8 Fantasy Football Tight Ends Primed to Break Out in 2022

Jul 25, 2022

Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images

No position in fantasy football has to be looked at from a “stars or scrubs” approach quite like tight end. There are basically four-to-five tight ends that you can choose from if you want consistent, week-in, and week-out production. After that, you’ll be looking for someone to far outkick their projections, or, breakout.

More Helpful TE & Breakout Articles: TE SOS Beneficiaries | TE Predictable Stats | Underdog TE Rankings | RB Breakouts

Below, I’ll be pointing out some potential breakouts at the tight end position with the help of TJ Hernandez’s study on predictable year-to-year stats. Combining the stickiest stats with the best offensive atmospheres should give us an idea of who can jump up a tier or leapfrog a number of tight ends who are going before them in average draft position.

A Look Back at 2021

There were more breakouts last year than I remembered before I dug into this, with six tight ends jumping at least one tier at the position from where they were being drafted.

2021 Tight End Breakouts
Player	2021 ADP	2021 TE Finish (PPG)
Mark Andrews	TE5	TE1
Rob Gronkowski	TE12	TE3
Dawson Knox	TE24	TE9
Hunter Henry	TE16	TE11
Zach Ertz	TE17	TE12
Pat Freiermuth	TE20	TE16

Mark Andrews feels a little bit like cheating, but at this time last year, he was going behind four other TEs, including rookie Kyle Pitts at times. He would go on to easily outscore all of them and even had more half-PPR points than all but five wide receivers. Even as the season fast approached, the fantasy community still wasn’t **quite sure what sort of role Rob Gronkowski was going to have, but those who took the plunge were rewarded with 12 very worthwhile fantasy performances. The four other options either carved out usage for themselves on new teams or in Dawson Knox’s case, he rode the wave of a quickly ascending offense.

When searching for that breakout talent at TE, these are the year-to-year stats we tend to lean on in identifying potential candidates, in the order of stickiest correlation:

Yards per game
Receptions per game
Half-PPR points per game
Targets per game
Share of Team Targeted Air Yards

Breakout Candidates

Gerald Everett, Chargers

ADP (Positional Rank): 13.03 (TE18)

Before we even dig into Gerald Everett’s potential 2022, I wanted to point out those exact “stickiest” stats from Jared Cook’s 2021 season with the Chargers, and I think they’re a little better than I would have assumed.

Jared Cook's 2021 with the Chargers
Stat	Rate	TE Rank
Yards per game	35.3	18th
Receptions per game	3.0	24th
Half-PPR points per game	6.8	19th
Targets per game	5.1	14th
Share of Team Targeted Air Yards	14.3%	13th

Considering the higher level of athleticism and the lack of additional offensive weapons that the Chargers added over the offseason, I would consider those rate stats as the absolute floor for Everett’s upcoming season. That would also mean that going as fantasy’s TE18 would be buying him at that floor, with an opportunity to operate more efficiently than what we saw from the 35-year-old Jared Cook.

Everett has been slowly climbing up draft boards —he was the TE24 in Underdog drafts in March— but I think there’s some meat on the bone, and a fringe-TE1 finish is not out of the question if touchdown variance falls his way. If you want a deep dive on the subject, here is a write-up exploring the signing from back in Spring.