Player

Trey McBride

TE · ARI Cardinals

Positional scarcity is the whole argument for a round-3 tight end, and this is scarcity at its historical extreme. A 105-point edge is about 6 points every single week over the best alternative, before comparing him to the mid-round tight ends most leagues actually start. Gaps this size have only appeared when one player monopolizes receiver-grade volume at the position, which is precisely his profile.

FanIQ Research · August 30, 2026 · 8 facts, every one from the play-by-play

The 2025 monopoly

105 points clear of the next tight end. The biggest TE1 gap of the last 27 seasons.

Comparison

Largest TE1-to-TE2 PPR gaps, 1999-2025

Season	TE1	TE2	Gap
2025	McBride 315.9	Pitts 210.8	105.1
2022	Kelce 316.3	217.4	98.9
2013	J. Graham 303.5	218.9	84.6
2000	Gonzalez 259.0	178.0	81.0

McBride scored 315.9 PPR points in 2025; the next tight end, Kyle Pitts, scored 210.8. That 105.1-point gap between first and second at the position is the largest since 1999, edging out peak Travis Kelce's 2022. Put differently: the difference between McBride and TE2 last season was roughly the difference between TE2 and TE20.

Why it matters. Positional scarcity is the whole argument for a round-3 tight end, and this is scarcity at its historical extreme. A 105-point edge is about 6 points every single week over the best alternative, before comparing him to the mid-round tight ends most leagues actually start. Gaps this size have only appeared when one player monopolizes receiver-grade volume at the position, which is precisely his profile.

126 catches and 169 targets: both all-time tight end records, and only Puka Nacua caught more balls than him at any position.

Rare

TE single-season records since 1999

Stat	McBride 2025	Previous best
Receptions	126	116 (Ertz, 2018)
Targets	169	156 (Ertz, 2018)

No tight end in the last 27 seasons had ever caught more than 116 passes; McBride caught 126. No tight end had ever been targeted more than 156 times; he was targeted 169. Across all positions, only Puka Nacua (129) had more receptions in 2025, putting a tight end second in the entire NFL in catches, ahead of Ja'Marr Chase and Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

Why it matters. Targets are a coaching decision, and 169 of them is the loudest possible statement about how Arizona sees him. Volume of this kind is the sticky part of fantasy production: it reflects a role that persists, unlike efficiency spikes that come and go. A tight end being fed like a No.1 wide receiver is the single most valuable structural quirk in fantasy, because everyone else at his position is splitting targets three ways.

Records and the mold

Four seasons, four steps up: 61 points, then 181, then 244, then 316.

Trend

McBride season by season

Season	Targets	Catches	Yards	Rec TD	PPR pts
2022	39	29	265	1	61.5
2023	106	81	825	3	181.5
2024	147	111	1,146	2	243.8
2025	169	126	1,239	11	315.9

Every season of McBride's career has been a clean step up in targets, catches, yards and points. The 2024-to-2025 jump is the revealing one: the volume climbed only modestly (147 to 169 targets), but the touchdowns went from 2 to 11, converting an already-elite usage profile into a record season. The yardage base underneath (1,146 then 1,239) barely moved, and that is the part history says to trust.

Why it matters. Season-over-season scrimmage yardage is among the most stable stats in fantasy, while touchdown totals swing hard year to year. McBride's arc is therefore best read as two layers: a rock-steady 1,100-1,250 yard receiving floor built on record target volume, plus a touchdown layer that spiked in 2025 and should be projected somewhere between its 2024 and 2025 extremes rather than at either one.

He owns two of the three biggest target-share seasons a tight end has ever posted.

Anomaly

Highest TE share of team targets, 1999-2025 (min 80 targets)

Season	Player	Targets	Team share
2024	Trey McBride	147	28.1%
2020	Darren Waller	145	27.7%
2025	Trey McBride	169	27.4%
2018	Travis Kelce	150	26.6%

In 27 seasons of data, no tight end has commanded a bigger slice of his team's targets than McBride's 28.1 percent in 2024, and his 2025 (27.4 percent) sits third on the same list. Kelce never got there. Gronkowski never got there. McBride has done it twice, in consecutive seasons, under different quarterbacks each time: Murray in 2024, then Murray and Brissett in 2025.

