The tight end revolution is here, ladies and gentlemen. And some fantasy football dynasty leagues out there are missing out! Yes, I’ve heard of some leagues that have watered down their own game by removing the tight end spot. I understand that you might want to make the game easier on yourself and your friends, where you only think about Christian McCaffrey or Justin Jefferson. 

But it’s just a shame that you don’t get to enjoy the true glory and positional scarcity of Sam LaPorta, Dalton Kincaid, Trey McBride and, the chosen one, Brock Bowers. If that’s your league, it’s time to get that vote up and running and get that TE spot added back so you can play like the big dogs. And use this article and the big boy tight end position to your advantage!

The beautiful thing about this influx of young talent at the position is that it has also pushed down the values of the veteran tight ends. Travis Kelce has never been more affordable. If you are a team looking to win now, it’s never been easier to go out and buy yourself some upside in your dynasty league. And, after sifting through the dynasty rankings out there, it’s obvious there is value to be had.

So today we are going to look at FIVE tight ends to buy now in dynasty based on where I’m seeing them on sites like KeepTradeCut.com, PeakInHighSkool.com and FantasyPros.com. Whether you are a win-now team or playing for the future, whether you have a lot of assets to trade with or not, we’ve got something here for everyone. I’ll try to give an idea of what picks I would move for these guys, but you can always check out our Dynasty Fantasy Football Rankings to see which players to move. 

 

 

 

Mark Andrews

There is some divide on the current value of Mark Andrews across the industry. The FantasyPros rankings have him at TE5 and KeepTradeCut has him as TE6 while PeakInHighSchool has him at TE2. All that really matters at the end of the day though is what his owner in your league believes he’s worth. And I think he should be valued as high as dynasty TE1 – especially if you are playing to win now.

Travis Kelce had his first 1,000-yard season of his career at 27 years old. Zach Ertz had his at 28. Mark Andrews is 28 right now. He has a top five tight end season OF ALL TIME in fantasy on his resume. If you take out the game where Andrews got hurt last year, where he only played 11% of the snaps, he was averaging ~14.6 PPR points per game, which would have tied for first with Travis Kelce and T.J. Hockenson. And conditions have not really changed for him – it’s still Andrews, Lamar Jackson, Zay Flowers and Rashod Bateman as the key weapons over there.

It’s also worth mentioning that he’s arguably the only tight end that has an actual handcuff that we can trust. If you can also acquire Isaiah Likely somehow, that combination becomes arguably the safest insulation anyone could have at the tight end position. If Sam LaPorta or Trey McBride go down, you’ve got nothing. If Andrews goes down and you have Likely, the train keeps on rolling. I’m willing to spend a first on Andrews and a mid-to-late second on Likely to just not worry about TE for a while.

 

 

 

Kyle Pitts

We just mentioned in the previous section that Travis Kelce and Zach Ertz had their first 1,000-yard seasons at 27/28. Kyle Pitts is the only player ever to have one at 21 years old. He’s still 23 right now. Despite being in the league three years already, he’s younger than Dalton Kincaid. This guy has so much elite-level ball left to play that it boggles my mind that he’s currently priced as the TE4-6 in dynasty depending on where you look. He could easily become the dynasty TE1 this year and hold that spot for a long time.

We’ve seen this story before. Evan Engram was a top five tight end in fantasy with Eli Manning as a rookie. Then he suffered from bad quarterback play for a few years before bursting back onto the scene with Trevor Lawrence. Pitts had that 1,000-yard season with the ghost of Matt Ryan then his QB play evaporated. And he could have been stuck on that same trajectory had the Falcons not made an aggressive move for Kirk Cousins and sped that timeline up. 

There is a world where Cousins is Cousins and Michael Penix Jr. pans out and, in that world, you don’t need to worry about Pitts again. Set it and forget it for years and years. It’s crazy how Arthur Smith and Desmond Ridder were able to make us forget the incredible upside of a 6’6”, 245-pound wide receiver who runs a 4.49 that you can start in a TE spot in fantasy. 

