Fantasy Football: Biggest surprises of the 2023 season – tight ends

• A new fantasy TE1 is crowned: Sam LaPorta delivered an all-time rookie performance at the tight end position, making him the biggest surprise at his position.

• Trey McBride seizes the opportunity: The Arizona Cardinals found a new top receiving option in the second-year tight end.

• Kyle Pitts lets fantasy managers down again: This past season becomes the second-straight year where the former fourth-overall pick not living up to expectations.

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Every NFL season is full of surprises, both good and bad, and 2023 was no exception. Plenty of fantasy assets emerged seemingly out of nowhere to become quality starting options, and others let us down, either due to injury, poor play and inefficiency or getting benched.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the pleasant surprises and surprise disappointments at tight end from 2023, leaving out players who missed significant chunks of time due to injury.

Pleasant surprise: Sam LaPorta, Detroit Lions

• PPR TE1
• ADP: TE18

LaPorta delivered a rookie of the year performance in 2023 — which he was awarded for here — as not only the best rookie tight end in fantasy football but the best overall fantasy tight end as well. LaPorta appeared in all 16 games this season while his closest competitors, Travis Kelce and T.J. Hockenson, both missed one game each which helped give him the edge. That shouldn’t diminish what LaPorta was able to accomplish in Year 1, especially at a position that has historically not delivered much rookie fantasy production at all.

LaPorta posted seven top-five PPR finishes among tight ends, ultimately delivering 225.4 PPR fantasy points, which surpassed previously great rookie tight end performances of the last decade, including Kyle Pitts in 2021 (176.6) and Evan Engram in 2017 (173.6). LaPorta has instantly established himself as an elite fantasy option at the position going forward, setting the bar incredibly high in Year 1, which will hopefully only continue in the years to come.

LaPorta’s numbers and ranks among 2023 tight ends (Weeks 1-17):

Pleasant surprise: Trey McBride, Arizona Cardinals

• PPR TE8
• ADP: TE35

In 2022, McBride had his opportunity to emerge when Zach Ertz missed the final seven weeks of the year, but he managed just one top-12 finish in that span and just the 19th most tight end fantasy points from Weeks 11-17 with Ertz out of the lineup. Ertz returned to the lineup to start the year for the Arizona Cardinals and it appeared that McBride would continue on a typically slow tight end development path, but that changed once Ertz suffered an injury in Week 7 and then didn’t play another game for Arizona this season. 

McBride went on a tear from Week 8-on, delivering four top-five PPR finishes over this final nine games, and ultimately accumulating the second-most tight end fantasy points over that nine-game span. McBride established himself as the top receiving option on the team, earning an elite 27% target rate (tied for first) from Weeks 8-17, and was efficient with those opportunities, despite coming up with only two receiving touchdowns. McBride still tied for the most receptions (63) at the position and the third-most receiving yards (621) over that span.

Trey McBride splits this season:

Pleasant surprise: Jake Ferguson, Dallas Cowboys

• PPR TE9
• ADP: TE26

Ferguson had some strong underlying metrics in his 2022 rookie season but never got the playing time to solidify an overly reliable sample size heading into 2023. Even with Dalton Schultz departing in free agency, there were still concerns about how much Ferguson would play considering the Cowboys' options at the position. While those concerns did linger through the first month of the season, as his snap counts were far from ideal, his efficiency and talent eventually allowed him to break through and work as the Cowboys' clear-cut top tight end, averaging around 80% of Dallas' offensive snaps from Week 6-on while providing comfort for fantasy managers looking to start him regularly.

Ferguson delivered nine top-12 finishes in his 16 appearances this season, which was good for a top-10 PPR finish among tight ends on the year. Ferguson went undrafted in most fantasy drafts this past offseason and now looks like a potential mainstay at the position heading into 2024 thanks to his breakout season which included five receiving touchdowns (tied for seventh) and 692 receiving yards (eighth).

Surprise disappointment: Kyle Pitts, Atlanta Falcons

• PPR TE14
• ADP: TE6

Perhaps not a surprise to many, after he also had a down year in 2022, partially due to injury, Pitts still managed to disappoint fantasy managers with another relatively unproductive season in 2023. Pitts managed just 8.3 PPR points per game in 2023, which ranked 18th at the position and was so inefficient that despite not missing a game, he still couldn’t crack the top-12 overall tight ends on the year.

Arthur Smith’s Atlanta Falcons were a frustrating group to sort out for fantasy purposes, and Pitts certainly suffered from that as his average playing time decreased significantly this year to 65% of Atlanta's offensive snaps. It’s difficult to deny Pitts' talent and easy to shift the blame to the situation around him, but these were all things fantasy managers were aware of heading into the year, which made him one of the riskiest picks of fantasy draft season. Even with all that considered, Pitts became utterly unstartable for most of the year, which is far from what fantasy managers were hoping for in 2023.

Kyle Pitts over his three-year career:

Surprise disappointment: Pat Freiermuth, Pittsburgh Steelers

• PPR TE30
• ADP: TE10

Freiermuth missed time due to injury but still appeared in 11 games this season, where he managed just three top-20 tight end finishes. In one of those games (Week 12) he was the overall TE1 for the week, but outside of that, Freiermuth gave fantasy managers next to nothing to be excited about, finishing as the TE29 in PPR points per game (6.6).

Freiermuth’s top-10 ADP for his position was built off of the solid production he had delivered in his first two seasons, finishing as the overall TE14 as a rookie, and then improving upon that with a TE6 finish in Year 2, but he fell well short of both of those marks in 2023. Freiermuth’s career-low in points per game came from him finishing outside of the top-25 in target rate (16.4%), yards per route run (1.12), yards per reception (9.6), and then only finding the endzone twice.

Surprise disappointment: Chigoziem Okonkwo, Tennessee Titans

• PPR TE23
• ADP: TE16

Okonkwo, much like Jake Ferguson, boasted a lot of strong underlying numbers in 2022, including 2.61 yards per route run which led the position (min. 20% of routes) and the second-best tight end receiving grade (84.6). With a potential ascension up the depth chart thanks to Austin Hooper’s departure, there was optimism that Okonkwo could deliver a breakout season.

While Okonkwo’s role certainly increased from 2022 to 2023 — nearly doubling his 172 routes run from last season (383) — it wasn’t enough to provide any sort of consistent fantasy production throughout the year. Okonkwo’s offensive snap share fluctuated wildly throughout the year and while he did at least finish as the PPR TE10 during the fantasy playoffs, it was too little too late as he had solidified his spot on fantasy benches by that point.

Chigoziem Okonkwo’s 2023 season (Weeks 1-17) versus 2022: