Top Five Tight Ends- 2025 Fantasy Football

Welcome to Top 5 Fantasy Tight Ends: Pre-NFL Draft (PPR). Half offensive lineman, half pass catcher, let’s evaluate this year’s difference makers. ADP combines FantasyPros consensus expert picks/Best Ball ADP with Pro Football Focus’s Tight Ends tiers to accommodate our commentary. All odds are from the Fanduel Sportsbook.

Spoiler alert: no Travis Kelce here. The torch passes to the league’s young, second-year stud of the same division. Right? 

5. Tight End T.J. Hockenson

Since Kevin O’Connell’s arrival in Minnesota, the Vikings’ TE targets have been 146, 179, and 117. Last year, the drop-off was Hockenson missing nine games and KOC putting training wheels on the passing game at times. The Vikings attempted 631 passes in 2023 with Kirk Cousins, Joshua Dobbs, Nick Mullens, and Jaren Hall. They attempted 671 passes in 2022 with Cousins, Hall, and Mullens.

The question is, what will they do with J.J. McCarthy? KOC and the Vikings seemed all in on the prospect and moved on from Sam Darnold. The coach is unafraid to turn the passing volume to 11, no matter who is under center. Hockenson ranks fifth due to his reliance on a young signal caller. If he gets into the 100+ target range, he could move up, but his trajectory ties to the development of McCarthy. 

FP Consensus: 3 FP Best Ball ADP: 5 PFFF: 5

TE Season Long Finishes: 31, 5, 15, 2, 4, 34

Team Win Total: Over 8.5 (+125)/Under 8.5 (+115)

Team Super Bowl Odds: +2700

4. TE Sam LaPorta

A rookie sensation, LaPorta will undoubtedly be a cornerstone for the Lions for years. Two years of sample size paints how touchdown-dependent his finishes are. Year 1: 10. Year 2: 7. Over the last three years, the Lions’ offense has finished fourth, third, and second, transcending one spot each year. Will this be the year the Lions take the one spot? It will be on the back of Jared Goff, who had career highs in touchdowns and quarterback rating in 2024. He set a career high 37 touchdowns, but only seven went to LaPorta.

The Tight End’s targets dropped from 120 to 83, along with the touchdowns. The reason could be the rise of Jameson Williams, who finally lived up to his draft capital. If LaPorta can get back in the 120 target range during the season, he could move into the top three, but he will have to coexist with Williams.

FP Consensus: 4 FP Best Ball ADP: 4 PFFF: 4

TE Season Long Finishes: 1,

Team Win Total: Over 10.5 (+125)/Under 10.5 (-135)

Team Super Bowl Odds: +1000

3. TE George Kittle

The times Kittle was not a top-five tight end was his rookie year and 2020. That’s it. The man’s results speak for themselves, but pair them with recent roster turnover, and there’s an upside opportunity for fantasy scoring. Deebo is gone, and whispers are swirling that Aiyuk may do the same.

Over the last four years, he received 94, 86, 90, and 94 targets. There’s an argument that he could be in store for the target volume he received in his second and third years in the league (136, 107). With an injury-prone reputation behind him, it would be no surprise that a high percentage of Aiyuk/Samuel’s 128 vacated targets go to Kittle.

FP Consensus: 4 FP Best Ball ADP: 3 PFFF: 3

TE Season Long Finishes: 19, 9, 3, 2, 19, 4, 3, 5 and 3  

Team Win Total: Over 10.5 (+115)/Under 10.5 (-135)

Team Super Bowl Odds: +2300

2. TE Trey McBride

Give this man his money! That is precisely what the Arizona Cardinals did with a four-year, 76-million-dollar contract. His pivotal role as a PPR maven gives him an upward trajectory for fantasy scoring. What stands out is his team’s inability to get him touchdowns. With 1,146 yards, he should be closer to eight touchdowns because NFL players average a touchdown for every 155 receiving yards. Instead, it took McBride Week 17 and 18 to find pay dirt after a season-long receiving touchdown drought. 

With the team’s receiving depth not changing, his role is safe, and a prediction of 150 targets, 110 catches, and six to eight touchdowns is a fair median projection for McBride. Cement him in as 2025’s number two.

FP Consensus: 2 FP Best Ball ADP: 2 PFFF: 2

TE Season Long Finishes: 40, 7, 2

Team Win Total: Over 8.5 (+105)/Under 8.5 (-125)

Team Super Bowl Odds: +4500

1. TE Brock Bowers

Bowers is batting 1000 as the Top overall TE in fantasy points in his career. Most impressively, he accomplished this with the rag-tag QB trio of Gardner Minschew, Aiden O’Connell, and Desmond Ridder. The Raiders recently extended Geno Smith through 2027, giving Bowers a taste of something unknown in his NFL career: consistency. The Raiders won a mere four games in 2024. With a healthier implied win total of seven in 2025, there is a significant growth opportunity here because the team is so thin at wide receiver. 

Since 2013, the tight end one on the season came from a team that finished well above 500. There are two exceptions: Mark Andrews in 2020 (when the Ravens went 8 – 9) and Brock Bowers in 2024 (when the Raiders went 4 – 13). Outside of those two exceptions, the TE 1 came from teams with over 10 wins, most with 11+. The Raiders are not forecasted to shine that bright in the win total department, so how can Bowers get there based on statistics?

In 2024, the Raiders were 9th in passing yards, 28th in touchdowns, and 27th in QB rating. Smith is an upgrade for Bowers. Coming off of 4,320 passing yards in Seattle, this should benefit our number one with a bullet. The Raiders did pass quite a bit, with 635 pass attempts, but O’Connell had the fourth-highest percentage of bad pass accuracy (21%), and Minschew ranked 27th (13.5%).

Well, how serendipitous. Who was the most accurate Quarterback in the NFL in 2024? Geno Smith. His 81.8% target rate will spike Bower’s fantasy points as it will increase his efficiency. Bowers is due to regress towards the mean of touchdowns based on yards (155 per TD), just like McBride. Bowers should have been closer to eight touchdowns with his 1,194 yards, not five.

Brock Bowers rules. Watch a consistent quarterback skyrocket his fantasy stock to the moon.

FP Consensus: 1 FP Best Ball ADP: 1 PFFF: 1

TE Season Long Finishes: 1

Team Win Total: Over 6.5 (-140)/Under 6.5 (+120)

Team Super Bowl Odds: +11000