Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Is it cliché? Of course it is, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
I don’t think you have to have your 2026 fantasy football rankings fleshed out right now, but being generally aware of where things stand will give you an edge on your competition: having a frame of reference is critical and allows you to tweak things as the offseason progresses as opposed to playing catch up in the days leading into your draft.
So let’s get started with some way-too-early tight end rankings!
2026 Fantasy Football Rankings: Top 12 Tight Ends
1) Trey McBride | Arizona Cardinals
2) Brock Bowers | Las Vegas Raiders
3) Colston Loveland | Chicago Bears
4) Tucker Kraft | Green Bay Packers
Tucker Kraft tore his ACL in Week 9, and that means that we haven’t seen him on an NFL field since early November.
A lot has happened since then, and it’s easy to lose track of the first half of the season, a run in which the pride of South Dakota State was giving Green Bay pass-catcher upside that they’ve thirsted for since Davante Adams moved on.
Yards per route run leaders vs. man coverage in 2025:
🥇 Jaxon Smith-Njigba: 4.37
🥈 Tucker Kraft: 4.16
🥉 CeeDee Lamb: 3.69
🏅 Puka Nacua: 3.61
🏅 George Pickens: 3.45
(min. 200 routes run this season) pic.twitter.com/8l0swa71ke
— The 33rd Team (@The33rdTeamFB) December 31, 2025
During last season as a whole, there were two tight ends who had two games with at least 120 receiving yards and a TD grab: Trey McBride and Kraft. That’s not bad company for a player who played half a season, and if not for the injury, he could still be riding a streak of consecutive games with a 15-plus-yard reception.
As it is, that streak ended at 14 straight, a threshold that Travis Kelce has never hit during his Hall of Fame career. Heck, over the past decade, George Kittle and prime T.J. Hockenson are the only others at the position to rip off 14 straight.
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Kraft has as good a shot as anyone of joining the top tier at the position, and with his season ending early paired with the winter breakout of Colston Loveland, we could be looking at a discount relative to his divisional mate.
5) Tyler Warren | Indianapolis Colts
6) Harold Fannin Jr. | Cleveland Browns
7) Sam LaPorta | Detroit Lions
8) Dalton Kincaid | Buffalo Bills
9) Kyle Pitts Sr. | Atlanta Falcons
10) Jake Ferguson | Dallas Cowboys
11) Juwan Johnson | New Orleans Saints
12) Hunter Henry | New England Patriots
