Over the past month, I’ve been going through outlier stats from the 2024 NFL season and examining whether we should consider them anomalies or new norms heading into the 2025 season. You can check out the QB, RB, and WR editions from earlier in the month. Last up in the series, possibly the most disproportionate position in fantasy football, TE.
2024 Recap
In this article last season, I called for Evan Engram to lose some volume, which, despite missing time to injury, he did on a per-game basis. I correctly pointed out that George Kittle could regress but still remain elite in yardage efficiency. In my favorite call of the season, I pointed to Jonnu Smith’s YAC/rec ability to make him a dart worth throwing with your last pick in fantasy drafts. That worked out, with Jonnu finishing as the TE4 overall.
But it wasn’t all great. I said that the Baltimore TE should continue to score TDs at a higher-than-league-average rate, but I did not envision that rate to actually improve in 2025. Finally, in my worst call of last season, I predicted that Dalton Kincaid would score more TDs and could become an elite fantasy TE. (Narrator whispers: “He did not become an elite fantasy TE”).
On to 2025.
The Stats
This series focuses on efficiency stats, and it’s no different for TEs. 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 too small a sample size, I looked at players who saw at least 40 targets in the 2024 season. That narrowed it down to 36 TEs. You can see the averages of the stats I looked at for those 36 players in the table below.
| Statistic | 2024 Average | 2023 Average |
| Targets/Game | 5.0 | 4.9 |
| Rec/Game | 3.7 | 3.5 |
| Yards/Tgt | 7.7 | 7.5 |
| Yards/Rec | 10.5 | 10.4 |
| Targets/TD | 28.5 | 22.6 |
| YAC/Rec | 5.0 | 4.8 |
TE efficiency stats were nearly identical over the past two seasons, except for targets/TD. That stat in particular will become evident below. Let’s dive in.
Trey McBride: 6.9 Rec/Game
If you’ve consumed fantasy football content this offseason, you’ve probably heard that McBride is likely due for some positive TD regression. While that is true, I want to examine his abnormally high reception rate from last season. McBride fell one total reception short of Brock Bowers for the overall lead at the position, but with one fewer game played, he topped the rookie in rec/game. McBride’s high catch count helped carry him to TE3 overall on the season, despite his lack of TDs.
Anomaly or New Norm?
Evan Engram made it into this article series last season at 6.7 receptions/game when he nearly set the NFL record for most receptions in a season by a TE. McBride only fell five catches short of that record, so he easily could have broken it if he hadn’t missed a game. His 6.9 rec/game sits tied for third all-time at the position. You can see the top five in the table below.
| Player | Season | Games | Rec | Rec/Game |
| Zach Ertz | 2018 | 16 | 116 | 7.3 |
| Travis Kelce | 2020 | 15 | 105 | 7.0 |
| Trey McBride | 2024 | 16 | 111 | 6.9 |
| Jason Witten | 2012 | 16 | 110 | 6.9 |
| Evan Engram | 2023 | 17 | 114 | 6.7 |
Whenever a player puts up historical season-long numbers, you can usually bank on some regression. A major reason for McBride’s high reception rate was his league-high 29.3% team target share. The Cardinals haven’t added any pass catchers of significance this offseason, though there is some optimism that Marvin Harrison Jr. can level up in his second season. Still, while we might not want to count on McBride to break any records this season, we should expect him to be near or at the top of the TE receptions list.
David Njoku: 7.9 Yards/Rec, 5.2 Yards/Target
The TEs who led in yards/rec last season were the guys you would expect. Namely, the aforementioned George Kittle (14.2) and the soon-to-be-mentioned Tucker Kraft (14.1). I didn’t expect Njoku to be in their company, but I also didn’t expect to see his name near the bottom of the list. He was just 0.1 yards/rec ahead of Evan Engram for the lowest in the league, while he ranked dead last in yards/target. Despite the low efficiency, he managed to finish as the TE11 in just 11 games played and the TE6 in fantasy points/game. It helped that he still scored five TDs, but it also speaks to the drop-off at the position after the elite tier.
Anomaly or New Norm?
