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.
Frank Ammirante’s Mark Andrews Fantasy Projection
Mark Andrews is one of my favorite targets at tight end this season. While the veteran got off to a slow start last year, that can be blamed on a car accident right before the year started. His splits support this.
From Weeks 6-18, Andrews averaged 12.0 fantasy points per game in half-PPR formats, which ranked as TE6 during that stretch. This included double-digit fantasy points in nine of 12 games. As one of the main red zone threats in an elite offense, Andrews is as good a bet as any to lead the position in touchdowns, especially after he racked up 11 scores last year.
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Then you have to consider the Isaiah Likely injury, which could keep him out for parts of the season. If Likely is forced to miss extended time, that means more routes and opportunities for Andrews. The bottom line is that you’re getting a proven producer at a lower price than usual due to a slow start that affected his overall numbers last year.
