Tight End TD Regression Candidates for 2026

Player mentions

Article text

I was doing some homework for a rankings article for Trust The ADP and during my deep dive of Trey McBride, saw that part of the reason that he had such a huge pop in 2025 (outside of his crazy volume) was that he was such a TD regression candidate. Let's look at his profile: Year Yards TDs TD/100 yards Expected TDs 2022 265 1 0.38 1.9 2023 825 3 0.36 6.0 2024 1,146 2 0.17 8.4 2025 1,239 11 0.89 9.0 His 2024 season (0.17 TD/100 yards) was one of the most extreme underperformer seasons in the dataset (I took TE receiving stats from 2016-2025 and then focused mainly on starters). The model predicted a bounce-back, and in 2025 he exceeded expectations with 11 TDs. From 2016-2025, starters at TE average .73 TDs per 100 yards, so rates well above or below this figure are considered out of the norm. During the McBride research, I caught a handful of names for regression candidates in both directions: Positive Regression (Expect more TDs) Player 2025 Yards 2025 TDs Expected Difference TD/100 yards Juwan Johnson 889 3 6.5 -3.5 0.34 Cade Otton 572 1 4.2 -3.2 0.17 Dalton Schultz 836 3 6.1 -3.1 0.36 Evan Engram 487 1 3.6 -2.6 0.21 Chigoziem Okonkwo 560 2 4.1 -2.1 0.36 Tyler Warren 817 4 6.0 -2.0 0.49 Kyle Pitts 928 5 6.8 -1.8 0.54 Outside of Warren, these players played on teams that have targeted the TE less on average compared to the rest of the league. Despite the overarching trend of "regress towards the mean," these players were in below average opportunities to get the TDs you'd expect to see. The Saints and Broncos target the TE less than 10% inside the 10 (8.3% and 6.3% respectively), and the Broncos and Buccaneers target their TEs on fewer than 18% of targets inside the 20. Warren feels like the biggest winner, but out of these options, he's the most likely to (still) be a top 5 TE by ADP in August. He's not an exciting option, but Dalton Schultz quietly finished as TE10 with 3 TDs effectively left unconverted; 18 points that would've landed him inside the top 5 by total points scored. Negative Regression (Expect fewer TDs) Player 2025 Yards 2025 TDs Expected Difference TD/100 yards Dallas Goedert 624 12 4.6 +7.4 1.92 Colby Parkinson 560 9 4.1 +4.9 1.61 Darren Waller 283 6 2.1 +3.9 2.12 Jake Ferguson 600 8 4.4 +3.6 1.33 AJ Barner 586 7 4.3 +2.7 1.19 Tucker Kraft 489 6 3.6 +2.4 1.23 George Kittle 634 7 4.6 +2.4 1.10 These players have a similar albeit less extreme version of the effect we saw with the last batch of players. These players are on teams that are near or slightly above the league average for red zone TE targeting, with the Eagles as a notable step above their counterparts, with a 35.9% (+6.7%) rate inside the 20 and 45.5% (+15.7%) inside the 10. The three highest "inside the 10" teams aren't on this list and only Philly and the Seahawks are included on in the top 10 team rankings. Andrews, Bowers, and McBride are above the league average (the starters on the most TE-targeting red zone offenses), but I'd guess that a lot of that is related to having above average opportunity to get TDs. Do you see any names in here that you aren't completely sold on in either direction? McBride is the poster child for an extreme difference in expected and actual TD values, but I'd happily take the smaller wins by listening to the data on the players highlighted as big-time regression candidates. EDIT: View the candidates in this Google Sheet submitted by /u/trusttheadp [link] [comments]