You may not find a more popular breakout pick this season than Colston Loveland. He is the prototype. He’s a 22-year-old second-year player, drafted in Round 1 last year, got off to a very slow start, broke out in the second half, and exploded in the playoffs. Then he lost target competition when DJ Moore was traded to the Buffalo Bills. If there is a player that everyone universally agreed was a breakout, it would be Loveland. It isn’t that strange for a young tight end to be a breakout candidate. What is really strange is that there are three other breakouts at tight end that I am excited about drafting.
Sam LaPorta, Kyle Pitts, and Isaiah Likely all got upgrades this offseason and all have the chance to post top-five seasons at tight end in 2026. They are a big part of the reason I don’t find myself drafting Loveland, Trey McBride, or Brock Bowers in the first three rounds of Fantasy Football drafts. Deciding whether you agree with me and which tight end to target could shape your 2026 draft plans.
LaPorta is the easiest sell, so we will start with him. He’s still just 25 years old, and he already has a TE1 overall season on his resume. LaPorta has been awesome in the red zone, scoring 20 touchdowns on 252 career targets, and has a chance to see his targets spike in 2026 due to the Lions addition of offensive coordinator Drew Petzing. Petzing has spent the last three seasons in Arizona, where his offenses threw 27.5% of their passes to tight ends. That’s 162.7 tight end targets per season, including 218 (!) last year. Trey McBride has been the big beneficiary there, and now it is LaPorta’s turn. While you may think McBride is in a different class than LaPorta, it is worth noting that LaPorta has been better at turning targets into yards (8.3 YPT to 7.5) and Fantasy points (2.07 FP/target to 1.75) than McBride has in his career. There should be no doubt that LaPorta has the upside to be the TE1 in Fantasy this season.
Before Petzing helped turn McBride into a star, he spent nine years working with Kevin Stefanski (three in Cleveland, six in Minnesota). I bring that up because Stefanski’s offense has been every bit as tight end centric as Petzing’s. Over the past three seasons, Stefanski’s Browns have thrown 27.2% of their passes to tight ends (167 targets per season). This past offseason, Stefanski joined the Atlanta Falcons, where I anticipate he leads 25-year-old Kyle Pitts to a career year. Pitts is viewed as a disappointment by many but that has as much to do with the expectations we put on him as anything. He’s battled injuries and struggled to get into the end zone, but his 3,579 receiving yards rank fourth amongst all tight ends since he was drafted. Pitts doesn’t have quite the same touchdown upside as LaPorta because of the quality of their offense, but if he stays healthy, I expect him to top 1,000 receiving yards and finish as a top-five tight end.
Isaiah Likely’s case is easier to make. He isn’t blocked by Mark Andrews anymore. He followed Head Coach John Harbaugh to New York and has a chance to be the number two target for Jaxson Dart. Dart threw 22% of his passes to Theo Johnson and Daniel Bellinger last year, and Likely is a better target than either. For what it’s worth, the Giants’ new offensive coordinator, Matt Nagy comes from the Chiefs system that has posted a 29% tight end target rate over the last three seasons. Likely averaged an elite 1.96 FP/target in Baltimore and could easily see 100 targets in his first year in New York.
In our mock drafts, it is rare for LaPorta, Pitts, or Likely to be drafted before Round 7, and one of them, sometimes two, generally fall to Round 8 or later. That’s not just four-plus rounds later than the elite tight ends; it is generally two to three rounds after Tyler Warren and Tucker Kraft. If you agree with me on any of these guys, you can build a much better team focusing on running backs and receivers early in the draft and drafting one of these breakout tight ends later. Pair them with my favorite sleeper tight end this year, Travis Kelce, who is almost always available after Round 9.
Here are six more breakout candidates for 2026:
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