 

 

 

Evan Engram

To say Evan Engram led all tight ends in receptions last year would be an understatement – he led all tight ends by almost 20 receptions and had the fourth most receptions of any player in the league. In any sort of PPR or tight end premium format, it doesn’t get much safer. Yet he’s not in the top 10 tight ends on any platform we looked at: FantasyPros, KeepTradeCut or PeakInHighSkool. What are we doing?

The Jaguars just replaced Calvin Ridley with a rookie in Brian Thomas They replaced field stretcher Zay Jones with Gabe Davis. I don’t expect the target distribution to be fundamentally different. Doug Pederson is still calling the shots here and he’s loved his tight ends going back to his time with Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert on the Eagles. 

Pederson especially loves tight end screens. Engram led all tight ends in receptions on screens in 2023 with 21. That’s free real estate in any sort of PPR. Evan Engram’s 8.4 targets per game last year wasn’t even the highest we’ve seen from Pederson as Zach Ertz once averaged 9.75 a game. It’s a function of the offense, it’s built in. And just imagine if we see some positive regression for Engram in the touchdown department? He still has a lot of juice in the tank and he’s still one of the fastest tight ends the league has ever seen.

 

 

 

Greg Dulcich

It’s funny how our mentality works. There was so much hype for this guy. Then he gets hurt very early in 2023 and falls completely off our radar. His value on most evaluation sites has plummeted to the third-round range – despite him being only 24 years old. Soft tissue injuries can be scary at times, but we’ve seen plenty of guys overcome them to shed that injury label, like Christian McCaffrey.

Last year, Dulcich earned the starting job. He was slated to play the “joker” role that Jimmy Graham occupied in Sean Payton’s offense as a tight end that can move out to WR and cause matchup issues. He then caught two balls on the first three drives before getting hurt. Without Dulcich, they inevitably ended up using Lucas Krull in that role who ran more routes than Adam Trautman over the second half of the season. That role is still up for the taking.

So, the gameplan is pretty simple here. Jerry Jeudy has been traded so there is a potential target void. We acquire Dulcich hoping that he comes back healthy and takes that role. We keep an eye on Lucas Krull just in case. Krull should be on waivers unless your league is insanely deep (if you are in a super deep league where someone has Lucas Krull, that’s awesome – go add Stone Smartt). 

Because of how cheap Dulcich and Krull are to acquire, we give ourselves a pretty good shot at nailing the pass catching tight end for this team unless they use Tim Patrick instead. But we are basically talking about a 3rd round pick here which already has a pretty bad hit rate as it stands. To me, that is worth it. 

 

 

 

Hunter Henry

Competing now can be tough in dynasty because there are only so many elite options out there. And they aren’t always for sale. You can’t just force someone to trade you Travis Kelce or Mark Andrews. 

So, the next best thing is to find an affordable guy that you can actually put in your lineup now without it making you sick. Then you load up your bench with upside plays hoping something hits. We already wrote a full article dedicated to one affordable option we like in Pat Freiermuth. The other is Hunter Henry, who will have his own article soon as well. But here is the short and sweet for now:

Hunter Henry has always been pretty good in man-to-man situations. That’s a big part of what makes him so effective in the redzone when teams typically go with “zero” coverage. He’s a size advantage mismatch and can make contested catches. There are a lot of names from this article in the favorable sections of this chart from Football Insights on Twitter and Henry is no exception.

So, we’ve got this guy who is great vs. man (and zone too, but it’s more difficult to be good vs. man). All he needs is more manufactured touches. Well, last year, the Patriots called exactly ZERO tight end screens. In walks Alex Van Pelt, who drew up 20 for David Njoku last year (second only to our guy Evan Engram). This new offense along with better QB play could give us the best version of Hunter Henry yet. And you can acquire him for next to nothing.