Tight ends are tough to rank. You know a left tackle is good if they can pass block and keep a quarterback safe. For tight ends, they are asked to do so many different things, and it depends on the player and the offensive scheme.
If you like a gritty run-blocking tight end, and that’s the most important thing to you, that’s totally fine. For this ranking, I’m mostly focusing on pass-catching tight ends because those are the ones that impact NFL offenses the most.
First, some Honorable Mentions: Dalton Schultz, Mark Andrews, Jake Ferguson, and Juwan Johnson are all awesome. They’ve just got some holes in their game or they don’t have the resumes that these other cats do.
10. Zach Ertz, Commanders
Zach Ertz’s resume isn’t the only reason that he made it into the top-10. It’s a huge part of it, but it’s not the only reason.
He’s been in the NFL for 13 seasons, has over 8,000 receiving yards, 57 touchdowns, and he caught the go-ahead touchdown from Nick Foles with 2:21 left in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LII and helped the Eagles win their first Super Bowl.
When you’re thinking of receiving tight ends who will make the difficult catch, Ertz is pretty much your prototype. If there’s a downside to his game, it’s that his nickname is ‘No YAC Zach’.
Jayden Daniels’ rookie season was amazing. He did a whole lot of scrambling, and it was very effective, but when he threw the ball, he hit his guys. One of those guys was obviously Terry McLaurin, but his second biggest target was Ertz.
In that magical season for Washington, Ertz had 66 catches for 654 yards and seven touchdowns. Olamide Zaccheaus was their third pass catcher, and he had fewer targets than Ertz had catches.
When it comes to growing a rookie, having players like that is incredibly important, and it really seems like the Commanders knew what they were doing when they signed Ertz.
9. Dallas Goedert, Eagles
Dallas Goedert makes the list because of his clutchness and the way that he regularly changes games. During the Eagles’ 2024 postseason, he was their leading pass catcher, and then he followed that up with a 2025 season where he was one of the most effective red zone pass catchers in the NFL.
And he’s doing that on an offense with A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Saquon Barkley. It’s impressive when you can be a standout playmaker on the field with those guys.
I know that I said injuries don’t really matter, but Goedert is the exception to that. If he were able to avoid some of these freak (and non-freak) injuries, he’d probably be a perennial Pro Bowler, at least.
8. Dalton Kincaid, Bills
It takes a lot to be a standout tight end on a team that regularly uses three tight ends, but sure enough, Dalton Kincaid has what it takes. When Josh Allen throws to him, good things happen. Last season, his 14.6 yards per catch was second only to Tucker Kraft (for tight ends).
He’s one of those guys where you feel him when he’s not there, too (which happened quite a bit in 2025). The Bills lost five games last season, and three of them were games that Kincaid was hurt… And it wasn’t just normal losses either.
In Week 6, they only put up 14 points against the Falcons’ defense, and Allen had a 72.6 passer rating. In Week 12, they got brutalized by the Texans, only putting up 19 points, and Allen had a season-low passer rating of 67.4. In Week 17, they lost 13-12 to the Eagles, and Allen had a passer rating of 88. For reference, Josh Allen’s passer rating for the whole 2025 season was 102.2, so those games were waaaaaay below what he’s used to.
Dalton Kincaid might not have the best numbers, but the value that he adds to the Bills’ passing offense is undeniable, and a player like that gets put in the top-10.
7. Tucker Kraft, Packers
Don’t let the Packers’ yearly postseason collapses let you forget that this Tucker Kraft is one of the realest of deals in the NFL. And don’t let him mangling his knee last season make you think that he’s soft.
Truth be told, if Kraft didn’t have that ACL injury and if he was able to finish last season, he’d probably be a few spots higher on this list.
He hasn’t really gotten any accolades or anything like that, and a glance at his Pro Football Reference page isn’t going to melt your eyeballs… but watching him play will. When he gets the ball, he’s not just going to take a lick and go down. Instead, he’ll get the ball, and either manufacture space and make a guy miss, or he’ll lower his shoulder to invite violence. And then he’ll get five more yards.
Over the last three years, the Packers have had a very full wide receiver room, and no one has been consistent enough to be a truly elite target. That’s because Kraft has been that guy for Jordan Love, and he’s done everything right to earn that ‘elite’ title.
