Bears with hands. That's the whole position in three words, and it's why tight end plays differently than anywhere else on the guillotine board. Pru, Dex, and Chiz close out their position-by-position 2026 Guillotine Fantasy Football preview with tight end, the steepest cliff in the game. Full individual rankings and group averages are posted at theshrewdness.beam.ly, with a dedicated sleepers-and-busts episode up next and the site's complete top-200 master list dropping mid-August — don't mock draft before then.
Why Floor Beats Everything at Tight End
Quick refresher for anyone new to the series: guillotine eliminates the lowest-scoring team every single week, so a zero-point dud can end your season no matter how many big weeks came before it. Tight end is where that risk is highest. As Chiz laid out at the top of the episode, roughly half the league is "blocking tight ends" who might see one or two targets a game and need a red-zone bounce just to matter, while a true bears-with-hands pass catcher can put up wide-receiver numbers. Out of the roughly 20 tight ends who are startable at all in an 18-team, eight-starter guillotine league, the hosts figure only 10 or 11 are ones you actually want. Below that, the whole tier compresses into guys who are all projected within a touchdown of each other for the season. Miss the top 10 and you're not picking a player so much as picking a coin flip on whether he gets fed that week.
The Countdown: Shrewdness Top 10 Tight Ends
10. Dallas Goedert (Eagles) — Finished TE11 last year but should see more targets now that AJ Brown has left for New England. Goedert posted a career-high 11 touchdowns last season — more than double his previous best — on 60 catches for 591 yards, and gets a soft opening two weeks against bottom-five secondaries in Washington and at Tennessee. The catch: his yards per reception were the lowest of his career, a sign he's running shorter, safer routes. Chiz was the low man of the three, noting Goedert "seems to be running shorter routes or not getting as much yards after the catch," and pointed to the touchdown spike as due for regression. Still, continuity with Jalen Hurts and Philadelphia's easy schedule keep him rostered.
9. Jake Ferguson, "Turd Ferguson" (Cowboys) — The safest floor play on the list. Ferguson caught 82 of 102 targets last year for 600 yards and 8 touchdowns, and once hauled in 13 catches for just 82 yards in a single game — an absurd short-route usage rate that nonetheless guarantees points. Pru's take: "Every time the ball is thrown to him, he will catch it… every catch is a point." Dallas has its full receiving corps and coaching staff back intact, and Ferguson opens against the Giants, Commanders, and Ravens — a soft stretch that should net him an early touchdown or two.
8. Tucker Kraft (Packers) — The asterisk pick. Kraft was tracking as fantasy's TE2 before tearing his ACL last year, averaging nearly 15 points a game across seven and a half games with six touchdowns and two 100-yard outings. He's in camp on a limited basis and trending toward Week 1, but nothing is official yet. If he's cleared, he's a huge-YAC athlete who breaks tackles after the catch and gets a healthy target share in a Green Bay offense thin on standout wideouts. Chiz, who owned him last year: "I did not anticipate him to have the kind of season that he did." Watch the injury report closely.
7. Harold Fannin Jr. (Browns) — The Shrewdness crew was on Fannin before his rookie year, and he delivered: 72 catches, 731 yards, and 6 touchdowns as a rookie, with an all-time catches record from his Bowling Green days to back up the pedigree. He gets the easiest first-month schedule of any tight end on this list — Jacksonville, at Tampa, home against Carolina, no top-15 defense in the first six weeks — and is clearly the best receiving option on a Cleveland roster with no proven wideouts. The risk: a crowded, unresolved quarterback competition in Cleveland, and the possibility defenses simply key on him since he's the only real threat. Chiz still ranked him highest of the three, calling it "the easiest schedule for competition of any tight end."
6. Sam LaPorta (Lions) — Missed nine games last year with a herniated disc but is healthy and full-go in camp. In 2023 under then-OC Ben Johnson, LaPorta was TE1 with 86 catches, 889 yards, and 10 touchdowns — and new Lions OC Drew Petzing arrives from Arizona, where he fed Trey McBride at an elite clip. Detroit also owns the league's easiest schedule and is favored in 12 of 17 games. Dex ranked him second among all tight ends. Pru was the skeptic, flagging more competition for targets in Detroit (Jameson Williams, Jahmyr Gibbs, Isiah Pacheco) than McBride ever had in Arizona. Chiz's summary stuck: LaPorta is "undoublable."
5. Kyle Pitts Sr. (Falcons) — The most talented, least trusted name on the board. A 6'6, 235-pound freak of a route-runner, Pitts has been maddeningly inconsistent — his touchdown total has climbed every year of his career (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), which the crew is only half-jokingly penciling in for 6 this year. Last season was his best yet: 88 catches, 928 yards, 5 touchdowns. An upgraded quarterback situation and a supporting cast in Drake London and Bijan Robinson that draws coverage away all work in his favor. Chiz has been burned by Pitts before and admitted it's coloring his ranking: "I'll be the first to admit I'm probably ranking him irrationally low."