When looking at Njoku’s past, his career-low yards/rec in 2024 appear to be an anomaly. He averaged 11.4 yards/rec over his first seven seasons in the league, while only dropping below 10.0 yards/rec once. However, we need to consider Cleveland’s QB situation when attempting to forecast for 2025, which makes it much more complicated.
Last season, Njoku caught passes from Deshaun Watson, Jameis Winston, and Dorian Thompson-Robinson. We know he won’t be catching passes from any of them this season, but it’s tough to say which QBs will be delivering him the ball. The best option for Njoku is likely Joe Flacco. He averaged 13.0 yards/rec in the five games they played together down the stretch in 2023. So the biggest question for Njoku’s fantasy value this season could be, “How many games does he play with Flacco at QB?”. Unfortunately, that is something we can’t confidently answer before fantasy drafts.
Tucker Kraft: 9.1 YAC/Rec
After a quiet rookie season, Kraft broke out in year two, finishing as the TE9 overall. A large reason for the breakout was his ability to rack up yards after the catch. As Andy and Mike reminded Jason on the Top 10 TE Rankings episode, his YAC was evidenced by the fact that he was tied for the league lead at the position with 15 forced missed tackles. Below is a clip of the 66-yard TD they discussed.
KRAFT WILL NOT BE DENIED.
A 66-YARD TOUCHDOWN!#GBvsLAR pic.twitter.com/7cK5YPTP2o
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) October 6, 2024
Anomaly or New Norm?
Kraft’s league-leading 9.1 YAC/rec is the highest at the position since George Kittle’s 9.9 YAC/rec from 2018. Since then, they have been the only two TEs to record over 9.0 YAC/rec, and only three others have been over 8.0. We shouldn’t expect Kraft to consistently be above 9.0 YAC/rec, but given the fact that he recorded 7.5 YAC/rec on a smaller sample size as a rookie, we can expect him to remain near the top of the league at the position.
Travis Kelce: 44.3 Targets/TD
Kelce caught just three TDs in 2024, the fewest of his career. This also led to the fewest fantasy points of his career and his first finish outside of the top five at the position since 2015. It wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds, however, as he still finished as TE6 on the season. Still, it was mostly a disappointing season for anybody who was counting on Kelce to carry their fantasy team.
Anomaly or New Norm?
As I mentioned earlier, every fantasy analyst in the industry is screaming for Trey McBride to see positive TD regression in 2025. In some ways, we can argue that Kelce’s TD rate was worse. If you factor in McBride’s rushing and fumble recovery TDs, he found the end zone every 36.7 targets.
Kelce averaged a TD for every 17.1 targets from 2014 to 2023. He still saw the third-most targets at the position in 2024, but the TDs didn’t come. It should be noted that Patrick Mahomes only threw them at a 4.5% rate, tied with 2023 for the lowest of his career. Even if Kelce is no longer in the elite TE tier, he should catch more TDs in 2025.
T.J. Hockenson and Jake Ferguson: Infinite Targets/TD
Speaking of not scoring TDs, Hockenson and Ferguson amazingly caught zero on a combined 148 targets. That is one more target than McBride saw last season. Ferguson had four top-ten finishes through Week 9, but only cracked the top-20 once more the rest of the season. As for Hockenson, he missed the first eight weeks while recovering from a knee injury. Upon return, he finished as a top-ten TE twice in his first four weeks back, then never better than TE15 the rest of the way. They finished as the TE31 and TE33, respectively.
Anomaly or New Norm?
Both of these TEs had unique situations in 2024. Ferguson’s early-season success, despite not finding the end zone, came before Dak Prescott’s season-ending injury. Over his first two seasons, Ferguson averaged a TD every 17.7 targets, nearly the same as Travis Kelce’s 18.2 targets/TD.
Hockenson’s scoreless 2024 season seems even more anomalous. He’s never been a prolific TD scorer, but he averaged a trip to the end zone for every 21.7 targets over the first five seasons of his career.
These two TEs have similar team environments heading into 2025. They are both in offenses that project to be pass-heavy, but they are also projected to be third in the target pecking order behind stud WRs. They both should score some TDs, but it will take an overcorrection in variance for them to dominate the end zone in 2025.
from Fantasy Footballers Podcast https://ift.tt/DF047UB
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