Fantasy Football: How do tight ends perform after serious injuries?

• Tight ends have a difficult time returning from injuries: Our 10-player sample averaged 48 catches for 529 yards and four scores — 124.9 fantasy points, or the TE20 in 2025 — after returning from a serious injury.

• Longevity at the position is a serious concern: Even though some players manage to produce after injuries, rarely do their careers last significantly longer.

• 2026 NFL Draft season is here: Try the best-in-class PFF Mock Draft Simulator and learn about 2026’s top prospects while trading and drafting for your favorite NFL team.

In our final piece in this series looking at how position groups perform a year after serious injury, we have finally come to the tight ends.

Tucker Kraft, George Kittle and Sam LaPorta are the standout names from the 2025 season who will be working their way from substantial injuries heading into the 2026 campaign.

Just like the previous entries to this series, we’re going to take a 10-player sample size from 2015 onward (perhaps with one exception) and average them out to give us a baseline.

In order in which the players sustained their injuries, our 10 players are:

Dennis Pitta (2015, hip), Rob Gronkowski (2016, hamstring and herniated disc), Greg Olsen (2017, broken foot), Jordan Reed (2019, concussion), George Kittle (2020 knee, foot), Logan Thomas (2020, hamstring, knee), Zach Ertz (2023, quad injury), T.J. Hockenson (2023 torn ACL), Darren Waller (2024, retirement) and Evan Engram (2024, torn labrum).

Below are the seasons the players turned in prior to injury.

Pre-Injury

Taking the above numbers for those players and averaging them out, we get 45 catches for 481 yards and two scores. It totals 106.62 fantasy points, enough for the TE28 in 2025 — a highly droppable asset in nearly every form of fantasy football.

The numbers are bleak, but some of these tight ends boasted genuinely monstrous seasons before their injury. Engram, for example, posted a 114-catch year with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2023, notching 963 yards and four scores on his way to a TE2 overall finish.

Prior to foot issues robbing Olsen of much of his 2017 and 2018 seasons, the former Carolina Panther was the center of Cam Newton’s passing attack, with 122 targets, 80 catches, 1,073 yards and three touchdowns on his way to a TE3 overall finish.

Similarly, Gronkowski was looking to follow up a stellar 2015 season in which he recorded 1,176 yards and 11 touchdowns, led all qualifying tight ends in average depth of target (10.9) and ranked second in yards per route run (2.31).

So, while our hypothetical average player posts bleak numbers, they would have had some incredible totals had we taken the last fully healthy season of some of these players.

What comes next is not encouraging, however. Before we take a broad look at how the 10 aforementioned players performed post-injury, it’s important to look at some outliers.

Waller is an interesting case. The former Raider retired in 2024 before returning for the 2025 season with the Miami Dolphins. Injury restricted Waller to just nine games this past season, but he still posted the second-highest PFF receiving grade of his career (87.6), as well as the second-highest touchdown total (six).

Projecting that across 17 games would have resulted in 45 catches for 535 yards and 11 touchdowns — the TE12 overall for the 2025 season.

Pitta is also interesting. The former fourth-rounder was plagued by injuries and played only six NFL seasons, and his last was his finest from a fantasy standpoint.

While Pitta earned a 62.6 PFF receiving grade in 2016, the second-lowest mark of his career, he did log 86 catches for 729 yards and two scores, which was enough for him to be the fantasy TE8.

Let’s take a look at the 10 players in their entirety.

Post-Injury

When we average that out, it results in 48 catches for 529 yards and four scores — 124.9 fantasy points, or the TE20 in 2025. It’s a slight jump from the TE28 mark when averaging out the injury-hit seasons, but it’s a low-end TE2.

Even scarier is the long-term viability of the players in our sample size. Pitta retired after the 2016 season, as did Reed after his 2020 season. Thomas played until 2023, with his final season being his best since his 2020 career year (55 catches, 496 yards and four touchdowns).

Olsen suited up until the end of the 2020 campaign. But the dynamic rumbling playmaker who notched three straight 1,000-yard seasons from 2014 to 2016 was long gone, with his best year from 2016 being a 52-catch, 597-yard 2019 campaign.

Perhaps the only player in 2026 threatened by the same thing happening is Kittle. The San Francisco 49er will be 33 by the time he recovers from a serious Achilles injury.

He could experience a downturn, and that uncertainty is playing out in his dynasty value, which is at a low point currently. Dynasty managers are best suited to hold on to the former Iowa product until he returns to the field.

Kraft and LaPorta may not return to post Gronkowski-type numbers, but there is no reason to believe they could not step back on the field and accomplish what Kittle did in 2021. 

Subscribe For Full Access

Subscribe For Full Access

If you’re a fantasy manager who is potentially looking to get cute and wait for a returning injured tight end to fall to you in fantasy drafts, don’t do it. Invest in the position early and take one of Brock Bowers, Tyler Warren or Trey McBride. 

If you’re a dynasty manager, just beware that you may need to spend extensive draft capital to bring in a tight end should your current rostered one suffer a serious injury. Unless they’re rare, like Gronkowski and Kittle have proven to be, you may be waiting for a bounce-back that never comes.