4. Tyler Warren (Colts) — A rookie who lived up to the hype, which the hosts said almost never happens at tight end. Warren's production dipped when Daniel Jones went down last year, so his Week 1 availability off an Achilles injury is the swing factor. If Jones is right, Warren's versatility — inline, off the line, short or deep — plus Michael Pittman's departure and a Jonathan Taylor-powered run game that keeps defenses honest make him a legitimate TE1-overall dark horse. Pru had him third individually: "He could surprise a lot of folks and be talked about as the most elite tight end in the league this year."
3. Colston Loveland (Bears) — The best second half of any tight end in football last year, full stop. Loveland's first eight games were a disaster (11 catches, 116 yards, zero touchdowns combined); his final 12, including two playoff games, were 59 catches, 790 yards, and 6 touchdowns — a full-season pace pushing 90 catches, 1,000-plus yards, and 9 touchdowns. Dex credited a young Chicago offense finally gelling under a new system and Caleb Williams learning to trust him. Chiz went on record: "I think Colston Loveland will be a top-50 player this year for fantasy scoring, which is really hard to do as a tight end."
2. Trey McBride (Cardinals) — Set the NFL record with 126 catches last year and quintupled his previous touchdown high with 11. The concerns are real: Vegas has Arizona with the third-hardest schedule in the league, the quarterback situation behind Jacoby Brissett is shaky, the offensive line ranks near the bottom of the league, and regression from a historic season is all but guaranteed. None of that matters much, according to Chiz: "It doesn't seem to matter who throws him the ball… he's always open." Pru ranked him first overall, arguing Arizona's tough schedule means they'll be throwing — and throwing to McBride — constantly.
1. Brock Bowers (Raiders) — Unanimous number one. A 6'4, 235-pound "freak" who plays like a wide receiver, Bowers set the league on fire as a rookie before a Week 1 injury cost him multiple games last year. Las Vegas' receiving corps outside of him is thin enough that Chiz called Bowers and running back Ashton Jeanty "the whole offense," and a new offensive coordinator plus an upgraded offensive line should only help. The schedule is the clincher: Miami in Week 1, then a stretch of mid-pack and depleted secondaries, including a Kansas City defense that traded away its top corners. Dex: "You've got a long stretch of freeway, baby."
The Debate Round: Names That Didn't Crack the Consensus
Mark Andrews (Ravens) — Pru's personal pick at 9th, landing at 12th on the group's overall average, just outside the top 10. Isaiah Likely's departure to New York should free up targets, and continuity with Lamar Jackson keeps him relevant in Baltimore's red zone. Age is the drag on his ranking, but Pru sees him anchoring the tightly bunched TE8-through-14 tier, where every option projects to roughly the same season-long output.
Isaiah Likely (Giants) — Dex's guy. A free-agent addition hand-picked by Giants head coach Harbaugh to be the new TE1 over Theo Johnson, who's expected to handle blocking duty instead. The concern: Likely has never been a true number-one option and had only two double-digit fantasy games all of last season. The upside case leans on a 6'4, 241-pound frame and a crowded but talented supporting cast in New York.
Travis Kelce (Chiefs) — For the first time in a decade, the Shrewdness doesn't have Kelce inside the top 10 — he landed at 11th. Chiz pushed back hardest on this one, pointing out Kelce was fantasy's third-highest-scoring tight end last year and torched defenses through the first half of the season (a stretch of 12, 10, 7, 10, 19, 13, 8, 21, 12, and 24 fantasy points) before a lost Chiefs season took the air out of the second half. With a possible final ride ahead of him, Chiz isn't ready to write him off: "I think we're all underestimating him still."
The Big Takeaway
No position in guillotine has a steeper cliff than tight end. There are only about 20 startable options in an 18-team league, but really only 10 or 11 you want — everyone else is a coin flip on whether they see enough targets to avoid a season-ending zero. That's why a short-route security blanket like Jake Ferguson can outrank a bigger name, why an unresolved quarterback battle keeps a talent like Harold Fannin Jr. out of the top five, and why the gap between "focal point of the offense" and "blocking tight end who gets a red-zone bounce" matters more here than at any other position. Get the full individual rankings and group averages at theshrewdness.beam.ly — sleepers and busts are up next, followed by the final overall top-200 rankings landing mid-August.
Listen to the full episode, "Shrewdness Guillotine Fantasy Football: Top 10 Tight Ends," wherever you get your podcasts, and follow The Shrewdness on Spotify and YouTube for the rest of the series.
Stay shrewd, everybody.
#FantasyFootball #GuillotineLeague #NFL #TightEnds