NFL Best Ball: Pre-Combine Rookie Tight Ends

2026 NFL Draft: Rookie Tight Ends

It's early, but the 2025 tight end class has the look of an all-timer. First-rounders Colston Loveland and Tyler Warren both lived up to the billing in Year 1, and guys like Harold Fannin and Oronde Gadsden have already far surpassed their expectations based on draft capital. Even guys like Gunnar Helm and Terrance Ferguson showed flashes of being future contributors. And Mason Taylor is still very talented...

Not to take the air out of the balloon, but it'll be tough for this class or any class to match the depth and top-end talent that 2025 produced. Still, there are some really intriguing tight end prospects in this class that we'll need to keep on our best ball radars. 

The NFL Combine is this weekend and it provides an important opportunity for these prospects to establish themselves on scouting radars. My guy Mario Puig already wrote up his 10 fantasy football prospects to watch at the NFL Scouting Combine, and I'm chipping in with my deep dive on the 2026 tight end class specifically.

2026 Rookie Tight End Metrics

Below is a table with the top tight end prospects in this class based on fantasy potential. Each of them had strong pass-catching roles at the college level that imply some level of usage in that regard in the NFL. 

Here are their 2025 stats below.

The key metrics here are target share (Tm Tar%) and YPT (yards per target). Those metrics give us a good idea of which players A) had a significant role in the offense and B) were efficient with those opportunities.

We've got some more metrics below. 

QUICK LINKS

Sync a League

Your path to victory starts here

Rankings

See the top players in your league

NFL Lineups

See the weekly starting lineups

This table aims to show how each player performed relative to the "team baseline." Put another way, I wanted to take each of these players' teams' total yards per pass attempt and completion percentage and compare that to the prospects' catch rates and YPT figures. 

I put together a rudimentary metric called TES+ (working title). It combines YPT and target share and is scaled to where a score of 100 is the average. So, guys like Tanner Koziol and Eli Stowers rank well above average based on their production. Obviously, there's more to a prospect than their production profile, though it is an important piece of the overall puzzle. 

The Delta YPT and Delta PCT columns measure how much more explosive and efficient each player was compared to the team outputs. So, for instance, Tanner Koziol averaged 0.3 Yards Per Target more than the Houston baseline while also generating a catch rate 15.4% above the team's catch rate. Factor in that he was targeted 25% of the time, and it's hard not to come away impressed.

I bolded the outliers, both good and bad, in those Delta columns.

You'll notice John Michael Gyllenborg of Wyoming brings up the rear on this chart, though we'd be unwise to totally write him off just based on that. He came into the year with some buzz after back-to-back seasons with strong YPT figures and three touchdowns in each. A leg injury wiped out the middle portion of the season, and he wasn't quite the same in his final four games down the stretch.

He caught an impressive 65% of his targets in 2025, but at a paltry 5.9 YPT. In fairness, Wyoming as a team completed 55.8% at just 5.7 YPT. That's terrible. And that's why context matters. 

2026 Rookie Tight End Snapshots

• Kenyon Sadiq: Though Sadiq doesn't pop by this metric, there's still a reason why he's the consensus TE1 going into the combine. He's a fluid mover and he's great after the catch. His frame (6-3, 245) isn't that of a conventional three-down tight end but that doesn't really matter as much anymore. My colleague, Mario Puig, made a great point on the RotoWire Fantasy Football podcast that there's a growing counter in NFL offenses to combat the proliferation of 2-high safety looks, and that's getting tight ends more involved. There's room for more than just the guy who blocks and catches 30 passes a season. Offenses are looking for a guy like Sadiq who can line up tight or in the slot and create mismatches for opposing defenses. Sadiq profiles as exactly that, and assuming he tests as well as the film implies, he'll be a first-rounder. 
• Eli Stowers: Stowers is a cool story. He started out as a quarterback recruit at Texas A&M before finding his footing as a tight end at New Mexico State. He firmly got on the radar when he followed Diego Pavia to Vanderbilt and led the 'Dores in targets in back-to-back seasons. The production speaks for itself: 111 catches for 1,407 yards and nine touchdowns on 161 targets over 25 games at Vanderbilt. He's a lanky, long strider with good hands. It'll be interesting to see his weigh-in at the combine because, at the moment, I'm a little concerned about the frame not being super well-suited to going over the middle in the NFL. A good combine could put Stowers into first-round consideration.
• Tanner Koziol: I wrote about Koziol a little in my best ball tight ends piece, but the gist of my argument is that he was productive for all four years, capped off by moving from a MAC program to the Big 12 and carrying the Houston passing game. The frame is a little concerning at 6-foot-7; there aren't a ton of success stories for tight ends that size other than Jimmy Graham, who is a total outlier. That said, Koziol checks all the production boxes, and a combine that shows some movement skill will go a long way towards helping his draft stock.
• Dae'Quan Wright: Wright is likely a Day 3 guy, but he's got my attention. I watched a lot of him at Ole Miss the last two years and always came away impressed by his big-play ability and after-the-catch chops. He only caught 65% of his targets in 2025 but drew a strong share of targets in a crowded offense in 2025 and maintained a strong 9.3 YPT figure despite the low catch rate. That shows a high impact on a per-catch basis (16.3 YPR). A big combine from him could get him on people's radars. 