Why it matters. A one-year share spike can be an accident of injuries around a player; a two-year repeat under three different quarterback situations is an offensive identity. Share, unlike raw targets, also survives changes in team pass volume, so even if Arizona throws less in 2026, his slice of whatever they throw is the best-established at the position in modern history. This is the stat that separates drafting McBride from drafting any other tight end.

MYTH TEST: the 11 touchdowns made him, so when they regress he craters. Half right, and the wrong half to worry about.

Two tests of the claim

Question	What the data says
Do 10-TD tight end seasons repeat?	34 of 36 since 1999 scored fewer the next year
Does McBride need them?	2024: just 3 total TDs, still 243.8 pts
Would 2024's version still be TE1?	243.8 would have beaten 2025's TE2 by 33 pts

The regression half is confirmed, emphatically: of the 36 tight end seasons with double-digit receiving touchdowns since 1999, 34 were followed by fewer touchdowns, and only 2011 Gronkowski improved. Expect fewer than 11. But the crater half fails: in 2024 McBride scored three total touchdowns and still put up 243.8 points, a total that would have out-scored 2025's TE2 by 33. His floor is built from 126 catches, not from six-pointers.

Why it matters. This is the rare player where both sides of a sell-high argument are simultaneously true and it still resolves in his favor. The touchdown line should be projected down toward 6-8, which trims 20-30 points off the 315.9. What remains, a 240-to-280-point catch-and-yardage machine, has led or nearly led the position two years running. The myth mistakes the cherry for the cake.

6 foot 4, 245 pounds: he is the exact center of the tight end mold, down to the pound.

Rare

McBride vs the tight end template

Measure	McBride	The mold
Height	6'4"	6'3" to 6'5"
Weight	245 lbs	245 to 264 lbs

Tight end is football's most standardized body: season after season, roughly half the league's tight ends fit inside a single three-inch, twenty-pound window, a concentration no other skill position matches. McBride, at 76 inches and 245 pounds, sits precisely on the window's edge-to-center line: the minimum weight, the median height. The most productive tight end alive is built like the position's factory setting.

Why it matters. The mold exists because the job prunes from both directions: too light to anchor as a blocker and you become a big receiver, too heavy and the seam speed goes. That McBride produces receiver numbers from a completely standard tight end frame, rather than as an oversized wideout in name only, is why he stays on the field for every down and every game script, which in turn is where the record target volume comes from.

Round-3 arithmetic

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: 140-target tight ends stay elite. The call: top-3 TE again in 2026, with fewer than 11 touchdowns.

TE seasons with 140+ targets, 1999-2024: where they finished the next year

Outcome	Count
Cohort seasons	13
Top-6 TE next season	10 of 13
Top-1 TE next season	4 of 13
Outside top-10	2 of 13 (Waller 17th, Engram 33rd)

Thirteen times since 1999 a tight end has drawn 140 or more targets, and the follow-up seasons are remarkably kind: 10 of 13 finished top-6 at the position the next year, four of them finished No.1, and both true collapses were injury seasons. McBride himself is the newest data point: his 147-target 2024 was followed by the record-setting 2025. The gradeable call: McBride finishes top-3 among TEs in PPR points in 2026, with fewer than 11 receiving touchdowns.

Why it matters. The two halves of the call come from two different laws of gravity. Target monopolies at tight end persist, because they are scheme decisions, which protects the rank. Touchdown spikes do not persist, which is why the call keeps the rank while shorting the touchdowns. The main risk is not fantasy theory but health: both cohort misses were injury years, and he has missed just one game in three seasons.

In 2025, the gap at the top of TE was seven times the gap at the top of WR.

Comparison

First place vs second place, 2025 PPR

Position	No.1	No.2	Gap
TE	McBride 315.9	Pitts 210.8	105.1
WR	Nacua 375.0	Smith-Njigba 359.9	15.1

Wide receiver's top two finished 15.1 points apart in 2025. Tight end's finished 105.1 points apart. That is the entire case for spending a late-second or third-round pick on McBride in one table: at receiver, missing the No.1 costs you a point a week; at tight end, it costs you six. His weekly consistency carried it: 10 of 17 games over 15 points, only two below 10.

Why it matters. Draft capital should chase the positions where the alternatives collapse fastest, not the positions with the biggest raw numbers. Whether the 105-point gap repeats at full size is genuinely uncertain, and the round-3 pecking order around pick 29 is mostly noise. But the structural point stands: no other position offered anything close to this much separation at the top, and he is the only player at his position with a two-year record of producing it.

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