Brock Bowers isn’t just the alpha in Las Vegas; he might well be a Tier 1 fantasy football TE for a generation. But the case for the greatest tight end season of all time, the featured take in Jason Katz’s bold predictions piece, asks this Raiders offense to do more than it’s built to do.
Brock Bowers’ Target Share Already Looks Maxed Out
Nobody needs convincing on the talent. Bowers is the unquestioned focal point of this passing game and the numbers clearly back it up. He averaged 38.4% more receiving yards per game than any of his qualified teammates last season, and he nearly finished 2025 with more catches than any other Raider had targets. That’s a role written in stone for the foreseeable future and is why he’s viewed as an elite performer at the position for years to come.
Bowers posted a 74.4% catch rate last season and a red zone target rate that ranked between two Hall of Fame scoring threats in Davante Adams and Mike Evans. Those are elite marks, obviously, but how much room is there for statistical growth?
The question isn’t whether Bowers is good enough to be featured more; it’s whether an offense that still doesn’t project as league average this season can feed him at a rate to support a historical season. That’s the same reasoning behind me ranking Trey McBride as this year’s TE1: the talent case is easy, the offensive-context case is harder.
START PREPARING: PFN’s Fantasy Mock Draft Simulator
Getting to the GOAT prediction (leader in the clubhouse: 2020 Travis Kelce), we need a per-game production jump of more than 42% over what Bowers did last season.
That’s not incremental growth; that’s a new tier and one that I’m not sure has a path to occurring in 2026 or any season. Kirk Cousins and rookie Fernando Mendoza would need to be more than functional to get him there, and Mendoza specifically would have to take the job over sooner than the Raiders’ own plan suggests and function like a top 10 passer immediately.
That’s a big ask.
The Quarterback Situation and Injury History Add Real Downside Risk
An in-season quarterback change is likely, if not inevitable, and that brings variance that projects to doom Katz’s bold call. The best tight end seasons in history came with the league’s best quarterback locked in and throwing to that tight end above everyone else: Rob Gronkowski with peak Tom Brady, Kelce with peak Patrick Mahomes.
Asking a Cousins-to-Mendoza timeshare to prioritize Bowers at that same level is a lot to ask of a team that’s building for the future more than it’s building to win now, even in this current offensive driven era.
Then there’s the health question. Bowers played through a PCL injury and a bone bruise in his heel last season, and while there’s no reason to expect those specific issues to resurface in 2026, any missed time closes the door on a historic ceiling almost by definition.
Michael Mayer is right there to spell him if something comes up, and given the Raiders’ bigger-picture outlook, there’s real incentive for the coaching staff to be conservative with their most valuable pass catcher rather than push him through anything nagging. Bowers is arguably too important to this rebuild to risk for a handful of extra targets at any point this season.
DIVE IN: PFN’s Fantasy Football HQ
None of this changes the floor. Bowers is still the safest bet at tight end in fantasy, and a top-three finish is very much in the cards for 2026. The record-book conversation just requires more things to break right, on both sides of the ball, than this Raiders team is currently built to deliver.
There are six (seven if we continue to get positive reports on George Kittle) tight ends that I think can flip your league, and Bowers is in that conversation, even if a historic year is never truly in the discussion.
