2025 Fantasy Football TE Rankings (Top 5)

Forbes

18 hours ago

To round out this initial 2025 fantasy football ranking series, we'll be looking at the tight ends. As the offseason goes on, we'll dive deeper into each position, but for now, we'll be breaking down my top five 2025 fantasy football TE rankings.
Tight end is a position that is extremely scarce. There's only a number of productive tight ends each year, and if you can draft one of them, you're giving your team a massive advantage. We'll be breaking down these players for a PPR format.
There's really not much debate for the TE1 spot this year. As a rookie in a bad situation, Brock Bowers was able to finish as the TE1 (PPR) in 2025. Bowers was dominant, catching 112 passes on 153 targets for 1,194 yards and five touchdowns.
The numbers that translate year to year, such as targets, receptions, and even Yards per Route Run (2.25), were elite. Out of all of Bowers's stats, the only thing that wasn't great was his touchdowns, which is typically a volatile stat.
With Geno Smith coming in as the Las Vegas Raiders QB1, this offense should be better, leading to more touchdown opportunities. The only minor concern you have is that the Raiders added more target competition in Jack Bech, and Ashton Jeanty now gives them a reason to run the ball a lot more.
With how talented Bowers is, though, and when taking the upgrade of Smith into account, Bowers is still easily my TE1.
The same thing that happened to Bowers can be applied to Trey McBride as well. McBride was great with his targets (147), receptions (111), receiving yards (1,146) and YPPR (2.42). The one thing that held McBride back was his touchdowns at two.
It's not as if this is new, which makes it a bit scary. McBride has yet to score more than three touchdowns in his NFL career. The saving grace is that at 6'4" and 246 lbs, it's not as if he doesn't have the build to do so.
Expect Marvin Harrison Jr to take a step up from his rookie season and slightly eat into those targets for McBride, but it's hard to project the 2024 TE2 lower than this. If McBride gets a spike in the right direction for his touchdowns, there's a shot that he overtakes Bowers.
After McBride, there's a slight tier drop just because of the age. George Kittle is 31 years old, so you have to be a bit cautious of him missing a few games, and it's also not expected for him to get much better.
Last season, Kittle was the TE3 due to excellent efficiency stats. Kittle was elite with his YPRR at 3.09, even though he didn't have the same number of targets (94) or receptions (78) as the players above.
Kittle is also the clear number on receiving option on an offense that projects out well for 2025. Mike Clay of ESPN projects Brock Purdy out for 4,609 passing yards, which is great for Kittle.
Putting T.J. Hockenson at four is shooting for his ceiling, but he's a player who could absolutely finish higher than four. We've seen Hockenson do so in 2022 when he was the TE2 with the Minnesota Vikings.
Now, with Hockenson, he's 27 years old, which is in the middle of the top three guys. He suffered an ACL and MCL back in 2023, which limited him to 10 games last year.
Now that Hockenson has had more time to recover expect big things in 2025. While his upside is capped because of Justin Jefferson, we saw him finish as the TE4 back in 2023 with the Vikings.
While Hockenson didn't put up impressive numbers in 2025 due to the fact that he played 47% of the snaps, one key metric did stick out. Hockenson had a 2.61 YPRR mark, which was the best of his career. If Hockenson can keep that up in 2025, expect the fantasy points to follow.
Before Bowers, many viewed Sam LaPorta as the best rookie tight end of all time. LaPorta was the TE1, scoring 239.3 points back in 2023. For reference, Bowers had 262.7 points, but both were great
That said, LaPorta only had 120 targets, 83 receptions, and 889 yards as a rookie, making his production a bit more unsustainable. LaPorta ended up dropping down to being the TE8 last year, but there's more to the story.
On Draft Sharks, LaPorta is given a number of injuries, but he played through almost all of them. If you look at the game logs, LaPorta only played at least 90% of snaps once before week 12. After week 12, LaPorta would play at least 90% of the snaps for the rest of the year.
In weeks 12-17, we saw LaPorta finish as a top 10 tight end in every week but one. Prior to week 12, LaPorta was only able to do so four times. With an offseason of recovery, LaPorta should be much better.
Having LaPorta as TE5 seems like a fair projection because you have to account for the loss of Ben Johnson as well. With Amon-Ra St. Brown still set to dominate, it's hard to see LaPorta having another TE1 season.
We'll dive deeper into this last as the offseason goes on, but for now, these are my top five 2025 fantasy football TE rankings.