fantasy TE studs Kelce and Kittle for the most games above the TE6 threshold, 7 games. The fact that you could score LaPorta as the 18th TE off the board almost guaranteed a positional advantage for any fantasy football team that took a chance on him.  

Trey McBride – Another rookie, McBride, was a huge success for fantasy managers in 2023. Although he didn’t post the gaudy single-week highs like LaPorta, the Cardinals’ future at tight end cleared the TE18 threshold in 59% of his games. Needless to say, both rookies will be hot commodities throughout the summer in both dynasty and redraft formats. 

Jake Ferguson – The Cowboys have a long history of producing tight ends and Ferguson is the latest to carry the torch. With Dalton Schultz leaving Dallas for Houston, a question of who would lead the ‘boys in tight end targets arose. Ferguson easily took that mantle on his way to a top-10 TE finish. Like McBride the top-tier upside was lacking but more than made up for on a weekly out. Over 65% of his games crossed the TE18 threshold good for another top-10 mark. Overall, not too shabby for an ADP over 200.

Underperformers 

Typically labeled “busts”, these players underproduced their ADP. 

Travis Kelce – It’s hard to label the guy who finished the season as the TE3 a “bust” but at cost, Kelce failed to return on his first-round value. Kelce still paced other tight ends in mean and median points per game however failed to post his exorbitant numbers like in seasons past. Only three of his 15 games topped 20 points for comparison Stephon Diggs, who fell off at the end of the season, was taken four picks after Kelce and posted five games over 20 points. Not saying this is the beginning of the end for Kelce yet it may be the impetus to move him out of the first round of drafts.

Dallas Goedert – Goedert provided some nice boom weeks with three finishes above the TE6 threshold. He also provided a bunch of bust games; his median score was 8.1 – by definition 50% of his 14 games were below this mark. Mix in the steep cost of being the sixth TE off the board and it’s clear why Goedert ends up in this list for 2023. 

Kyle Pitts – Once again Pitts has failed to make fantasy managers happy. It’s easy to point blame at recently removed Head Coach Arthur Smith and his lack of willingness to involve his playmakers, Bijan Robinson and Drake London as underperformed based on fantasy expectations. Pitts went off the board right after Goedert both by positional ADP (7th TE selected) and overall (73rd pick) and finished right above Goedert in total points (137.3 to 136.3) despite Pitts playing three additional games 

2023 Fantasy Football Injuries

I set this category aside because I feel it’s unfair to label a guy that got injured a “bust”.

Darren Waller – Waller was struggling with a floundering Giants team, which also lost starting QB Daniel Jones before Waller joined the injury list. Coming off the draft boards as the fifth tight end, Waller only returned 3 of his 12 games above the TE12 threshold. Recent rumors have Waller contemplating retirement combined with his third year of disappointing fantasy production and missed games should put Waller out of draft considerations for 2024.  

Mark Andrews – Unlike Waller, Andrews was off to a terrific start to the 2023 season. Andrews led the league in median points per game and finished above the TE12 threshold in 7 of his 10 games before his season was cut short in week 11.  Andrews was able to come back in the playoffs and should be perfectly fine moving forward into next season.

Pat Freiermuth – The “Muth” was primed for a strong third year in the league after a top-ten TE finish in 2022. Unfortunately, the stars never aligned for the Steelers’ tight end or anyone on the team’s offense. Freiermuth played just 12 games and only two of them topped 10 PPR points. Pickett struggled and now rumors swirl around the future of the QB position in Pittsburgh creating even more questions about The Muth’s future fantasy production.  

2024 Fantasy Football Outlook

Following Churchill’s lead, we will use this look back to help us see into the future. The 2024 season won’t start for a while, many things will change from this writing to your drafts. However, here are a few players to keep an eye on through these long football-less days.

Isiah Likely – In six games without Mark Andrews, Likely put up over 15 PPR three times and another over 10 PPR points. Yes, he needed an injury to get anything significant but in leagues with deep rosters, he could be a fun prospecting pick-up. 

Kyle Pitts – With Arthur Smith out as Head Coach the expectations for Pitts to be unleashed as a top-performing TE will once again be high. I’m cautiously optimistic about his chances in 2024 but will be eyeing his ADP throughout the summer to avoid paying for hype. 

Travis Kelce – It hasn’t hit Brady status yet, but the wave of voices trying to predict Kelce’s decline has been swelling since celebrating his 30th birthday. Despite his third-place finish in total points, the 2023 season was Kelce’s lowest-scoring season since 2015. 

Fantasy Football Data and Stats

The data is compiled from various free and openly available sources and then used to calculate further data points. For instance, widely available general player stats are compiled and then used to calculate a player’s average or median points per game. For any questions concerning the underlying data, please reach out to me on X @fftheathomedad. 

When I use terms like QB12 or QB24 thresholds, I am referring to the average points of that particular player across the 2023 season. Using who was the twelfth-highest-scoring QB in any particular week creates a misrepresentation of what the score at that level typically is. For example, CJ Stroud scored 14.16 points in both weeks 5 and 6, in week 6 he was the QB12 however in week 5 he was the QB17 more than 4 points less than the QB12 on the week.

The thresholds used along with the median and range of values are below for reference. 

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