Anomaly or New Norm? What to Make of TE Outliers for 2024 (Fantasy Football)

Over the past month, I’ve been going through outlier stats from the 2023 NFL season and examining if we should consider them anomalies or new norms heading into the 2024 season. You can check out the quarterback, running back, and wide receiver editions from earlier in the series. Last up, possibly the most disproportionate position in fantasy football, tight end.

The Stats

This series focuses on efficiency stats, and it’s no different for tight ends. Looking at per-target, per-reception, and per-game data gives us a better understanding of a player’s talent and role than compiled end-of-season stats. To eliminate players with a sample size that was too small, I looked at players who saw at least 40 targets in the 2023 season. That narrowed it down to 37 tight ends. You can see the averages of the stats I looked at for those 37 players in the table below.

Evan Engram: 6.7 Rec/Game

Engram fell just two receptions short of Zach Ertz’s tight end reception record set in 2018. He played one more game but saw 13 fewer targets than Ertz in 2018. His 6.7 rec/game led the NFL, ahead of T.J.Hockenson (6.3) and Travis Kelce (6.2). Engram finished as the overall TE2, the same as Ertz in his record-setting season, but was just TE6 on a fantasy points/game basis.

Anomaly or New Norm?

Engram’s high reception rate led to a career-high 963 receiving yards but the fact that his 8.4 yards/rec ranked 34th out of 37 qualified tight ends reminds us how he earned the “Shmevan Shmengram” moniker. He also had the fourth-highest catch rate among tight ends (79.7%), though it came on the 34th ranked aDOT (5.0). The best season of Engram’s career came on high volume and high percentage short-area targets. While the type of targets might remain constant in 2024, the volume is in question now that Brian Thomas Jr. and Gabe Davis have joined Christian Kirk in the Jacksonville receiver room. 

George Kittle: 15.7 Yards/Rec, 11.3 Yards/Target

Kittle set new career highs in both yards/rec and yards/target in 2023 and led the league in both metrics among qualified tight ends. Only four players hit at least 15.7 yards/rec and 11.3 yards/rec in 2023, and Kittle was the only tight end. 

Perhaps most impressively, Kittle’s 11.3 yards/target is the most by any tight end with at least 90 targets in NFL history.

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Anomaly or New Norm?

This kind of efficiency is typically anomalous but it seems to be the norm for Kittle. Since 2014, we have just six seasons where a tight end finished with at least 15.0 yards/rec. 

I mentioned earlier that Kittle’s 11.3 yards/target in 2023 was the best ever for a tight end with at least 90 targets. Looking further down the list, he also put up the fifth, sixth, and thirteenth best seasons. He joins teammates Brandon Aiyuk and Brock Purdy as efficiency standouts in this article series. It’s safe to assume that as long as the band stays together and continues to be orchestrated by Kyle Shanahan, Kittle’s efficiency will remain well above average. 

Jonnu Smith: 7.1 YAC/Rec

I didn’t expect to write about Jonnu Smith in this article, but here we are. The journeyman tight end set career highs in targets (70), receptions, (50), and receiving yards (582) last season. He set these career bests while playing alongside Kyle Pitts. He was one of only five tight ends in the league who averaged more than 7.0 YAC/rec.

As you can see, David Njoku and George Kittle were the only two tight ends to eclipse 7.0 YAC/rec with more targets than Smith. 

Anomaly or New Norm?

Jonnu’s 7.1 YAC/rec is a career outlier, but not because of how great it was. Rather, it was the lowest since his rookie season. He’s averaged 7.2 YAC/rec over his seven-year career, trailing only George Kittle (7.3) for the best career rate of any tight end of all time.

He’s left Atlanta for Miami and the chance to be the lead tight end for the Dolphins. He’s unlikely to see a high target share behind Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle, but he likely will continue making big plays after the catch in the open spaces created in Mike McDaniel’s offense. He’s TE27 in ADP as of this writing, meaning you can take him as a last-round flier or simply keep him on your waiver wire radar.

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Mark Andrews + Isaiah Likely: 9.2 Targets/TD

I combined the two Baltimore tight ends here because Likely had the best target-to-touchdown rate at the position with 8.0 targets/TD and Andrews tied Hunter Henry for second at 10.2 targets/TD. Andrews was the TE3 over the first 10 weeks of the season before going down with a brutal leg injury in Week 11. Then from Week 12 on, Likely produced as the TE6. 

Anomaly or New Norm?

It appears that the Ravens like throwing touchdowns to their tight ends. Lamar Jackson threw nearly half his 24 touchdowns last season to tight ends with six to Andrews and four for Likely. Even players deeper on the depth chart got involved with Tyler Huntley throwing one to Likely and another to Charlie Kolar.

Over his career, 39% of Jackson’s touchdown passes have gone to tight ends, with Andrews’ 33 easily leading the way. The takeaways here are that Andrews should continue to score at an above-average rate and that Likely is the rare tight end fantasy football insurance policy.

Dalton Kincaid: 45.5 Target/TD

Kincaid’s rookie season was on the other end of the touchdown-scoring spectrum. His two touchdowns were the fewest for any tight end that saw at least 90 targets last season. His slow start as a rookie didn’t help. He didn’t score his first touchdown until Week 8 and then found the end zone again in Week 10, though both of those scores came when fellow tight end Dawson Knox was sidelined with an injury. Kincaid finished as the TE11 despite not finding the end zone again until the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs.

Anomaly or New Norm?

As pointed out in Javier Manzanera’s vacated targets article, the Bills lost 317 targets from last season, the second most in the NFL. That includes the 15 touchdown passes that went to a combination of Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis, plus a touchdown apiece for Trent Sherfield and Deonte Harty. Buffalo spent a first-round pick on Keon Coleman and brought in a gaggle of wide receiver retreads, but Kincaid is expected to step up in his second season.

Josh Allen only threw 29 touchdowns last season, his lowest total since 2019. If that number bounces back, Kincaid will likely score more than twice and certainly more than once every 45 targets. If he takes a step forward in the offense and scores more frequently, he has the potential to be one of the rare elite tight ends for fantasy football.