Tyler Warren 2026 Season Preview — a top-5 TE rate hiding behind a torn Achilles | Muffed

Tyler Warren set a Colts rookie tight-end receiving record last season — and his per-game line looks merely okay, because his quarterback tore his Achilles in December and the bottom fell out. Split the season at that injury and you find a top-five tight end inside a TE4 price. The Muffed 2026 preview.

The full-season line was a strong rookie year: seventy-six catches on a hundred twelve targets, eight hundred seventeen yards, four touchdowns — eight-nine a game, the number-eleven tight end per game, fifth in total points. Elite volume for a rookie at the position. But the shape is the story, and here's the split nobody runs. Daniel Jones started thirteen games before his Achilles; in those, Warren caught sixty balls for six hundred ninety-nine yards and averaged twelve-four a game — a top-five tight-end rate. In the four games after, with the backups, he managed sixteen catches for a hundred eighteen yards and seven points a game. Same player, two quarterbacks, two completely different tight ends.

The arc is one rookie season, so we won't sell you a year-two leap as fact. But we don't need a leap here — we need the quarterback back. The volume Warren commanded with Jones, a hundred-plus-target pace, is the stickiest thing a tight end can have, and it was already there as a rookie.

What repeats: the target role, which is real and large. His touchdown share was a low sixteen percent — four scores on that volume is starved, the kind of number that tends to climb, not fall. There's no luck to give back here; if anything, the touchdowns owe him.

[[SITUATION]]

The situation, per the reports, is the unlock, and it's tracking better than expected: Daniel Jones tore his Achilles in Week 14 last year with a six-to-eight-month recovery timeline, and by June's OTAs he was already back on the practice field — ahead of schedule — saying he expects to be fully ready for Week 1, "if not sooner." The Jones-Warren connection was one of the league's best before the injury, and Warren himself made the Pro Bowl as a rookie off a franchise-record receiving season. A healthy, on-time Jones turns Warren's TE4 price into a discount on his with-Jones rate.

The price: pick fifty-one, the fourth tight end. [pause] Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. His full-season finish was dragged down by four quarterback-less games; his real rate with Jones was a top-five tight end, the volume is elite and sticky, and the touchdowns should climb. The counter: it hinges on Jones's Achilles continuing to hold up as he ramps toward game speed, and rookie tight ends don't always carry their volume forward. But you're buying the with-Jones version at the full-season price.

September watch: Jones's continued health and the target share — the with-Jones rate is the bet; and the red-zone role, where four touchdowns has room to grow. [[CLOSE]] Your whole roster gets this treatment every week — that's the show.