There is much hype surrounding Buffalo Bills TE Dalton Kincaid heading into the 2024 season. With Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis gone, a ton of Josh Allen targets are available. Does Kincaid’s projection suggest fantasy football managers should pay for the breakout in advance?
Dalton Kincaid’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
- Fantasy points per game: 12.3
- Receptions: 80
- Receiving Yards: 995
- Receiving TDs: 4.9
These are PFN’s consensus projections, correct as of August 14. The most up-to-date projections can be found in our Who Should I Draft Tool.
Should You Draft Kincaid This Year?
There’s certainly a lot to like about Kincaid. He’s a very good athlete tethered to a top-five quarterback coming off a rookie season where he flashed serious upside.
Although Kincaid only averaged 9.4 fantasy points per game last season — catching 73 passes for 673 yards — that was still good for a TE14 finish. In fact, for a rookie tight end, that’s actually one of the best seasons of all time.
Kincaid lined up in the slot 49% of the time, which is exactly what we want to see from fantasy tight ends. When he’s in the slot, Kincaid is running routes and not blocking — which is what we need for him to score fantasy points.
The concern is that even after Kincaid’s midseason breakout, he was unable to completely break free of Dawson Knox. Kincaid averaged just 7.4 fantasy points per game with Knox on the field, yet he was at 14.2 ppg without him.
If you’re thinking, “Well that’s probably because of all the games early in the season,” think again. Even if we limit that split to after Knox returning from injured reserve in Week 14, Kincaid still averaged 7.4 ppg the rest of the way.
The Bills saw what Kincaid could do on his own and still chose not to feature him once they got Knox back. Could that change this season on an offense that no longer has its top two receivers from last season? Absolutely. Is it guaranteed? Absolutely not.
Unfortunately, the price to find out if Kincaid truly is the guy this year is pretty steep. His ADP is TE5. To justify that cost, he can’t merely finish as a top-five tight end — he needs to be a difference-maker.
Yet, not a single tight end who has averaged fewer than 10 ppg has exceeded his ADP expectation by at least 2.0 ppg (credit to JJ Zachariason for this data).
Kincaid was unable to reach 1.5 yards per route run as a rookie. The best tight ends get to 2.0. Could Kinciad reach that number this season? Of course, but the fact that he couldn’t last year is a red flag.
In my projections, Kincaid is projected to take a big step forward, catching 86 passes for 819 yards and 8.1 touchdowns. That comes out to 12.75 fantasy points per game. Those are fine numbers for a tight end, but they’re not so great that you’d want to pass up a WR or an RB to take him at his ADP.
For me to truly care about a tight end, he needs to score 14+ ppg. That’s undoubtedly within Kincaid’s realistic range of outcomes. But in a Bills offense that is going to be more run-heavy than ever, I just don’t see Kincaid becoming Allen’s Travis Kelce.
Curtis Samuel, Keon Coleman, and Khalil Shakir are not elite receivers. They’re also far from terrible and will collectively eat into Kincaid’s volume.
Kincaid is 25 years old, so we undoubtedly haven’t yet seen his best season. There is certainly a world where he finishes as a difference-making TE, inside the top three. If you want to draft him, I wouldn’t make some big protest against it.
With that said, I don’t like drafting tight ends in the area in which Kincaid goes. I either want a surefire elite one or to completely punt the position. As a result, Kincaid is not someone I’m looking to draft this season.
