Dalton Schultz

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• 2026 PreviewJul 3, 2026

  Dalton Schultz 2026 Season Preview — what repeats, what doesn't

  Schultz finished as the TE11 in 2025, producing 8 half-PPR points per game across all 17 games on a roster that leaned on him as a consistent underneath option. His 95.3% availability rate from 2021 through 2025 establishes him as one of the more durable tight ends in the league, and durability is exactly the kind of input that carries between seasons. The question heading into next year is how much of his target volume survives with Dell, Klein, and a promoted Higgins all competing for the same looks.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Dalton Schultz finished eleventh among all tight ends in total Half-PPR points last season, and the market is selling him as the 20-third tight end at pick one-67. A 12-slot gap at this position is a full tier. The last time we found one of these, the pattern library liked it — so let's see if this one survives its own depth chart.

  The season: all 17 games, 82 catches on a hundred six targets — a 77 percent catch rate and a career high in receptions — for 777 yards and three touchdowns. Eight-point-oh Half-PPR points a game, seventeenth among tight ends per game, eleventh in total. He led Houston in catches, every position counted, drew 19 percent of the targets in his games, and posted his most receiving yards since 20-21. On a 12-five team that won a playoff game, he was the second-most productive target behind Nico Collins — right up until a calf knocked him out mid-game in the divisional round loss to New England.

  The career: nine seasons, and the shape is a metronome with one dent — seven-two, 10-oh, seven-six, eight-one points a game through the Dallas years, the down 20-24 at five-four, then last season's eight-oh. The 21 season remains the ceiling; everything since lives between five and eight.

  The pattern beat leans on the position's most reliable receipt. Tight end targets per game replicate year over year at point-seven-two before 20-21 and point-eight-oh since — n of 251 238 — and Schultz's 6.2 a game is the input behind the TE11 output. There's no touchdown air in the price either: three scores on a hundred six targets is a conversion drought, not a regression risk — his touchdown share is point-one-oh, and there is nothing in it to give back. Volume built this season; volume is the stat that stays.

  The situation is the counterargument, and it's crowded. Houston extended him March sixth — a one-year add-on reported at 12.6 million, 17-six guaranteed on the two-year total, per PFR and Spotrac — so the team paid to keep the floor. Then it spent the spring stacking the target tree: Tank Dell is back after missing all of 20-25 rehabbing the catastrophic knee, per NFL.com in June; Houston drafted Michigan's Marlin Klein at 59 — a tight end, his position — and Jayden Higgins steps into the vacated number-two receiver job in year two. David Montgomery arrived from Detroit in a March trade built around Juice Scruggs and day-three picks. Nick Caley returns as coordinator and play-caller for year two of the system, per Click2Houston, with Stroud entering year four. Same offense, many more mouths.

  The price: TE23 at pick one-67 for last season's TE11 by total and TE17 by rate. The slot pays for a backup tight end; the production was a weekly starter's. Our verdict: lean, underpriced. History leans on the stickiest stat at the position sitting a tier below its own output — and it stops short of a call because the crowd is real: Dell, Klein, and a promoted Higgins are all new claims on the same hundred six targets, and no pattern prices a target tree's reshuffle. The caveat in one line: if the room's health holds, his volume is the one most likely to shrink — the market knows it, and that's the discount you're being paid to accept.

  Watch his September target share against the 19 percent baseline — that's the whole verdict in one number — and the red-zone rotation, because three touchdowns on this volume has more room above than below. Sticky stats don't argue; they just show up in week one. If he's one of your guys, this show exists for your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.