Tucker Kraft

Before he tore his ACL in November, Tucker Kraft was on pace to be an All-Pro — a top-two tight end on a per-game basis. The market is pricing him TE5, betting the knee comes all the way back. The Muffed 2026 preview.

The 2025 season was eight games of a breakout: thirty-two catches for four hundred eighty-nine yards and six touchdowns, twelve-six a game — the number-two tight end per game when he played, though the injury left him at TE21 in total. The signature was a seven-catch, a hundred forty-three-yard, two-touchdown game against Pittsburgh in Week 8, weeks before the knee. On a per-game basis, he was elite.

The arc is straight up: four-five a game, eight-one, and then twelve-six — a third-year leap into the position's top tier, cut short.

What the data says, both sides honestly: the per-game rate is genuinely exciting, but two things make it hard to bank. First, it's eight games. Second, his touchdown share — thirty percent, six scores in eight games — is a top-quartile rate that regresses; the twelve-six was partly touchdown-fueled. So the TE2 rate is real talent but not a clean repeat even at full health.

The situation, per the reports, is the swing — and June's reporting was all arrows up, with one procedural catch: Kraft says he's "doing better than expected... quad looks great, swelling is minimal to none," he expects to play Week One — September thirteenth at Minnesota — with no pitch count, and the GM went further than the coaches: "a little bit ahead of schedule." The catch: he expects to open training camp on the physically-unable-to-perform list, so the first proof point is when he comes off it. LaFleur still calls him "a big focal point of our offense." The talent and the role are there; the knee is the question, and ACL returns aren't always linear.

The price: pick seventy-three, the fifth tight end. Verdict: WATCHLIST — an ascending top-tier talent with a defined role, priced a notch below his per-game rate, with a torn ACL and a touchdown-inflated sample as the two big unknowns. The counter for him: if the knee is right, a focal-point tight end at TE5 is a value, and the reports are glowing. Against: you're paying a near-starter price on an eight-game sample and a recovering knee. The talent says buy; the uncertainty says watch.

September watch: the knee — the PUP exit first, then snap count and explosiveness; and the touchdown rate, where six in eight games won't hold its pace. If he's one of your guys, this show exists for your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.