• Justin Joly: Joly's another guy with strong multi-year production. He blew up at UConn as a sophomore in 2023 with 56 grabs for 578 yards and then transferred to NC State, where he continued to post strong numbers. He combined for 92 grabs for 1,150 yards and 11 touchdowns in two seasons with the 'Pack. I can't quite tell how he'll grade out in athletic testing, and with him being listed in college at 6'3", I'm hoping that the combine measurements verify that. There isn't a long list of great tight ends under that height threshold.
• Oscar Delp: You can call me a homer for this one, as Delp's numbers won't stick out to many folks outside of Georgia football fandom. However, I feel as though the offense was not set up to maximize Delp. He's not Brock Bowers and was never going to have that type of role, but there were tantalizing flashes of brilliance over his final three years in Athens. He's also a tough blocker and a good natural athlete. A good combine from him could have scouts going back to take a closer look. 
• Eli Raridon: Raridon didn't do much at Notre Dame until his senior season, when he turned in an impressively efficient campaign. He caught 73% of his targets at 11.0 YPT, though he never scored a touchdown (cue the Beavis and Butthead meme). His YPT and catch rate figures both outpaced the Notre Dame baseline. He's 6'7" like Koziol so the frame concerns apply here as well, though I'm open to the possibility of him turning into something at the next level.
• Michael Trigg: Trigg seems to be picking up steam as someone who could challenge the TE2 spots. I'm not sure if I buy it, though. Maybe my eyes need to adjust to these rookies just inherently being older now because NIL is influencing kids to stay in school longer, so we don't get as many underclassmen or true seniors anymore.  He had an undeniably strong 2025 with 50 grabs for 694 yards and six touchdowns, but it came with a 56% catch rate that was 4% worse than team baseline. It was also his fifth year and his third school. You can't really penalize guys for transferring anymore, but it took him four years to play more than seven games or record more than 17 receptions. Maybe his combine will be too good to ignore, but I'm not enamored by the production profile, especially when you adjust for age.

Rookie Tight Ends -- Historical Comps (Measurables)

These comps are based solely on physical measurements pulled from our NFL combine database. 

2026 Rookie Tight End Best Ball ADP

Obviously, the market is pretty cool on this class right now, save for Sadiq, who goes in the 13th. Eli Stowers, Michael Trigg and Max Klare are the other guys who are reliably going in most drafts.

The only one of that group I haven't really discussed is Klare. He singlehandedly carried an otherwise brutal Purdue offense in 2024 before finding greener pastures in Columbus in 2025. Ohio State has a lot more mouths to feed so Klare's volume slipped from 81 targets to 56. His catch rate jumped from 63 percent to 77 percent, and he maintained a solid YPT figure of 8.0.

It will be interesting to see how the combine reshapes the tight end pecking order. Athleticism isn't the be-all, end-all for tight ends, but there are certain thresholds they'll need to hit in order to stay on the draftable radar. In any case, I think it's a good idea to get some drafts in on your preferred best ball platform before the Combine reconfigures the ADP. You could end up with some solid closing line value on some of these tight ends.

When you're watching along this weekend, here's a handy and comprehensive table of tight end workout data at the Combine courtesy of mockdraftable.