Before ranking Brock Bowers, Trey McBride, Sam LaPorta and Kyle Pitts, start with the weekly job. Does the tight end stay on the field? Does the ball keep finding him? Can the role survive a Sunday without a touchdown? Those questions separate this group better than last season’s fantasy finish.
My call is McBride alone in Tier 1. Draft McBride there while he owns at least a 25% target share. Bowers and Pitts belong in Tier 2 for different reasons, while LaPorta sits in Tier 3 until his target share recovers. Once McBride is gone, choose Bowers for playing-time stability or Pitts for the stronger recent target ceiling.
Three Questions That Set the Tiers
Use three checks before moving any tight end in this group:
- Can he disappear from the formation? A player above a 90% snap share has more ways to stay involved when the offense changes personnel.
- Does the ball find him often enough? Target share shows whether the tight end is part of the quarterback’s weekly progression rather than merely present for the play.
- What happens when he doesn’t score? Touchdowns can separate close players, but they can’t repair a thin receiving role every week.
FFN’s August 5 PPR list starts with McBride and keeps Bowers in the top three at tight end. The same list puts LaPorta ahead of Pitts. Late target volume is why this four-player map reverses the second pair.
Tier 1: Trey McBride Can Win Without a Touchdown
McBride’s role gives Arizona several ways to keep him useful. Over the last five weeks of 2025, he played 95.2% of the offensive snaps and drew 10.2 targets per game. His 29.6% target share was the strongest in this group.
Needing a touchdown to save the day isn’t the same job as seeing ten throws.
Week 18 puts the role on screen. McBride played 52 snaps and earned eight targets. The volume wasn’t built on one broken coverage or one trip to the end zone. He kept showing up in the progression, caught enough of those chances to matter, and finished with a usable fantasy day.
Across the 2025 season, FFN recorded Arizona at a 69.9% pass rate, including 70.2% in the red zone. Mike LaFleur is now the head coach, with Nathaniel Hackett coordinating the offense, so last season’s play mix can’t be treated as permanent. McBride has room for Arizona to become more balanced without losing the best target concentration in this comparison.
The threshold is 25%. If McBride holds at least one quarter of Arizona’s targets, he stays in my first tier even if the overall pass rate falls. A meaningful drop below that line would remove the advantage that makes him the group’s anchor.
Tier 2: Brock Bowers Owns the Playing-Time Floor
Bowers gets there through availability within the offense. Across five games near the end of his 2025 season, he played 96.4% of Las Vegas’ snaps. He was available in base personnel, spread looks and obvious passing situations. Coaches didn’t have to signal the call by bringing him onto the field.
FFN recorded a 22.4% target share for Bowers in that stretch, with 6.2 throws coming his way per game. His air-yard involvement moved around more than his snap count. Even an every-down player can have a quiet receiving day when the routes stay short or targets shift elsewhere.
Las Vegas threw on 64.4% of its plays last season and passed on 65.3% of its red-zone snaps. Klint Kubiak and offensive coordinator Andrew Janocko now own the scheme, so those rates serve as background rather than a forecast. Bowers’ advantage is that his role can bend with the new staff. A tight end already playing nearly every snap can be moved across the formation without needing a personnel overhaul.
Bowers joins McBride if his target share rises above 25% while the snap rate stays near 90%. At roughly 22%, he remains a strong Tier 2 option who needs more scoring or explosive gains to match the first tier’s weekly base.
Draft Bowers for the snaps and the formation flexibility. Don’t turn those snaps into target volume he hasn’t yet earned.
Pitts Has the Tier 2 Ceiling
Pitts is the disagreement that makes these tiers useful. FFN lists him at TE9 in PPR as of August 5, two spots behind LaPorta. Atlanta’s late-season usage gives me enough reason to reverse them.
During the closing month of 2025, Pitts averaged 8.6 targets, commanded 27.3% of Atlanta’s throws and played 91.8% of the snaps. That profile belongs in the same conversation as the position’s better volume bets. Atlanta also used the franchise tag to keep him for 2026, eliminating the possibility that a new team would force us to guess at his place in a different target tree.
The surge wasn’t perfectly stable. Pitts’ target share slipped to 23.8% over the last three weeks, and his targets fell to 7.0 per game. Then Week 18 delivered nine targets on 58 snaps. The high-end involvement appeared often enough to matter, but it didn’t settle into a steady first-tier level.
Atlanta creates the bigger structural question. The Falcons passed on 57.2% of their plays in 2025 and were close to balanced in the red zone. That leaves less raw receiving volume than Arizona or Las Vegas. Kevin Stefanski and Tommy Rees take over an offense that can lean on its running game, so Pitts needs a large slice of a smaller passing pie.
That slice is the bet. Keep Pitts in Tier 2 if he earns at least 25% of Atlanta’s targets during the opening month. A drop below 20% would make the offense too balanced for this placement and give LaPorta a direct path back ahead of him.
Pitts offers the best chance to beat this order because the target ceiling already appeared. He also carries the easiest path to falling out of it.
Tier 3: Sam LaPorta Needs More Than Full-Time Snaps
LaPorta still played like a starter in the portion of 2025 that FFN can verify. Over five games leading into Week 10, he averaged a 92.6% snap share. Detroit didn’t phase him out of the formation.
The warning came from LaPorta’s place in the progression. His target share fell 5.2 percentage points from one three-game stretch to the next, ending at 16.2%. The broader five-game average was 5.6 targets. His playing time held while the ball moved elsewhere, a split that one touchdown can hide for a week without fixing for a season.
Detroit’s offense gives him a plausible scoring path. The Lions passed on 59.7% of their plays and 54.0% of their red-zone snaps in 2025. Their offense can create valuable trips near the goal line even when the target tree is crowded. The catch is that a good scoring environment helps several players at once. It doesn’t guarantee LaPorta enough throws to carry an early tier.
His 2025 record ends after Week 10, with nine games included. No active official availability report resolves his present condition, so there’s no basis for inventing a health conclusion. Rank the role we can verify and leave room for preseason participation to change it.
LaPorta returns to Tier 2 when his target share gets back above 20% while his snap rate remains near 90%. Until then, I’d take Pitts’ demonstrated target ceiling first. LaPorta can absolutely score enough to beat that choice, but drafting him on that outcome asks efficiency to do work that volume should be doing.
The Risk in This Ranking
The risk is that preseason usage changes the jobs underneath this order. McBride losing the concentrated target role would erase his Tier 1 edge. Bowers coming off the field in obvious passing situations would remove the safety behind his placement. Pitts falling below a 20% target share would make Atlanta’s balanced offense hard to overcome, while a healthy LaPorta reclaiming more than one fifth of Detroit’s targets would move him back into Tier 2.
Scoring Changes the Distance, Not the Order
Full PPR stretches the gap between McBride and the rest because catches reward his concentrated target role before yardage or touchdowns enter. Bowers stays second for managers who want fewer ways to lose the pick. Pitts becomes the aggressive alternative for a roster that can absorb more weekly variance.
Lower-reception formats pull the group closer. Explosive gains and touchdowns carry more weight there, which helps Pitts and LaPorta. It still doesn’t erase the importance of earning throws. Five chances leave less room for an ordinary day than eight or ten.
Use the break as a roster decision. Take McBride when you want the position to run through weekly volume. After he’s gone, decide whether Bowers’ snap stability or Pitts’ target ceiling fits your build. If neither profile reaches you at a comfortable tier, wait. LaPorta’s path back is visible, and you don’t need to pay for it before the targets return.