Kyle Pitts Sr. 2026 Season Preview — a second-team All-Pro at TE7 | Muffed

Kyle Pitts finally had the season everyone waited four years for — second-team All-Pro, the number-two tight end in total points. And he's the seventh tight end off the board, because the market spent four years learning not to trust him. The Muffed 2026 preview.

The 2025 season was the breakout: eighty-eight catches on a hundred eighteen targets for nine hundred twenty-eight yards and five touchdowns, twelve-four a game, the number-five tight end per game and second in total, all seventeen games. The signature was an eleven-catch, a hundred sixty-six-yard, three-touchdown eruption against Tampa Bay in Week 15 — a forty-five point game, the ceiling everyone always saw. The volume finally matched the talent.

The arc is four years of frustration and one of arrival: a ten-four-a-game rookie, then three seasons stranded in the sevens and eights as the Falcons' quarterbacks failed him, and now twelve-four. The talent was never the question; the targets were, and in 2025 they came.

What the data says: a hundred eighteen targets is genuine alpha-tight-end volume, the sticky foundation, and his touchdown share — a low fourteen percent, just five scores — is a positive-regression candidate, not a fade. He finished TE2 in total on volume that repeats and a touchdown rate that should climb. There's nothing in the numbers arguing the price is right.

[[SITUATION]]

The situation, per the reports, is mostly tailwind: new head coach Kevin Stefanski has a long history of featuring tight ends, and Pitts is on the franchise tag, motivated for a long-term deal. The honest caveat is the quarterback — Michael Penix is recovering from a knee injury and the Falcons added Tua Tagovailoa to compete, so the passer feeding Pitts isn't settled.

The price: pick ninety-four, the seventh tight end. Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. He finished TE2 in total on alpha volume with a touchdown rate due to rise, under a tight-end-friendly new coach, and he's priced TE7 because of four years of scar tissue. The counter: the quarterback situation is genuinely unsettled, and Pitts has disappointed enough that skepticism is earned. But the volume and the finish say the price is a tier too low.

September watch: who's at quarterback and the target share under Stefanski — the volume is the thesis; and the touchdown rate, where five has room to climb. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.