Baltimore Ravens tight end Mark Andrews is coming off the worst season of his career, excluding his rookie year. He simply wasn’t a difference-maker at the position in fantasy football. Should fantasy managers bank on Andrews returning to being Lamar Jackson’s top option in 2025?
Mark Andrews Fantasy Outlook
It’s tough to know what to make of Andrews’ 2024 season. Isaiah Likely played well, filling in for an injured Andrews during the second half of the 2023 season. As a result, he earned a more significant role last year. From the jump, Andrews was negatively impacted.
From Weeks 1 to 4, Andrews scored 12.5 fantasy points. That included back-to-back games with zero catches in Weeks 3 and 4. Then, from Week 5 onward, Andrews averaged 13.56 fantasy points per game, which aligns with what he did almost every year of his career outside of his outlier 2021 season. On the surface, he was his usual self.
If you drafted Andrews, you may not have liked how he got there, but he returned the value you asked for. Looking purely at the final numbers, it seems mostly fine. But digging deeper, I see there are many concerns.
Andrews’ Usage Dropped Considerably
Let’s start with how much Andrews even saw the field. Andrews’ snap share was just 61.7%, 25th in the league. Now, to be fair, tight end snaps don’t matter. We need them to run routes. Well, Andrews ran a route on 58.3% of Lamar Jackson’s dropbacks, 22nd in the league. Not good.
Most concerning were Andrews’ target share and targets per route run rate. From 2019 to 2023, Andrews’ lowest target share was 22.2%. He was in the top four in target share each of those seasons. Last year, he commanded a 15.3% target share, 18th in the league.
At his peak, Andrews saw a targets-per-route rate as high as 42.4%. Last year, it was 23.6%, 18th in the league.
With his volume way down, how did Andrews maintain his fantasy value?
Andrews Was Entirely Reliant On Touchdowns
In 17 games, Andrews caught 55 passes. For context, he had 45 receptions in 2023 in just 10 games. His 673 receiving yards marked his lowest total since his rookie season. Based on his yardage total, he should’ve scored roughly five touchdowns. He had 11 of them.
From Week 6 through the end of the regular season, Andrews scored in all but two games.
While Andrews is a prominent end zone target and can be reasonably expected to outperform his expected touchdown rate, this was absurd. He scored a touchdown on 20% of his receptions.
Mark Andrews has scored a TD on 21.1% of his receptions so far this season, totaling 11 TDs on 52 receptions. 👀
From 2022-23, it took him 118 receptions to reach the 11 TD mark, a rate of only 9.3%. pic.twitter.com/YNotTPoO7F
— PFSN (@PFN365) January 4, 2025
Andrews managed a TE7 finish last season, which is precisely where his ADP is and where my ranking of him is. However, there’s very little separating the back-end TE1s.
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I was high on Andrews entering last season and got bailed out by a whole lot of touchdowns. This year, if I’m waiting to draft a tight end until the range at which Andrews goes, I will likely wait even longer and take a borderline TE1/2 or stream the position.
Dan Fornek’s Mark Andrews Fantasy Projection
Mark Andrews struggled to start the 2024 season, leading many fantasy managers to believe his best days were behind him. Andrews caught just six of nine targets for 65 yards in the first four weeks of the season. That said, a car accident before the season was likely the reason for the slow beginning.
Andrews quickly found his form starting in Week 5 and was immediately a fantasy contributor once more. From Weeks 5 to 18, Andrews caught 49 of 60 targets for 608 yards and 11 touchdowns, ending his season with a six-game stretch with at least one touchdown scored. Andrews was ridiculously efficient in the red zone, catching all nine of his end zone targets for touchdowns. His 2.05 yards per route run mark was also eighth among tight ends. Andrews ultimately finished as the TE7 in fantasy points per game (11.1) despite the slow start. He ended the year with eight straight top ten tight end finishes, primarily due to his ridiculous touchdown production.
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The veteran tight end has six straight top 10 finishes at the tight end position, even if 2024 did break a five-year streak of top-five production. The Ravens’ passing attack will be just as crowded in 2025, but Andrews should benefit from Isaiah Likely missing most of training camp due to a foot injury that required surgery, even if he doesn’t miss many games.
At worst, Andrews is a lethal weapon in the red zone that Lamar Jackson trusts to get open and make plays. At the tight end position, that is enough to finish as a top 10 option, especially in one of the best offenses in the league.