6. Sam LaPorta, Lions
One thing that really good offensive coordinators do is scheme their tight ends open, if the tight end is the kind of player who deserves to be schemed open. For his first two seasons, Ben Johnson made sure that Sam LaPorta was a significant part of the Lions offense because he is that kind of player.
Then came 2025, and Johnson left to take the head coaching job in Chicago. The overwhelming question in Detroit was, ‘How much was that going to impact the offense?’ It turns out, the answer was just as predictable as it was resounding. ‘A whole lot.’
But it didn’t really hurt Sam LaPorta. Before he hurt his back in Week 10, he was right on track with his production from his first two seasons (he was even a little bit more efficient). It wasn’t really surprising, but instead, it was reaffirming.
He’s not a Ben Johnson merchant. He’s just a super awesome tight end that makes the most out of the opportunities he gets… And that rocks.
5. Kyle Pitts, Falcons
It’s criminal what Arthur Smith did with Kyle Pitts. The Falcons drafted him fourth overall in the 2021 draft, and they used him like you would a fourth-overall pick… for one season.
He went from running 28.7 routes and getting 60 yards per game his rookie season, to running 19.2 routes per game and getting 35.6 yards per game in his second season. He bounced back a little bit in that third season, but it still wasn’t close to where he was as a rookie.
Luckily, over the past two seasons in Zac Robinson’s offense, Pitts started getting back to the super-athlete levels of production that he’s capable of. In 2025, he had his first All-Pro season, which is something that we, as a society, thought should’ve happened a whole lot sooner.
Kyle Pitts was physically built to be a football tight end, and it unfortunately took him five years to get put in a position for everyone to fully realize what he can do… and he can do just about everything.
4. Travis Kelce, Chiefs
I mean… It’s Travis Kelce. Sure, he’s been getting more and more inefficient over the past three seasons, but the guy has more than made his argument for best tight end of all time. When someone like that is still playing, they’re going to be a top-five guy. Easy.
3. Brock Bowers, Raiders
Historically, rookie tight ends haven’t done a whole lot. Brock Bowers was just about as much of an outlier as you can get in that aspect. In 2024, he came out of the gate and dropped a cool 1,194 receiving yards and seven touchdowns on 112 catches.
In 2023, Puka Nacua came on the scene and set the rookie receptions record at 105. Before him, Jaylen Waddle (2021) had the record at 104. Before Waddle, it was Anquan Boldin (2003) with 101.
My point is that Bowers didn’t just break the record; he put it in a bucket and lit it on fire. Now, does that make him a great tight end? No. Does it help? Yeah, duh.
What makes him great is that he did all of that when Gardner Minshew, Aidan O’Connell, and Desmond Ridder were the ones throwing him the ball. Those aren’t three guys who you want throwing a football at you.
Then, in 2025, Bowers’ quarterbacks were Geno Smith and Kenny Pickett, who again, should not be hucking balls at you.
He’s a bona fide weapon, and he’s going to make Fernando Mendoza’s job a whole lot easier in 2026… especially since he’s the only real passing option on that roster.
2. Trey McBride, Cardinals
Trey McBride was already pretty good at catching footballs, but last year? Wooo buddy… Last year was special.
In 2018, Zach Ertz set the single-season receptions record for tight ends with a seemingly untouchable 166 catches. McBride looked at that number, looked around the field, saw that he was going to be the focal point of the Cardinals’ offense, Teen Wolfed a warm Bud Light, and then went out and caught the ball 126 times for 1,239 yards and 11 touchdowns. It was as simple as that.
The dude solidified himself as a premier pass threat in the entire NFL. Hopefully, he gets to play on an offense with more talent before too awful long, because then we’ll get to see some killer efficiency out of this cat.
1. George Kittle, 49ers
There aren’t many complete football players in the NFL. If you get a running back with elite speed and shiftiness, they might stink at pass protection. If you get a guard who can rip across a line when they’re pulling and bulldoze everyone in their way, they could be a bead curtain pass blocking. If you get a cornerback who is clamps in zone coverage, they might just be a scarecrow in man… You get it.
On a play-to-play basis, tight ends have the most different jobs. They block, they run routes, they block and run routes… and the better they are at all three of those things, the more they stay on the field, and the more versatile the offense.
George Kittle is the most complete tight end in the NFL, and there’s not a real argument that you can make otherwise.
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