Trey McBride

A tight end caught one hundred twenty-six passes last season — more than every wide receiver in football except one. He finished as the number one fantasy tight end by almost three points a game. And he's being drafted behind another tight end. Trey McBride is the value of the position, and this is part two of the trade. The Muffed 2026 preview.

The season was historic volume. A hundred sixty-nine targets into a hundred twenty-six catches — second-most of any pass-catcher in football, receiver or tight end — for twelve hundred thirty-nine yards and eleven touchdowns, at a seventy-five percent catch rate. Fourteen-nine a game, TE1 by a comfortable margin, all seventeen games played. And he did it catching passes mostly from Jacoby Brissett, as the unquestioned number one option on the roster. The identity isn't one play; it's the eleven touchdowns on a team that scored just forty-one offensive touchdowns all year, and the five hundred eighty-three yards he piled up after the catch. Volume and the skill to turn it into yards.

The arc: McBride has grown into the most heavily-targeted tight end in football, and last year the touchdowns finally matched the volume — a complete season at the position's most valuable usage tier.

What repeats, and it's the whole case: tight-end targets per game are the stickiest stat at the position, repeating around point eight, and McBride's nine-point-nine led all tight ends. That's not a number that evaporates — it's the most durable signal we track, and he owns the most of it. The touchdown share is clean, the catch rate and after-catch production are skills, not luck. There is nothing in the pattern library arguing against him and a great deal arguing for him.

The situation, per the reports: Arizona rebuilt the offense around a new head coach, Mike LaFleur, with Nathaniel Hackett as coordinator and LaFleur calling the plays — and LaFleur spent June telling reporters the "sky is the limit" for McBride in the new scheme, floating more three-tight-end packages and more quick game. The quarterback picture is the caveat, and it's gotten specific: Jacoby Brissett has been named the starter, but he's in a contract standoff — he reported to June minicamp only to avoid fines, and the two sides are described as significantly far apart — with Gardner Minshew behind him. The honest read hasn't changed: McBride's volume survived backup quarterback play a year ago and still led the position — the target floor is about as quarterback-proof as it gets at tight end.

The price: pick eighteen — and, new this snapshot, TE1, ahead of Bowers for the first time. Verdict: CALL — underpriced, and it holds. The market finally moved him ahead of Bowers, but his own price barely moved, and the case was never about the order: he led the position in targets by roughly fifty, and he out-scored the tight end going right behind him by almost three points a game. The stickiest signal at the position, the most volume at the position, at a price that still pays for a tight end, not for the TE1 overall. The counter, fairly: tight-end scoring compresses in twelve-team leagues, so the absolute edge is smaller than the rank gap suggests, and an unsettled quarterback contract is a real if minor cloud. But top-of-position production at a round-two-adjacent price is still the cleanest positional value on the board.

September watch: the target share under the new staff — if it holds near ten a game, he's TE1 again; and the Brissett situation, the only thing that could dent a bulletproof volume profile. If he's one of your guys, this show exists for your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.