The Ultimate TE Rankings for 2026 Fantasy Football

**Josh Norris** (0:00)
It's tight end time, yes.
One of the onesies here, and I actually think the position that requires them is strategy when you're drafting. We talked through the Brock Bowers, Trey McBride, Tyler Warren, Colston Loveland here at the top, then the mid-round players. Some are avoiding them. Some, I think, might pop up here as potential league winners. And then just how many of you have won your fancy leagues in the past, really late round picks, including one special name that you might not hearing enough about this training camp, this preseason, and he plays for the LA. Rams. Stick around for this episode of Yahoo Fantasy Football with Josh and Hayden coming up next. It's onesie time today, our final rankings for tight ends. I can't wait to talk about this group because obviously, there's a number going in the top three or four rounds.
In the past, one of our favorite strategies has been to Dr. Frankenstein the position. I think that's more difficult now than ever, Hayden, because we've become better at identifying later round tight ends and because more and more people started doing that. And I think like actually this group of mid round tight ends is kind of interesting. At least one or two of them might be on your fantasy league championship team this year.

**Hayden Winks** (1:15)
I think it's a very exciting group to talk about. I think there's huge error bars for these tight ends as well because so many of them are under 25 years old and we know that they're good. We don't know if they're going to be elite guys or if this is going to be one of those situations where a couple of things don't break their way and they end up busting because this is a position that a lot of times with like the fifth round fantasy tight ends like typically bust out, I think the difference here is that all these guys are really good and they're like 23, 24 or even sometimes even younger than that.

**Josh Norris** (1:45)
Right. And where the cycle of the NFL is right now, tight ends are imperative for many of these crossers across the league to the point that pure blockers are being selected in rounds two and rounds three. And if these teams are in 12 personnel and especially 13 personnel with three tight ends on the field, that means one of the tight ends is the secondary pass catcher in the lineup and they're going to get funnel targets. And so we're going to bring up all that stuff because then that guy is going to get pep over the whole bunch of stuff and be very fittest to you all over the course.

**Hayden Winks** (2:16)
And my last note is if you miss out on the young tight ends, that could be the top pass catcher, second pass catcher on their team. Then you get into the range of now we're talking about 33 year old tight ends. Like, can they still play football? And like now we're talking about a different cliff of like, they just might not have it anymore as well. So it's kind of like the entire position can go up and down.

**Josh Norris** (2:35)
Five years ago, those guys were being selected in the first and second round. You know, it shows you how quickly things change. And I think that's very evident here at Tiden, maybe more than any other position. Okay, we kick things off with Brock Bowers, who is around the 18th overall pick right now. He's both of our Tiden ones.
When you talk about the Raiders, you almost have to talk about the Seattle Seahawks on top of it because of what Clint Kubiak is bringing to this team. The Seahawks were fifth in the NFL in pass success rate last year, second in the rate of pass plays that gained 10 or more yards. I mean, Kubiak's Saints offense was also one of the most explosive in the NFL. And Hayden, what stands out to me is none of those teams, either of them, were expected to be that before Clint Kubiak showed up. And you could say the same thing about this Raiders team. And that's why we like Brock Bowers so much this year.

**Hayden Winks** (3:27)
Yeah. Last year, he was my Tiden two. And then this year, I did not even blink twice. He was easily going to be my Tiden one this year because I think Trey McBride has a lot more target competition and Brock Bowers. It's just going to be him out there. It sounds like Trey Tucker has run away with the wide receiver one job for the Raiders. He's never going to be a high-volume guy and doesn't seem like they're getting that much out of Naylor Besh, like those type of guys. So all these explosives that you talk about, I think a lot of it's going to be with Brock Bowers. They have two quarterbacks that they can go to between Kurt Cousins and Fernando Mendoza.