The injury news is coming fast and furious at training camp, and it continued on Wednesday when Ian Rapoport reported that Isaiah Likely is having foot surgery, which will put his recovery in doubt, though not rule him out, for Week 1. Likely and teammate Mark Andrews can alter the landscape of the tight end position in both Dynasty and redraft Fantasy Football leagues. My initial reaction to the news was to lower Likely from a 10% target share to 9%, and to boost Andrews from 14% to 15%. There could be a significant change if Likely experiences a setback, and this change could be reversed within a month if Likely meets his six-week timeline.
The first thing you should know, is that for both redraft and Dynasty, Likely’s projection has very little to do with his ranking. Last year he opened the season by catching nine of 12 targets for 111 yards and a score against the Chiefs in Week 1. In his next five games he only saw 13 targets combined and only produced 96 receiving yards. Likely for now is best viewed as a high-upside backup tight end, who is one injury away from being a top-five option. The injury does not change much in that regard. Even if he misses a week or two to start the season, he was probably going to be limited by Andrews anyway. For that reason, I am not lowering him in my rankings and I would suggest seeing if you could buy low on this news. There is some risk that the injury lingers, so factor that in, but this play was always about the future for the 25-year-old.
Andrews is a different story. He only saw 69 targets in 17 games last year. He made up for that by scoring on 15.9% of his targets, a wholly unsustainable rate. Andrews’ career TD rate going into 2024 was 7.1% and he posted a 6.1% rate from 2021-23. In other words, touchdown regression is coming and he needed a volume rebound to make up for it. With this small bump in target share, he moves up to TE12 in the rankings below. There is upside beyond that, but Baltimore projects to have one of the lowest pass totals in the NFL and Zay Flowers, DeAndre Hopkins, and Rashod Bateman project to take up more than half of those targets. Andrews will need an absence to Likely or continued outlandish touchdown production to be a true difference maker at the position. I would be more likely to sell based on this news than buy, but you may want to wait and see if Andrews gets off to a hot start.
The biggest riser in the rankings below is Elijah Arroyo, moving up from TE23 to TE13 after the Seahawks cut Noah Fant. That move highlights the instant opportunity for Arroyo, but also the lack of separation between the TE2s in Dynasty. Jamey Eisenberg wrote more on Arroyo’s sleeper appeal for 2025 earlier in July.
Here are my updated Dynasty Tight End Rankings:
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