Trey McBride 2025 Season in Review

Trey McBride finished 2025 as the number 1 tight end in total PPR scoring AND the number 1 tight end in PPR per game among qualifiers. Let that land. On a 3-and-14 Cardinals team that finished 23rd in offensive expected points added, McBride was the centerpiece of the entire passing operation. He played all 17 games, he was the verified number one receiver on the roster, and Jacoby Brissett threw at him like the offense had one reliable answer and was determined to find it on every script. This wasn't a touchdown fluke or a couple of spike weeks carrying a thin profile. This was a true workhorse year at a position that almost never produces one.

Now let's dig into the numbers, because the volume is what separates McBride from the rest of the tight end room. He caught 126 balls on 169 targets for 1,239 yards and 11 touchdowns — a 75 percent catch rate on a target diet most number one wide receivers would envy. His total receiving expected points added came in at plus 72.7, so he wasn't just compiling — he was generating real value per play. The tracking backs it up: 3.06 yards of average separation, 4.72 yards after the catch per reception, and a yards-after-catch-above-expectation of plus 0.72, meaning he beat the model after the ball arrived. 583 of his 1,239 yards came after the catch — nearly half his production was creation, not running into open grass. And the weekly profile? Steady-floor, the kind teams dream about. Brissett's completion percentage over expected of plus 3.4 meant accurate, catchable targets all year, and McBride was the focal point on a pass-heavy team that dropped back 748 times, the eighth-most-sacked group in football. When the script went bad — and it did, often, with seven losses by 18 or more — his role only grew.

The identity of the year sits in the touchdown column: 11 receiving scores from a tight end on a team that scored just 41 offensive touchdowns total. McBride was the red-zone solution, the third-down solution, the move-the-chains solution on a roster starved for any of them. On a team that lost 14 games and finished 31st in yards per carry, he was the offense's only consistent answer. That's how a tight end smashes his way to the top of the position.