2023 NFL Draft: History Not Good for First-Round Rookie Tight Ends

Only three first-round tight ends since 2000 have been top 10 fantasy finishers at the position.

The 2023 NFL Draft is almost upon us, which excites both the real and fantasy fan bases across the globe. That brings in a new crop of good, young players who could come right in and make an impact on our fantasy teams. We’ve already covered the top three offensive skill positions, so now it’s time to move on to the tight ends. It hasn’t been a very fruitful spot, at least among rookies, which we learned from my look at the position since 2000. But now, I’ll focus on the first-rounders.

The question for our purposes of course, is how have prominently drafted players at tight end fared in terms of fantasy football production on an historical basis?

Well, I jumped in the fantasy DeLorean for the last time in this exercise, got that sucker up to 88 miles per hour and looked at exactly that. Why? Because by looking at the past, we can often times find trends that help us have success in the future.

So, without further ado, here’s what I found that can make you a better drafter.

Jeremy Shockey, a first-round pick of the Giants in 2002, was one of the few first-round tight ends to be fantasy relevant as a rookie :: James Lang/USA Today Sports

In the last 23 years, 25 tight ends have been selected in Round 1. Not one has had 200-plus points. Three (12%) have finished with more than 175 fantasy points, and eight (32%) have finished with over 100 points. To put that into perspective, scoring 100 PPR points last season would have been good enough to finish TE23.

That’s not good.

Digging a little deeper, I found a trend that proves just how rare it is to find a rookie tight end drafted prominently in Round 1. Just five of the 25 tight ends since 2000 were picked among the first 10 picks of their respective drafts. Two (T.J. Hockenson in 2019 and Kyle Pitts in 2021) have gone in the top 10 since 2015 and just three, including Eric Ebron (2014), have done so in the last 18 years. The majority (18) were taken between picks No. 20-32. The remaining two went No. 14.

Based on that information, it’s no surprise that just three players (Pitts, Evan Engram in 2017 and Jeremy Shockey in 2002) have finished in the top 10 among tight ends. Four others, Jermaine Gresham (2010), Heath Miller (2005), Dustin Keller (2008) and Noah Fant (2019) ranked in the top 16 in their rookie campaigns.

So, just three rookies have finished in the top 10 and seven have ranked in the top 20 at the position in the last 23 years. Among those seven, just one (Pitts) was a top-10 draft pick. The other six were picked between No. 14 and No. 30 in drafts.

Now, let’s look at things on a points-per-game basis.

Engram leads all first-year rookies in our research with an average of 11.6 points per game. Shockey (11.4) and Pitts (10.4) are the lone others who averaged more than 8.2 points per game, and only Gresham averaged more than eight among the rest of the tight ends in this exercise. Based on last year’s totals, 22 of the 25 rookies would have finished 18th or worse in terms of PPR production. 

Again, that’s not good.

Looking to this year’s draft, the list of top prospects at the position is deep, with at least one and possibly even two or three projected to come off the board in the first round. Michael Mayer out of Notre Dame and Utah’s Dalton Kincaid are the most likely to be first-rounders with Georgia’s Darnell Washington, Luke Musgrave from Oregon State and Iowa's Sam LaPorta rounding out the projected top five.

Based on the historical data, however, fantasy fans looking for a breakout (or even a regular fantasy starter) in 2023 will be disappointed. While this year’s class should fare better than the 2022 version, I don't see a Year 1 star on the list.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if only Mayer and Kincaid are picked in the majority of fantasy redrafts with Washington, Musgrave or LaPorta being considered if they land with a team that allows them a chance to see opportunities as rookie players. Such is the plight of the rookie tight end.