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, nine-eight a game, the number-six 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: an eight-four-a-game rookie, then three seasons stranded in the sixes as the Falcons' quarterbacks failed him, and now nine-eight. 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, went from tailwind to paid: Atlanta and Pitts agreed to a three-year, fifty-four-million-dollar extension on June twenty-third — thirty-six million fully guaranteed, the largest three-year tight-end contract in league history. The franchise-tag standoff is over; the new coach who lobbied for him, Kevin Stefanski, has a long history of featuring tight ends. The quarterback is still the caveat, and it's now a two-man derby between lefties: Tua Tagovailoa — signed for the league minimum after Miami released him — took all the first-team reps this spring and is the reported favorite to open, while Michael Penix says he'll be full-go when camp starts, five months clear of the ACL. Nobody's been named.

The price: pick seventy-nine, the seventh tight end. [pause] Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. He finished [emphasis] TE2 in total on alpha volume with a touchdown rate due to rise, under a tight-end-friendly coach who just got him paid, 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. [[CLOSE]] He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.