Fantasy Football 2024: Don’t Be Afraid to Draft Rookie TEs

The 2024 Athlon Sports Fantasy Football Preview Magazine , which is on sale now, includes a feature that breaks down the “10 things we learned in 2023.” This is an excerpt:

Leave conventional wisdom about rookie tight ends in the past

In two of the past three seasons, a rookie tight end has been a real factor in fantasy leagues. Kyle Pitts went for 68/1,026/1 in 2021, posting a top-10 finish at the position despite an unlucky paucity of touchdowns. Give Pitts a more-normal-for-that-target-volume five touchdowns, and he would have finished as the TE5. In 2023, your TE1 was Travis Kelce, but Sam LaPorta — wait, sorry, I’m told that LaPorta actually dethroned Kelce, leading all tight ends in fantasy points and average fantasy points per game. My apologies; it’s just that I have that Kelce sentence pre-written because it’s happened so often.

Meanwhile, latecomer Trey McBride put up some big numbers once Arizona’s tight end situation was more settled in his favor, finishing 10th on the season in points at the position.

This year’s TE class, to be clear, has only one clear short-term fantasy factor: the Raiders’ Brock Bowers. But even that situation is going to be ugly. The Raiders have a quarterback competition of Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew as we go to press. Bowers also has to contend with a run-focused offense that has Davante Adams and Jakobi Meyers as volume pieces already. But nothing in Bowers’ profile is bad enough that we should rule him out of finishing as a TE1 this year, especially if Meyers or Adams is traded or sidelined.

Moreover, there were a lot of fantasy waiver wires that had LaPorta and McBride on them at the start of last season — and a lot of the reasoning was, “OK, but rookie tight ends never do well.” Well, they hadn’t, but now they have. Maybe Bowers isn’t going to get the target volume to be a great fantasy player right away, but if injuries or other factors put Bowers or maybe the Houston Texans’ Cade Stover into a high-value role, don’t dismiss it out of hand. There is plenty of upside to be mined in this area, especially because fantasy TE1 no longer belongs to players who create a Kelce-esque stratosphere.

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Related: Athlon Sports 2024 Fantasy Football Preview Magazine Now Available