finished TE2 in total points on 118 targets with a touchdown rate due to rise, under a tight-end-friendly new coach, priced TE7. Four years of scar tissue, not the production, set the price.
Kyle Pitts Sr. 2026 Season Preview — a second-team All-Pro at TE7
Show notes & transcript▾
Kyle Pitts finally had the season everyone waited four years for — second-team All-Pro, the number-two tight end in total points. And he's the seventh tight end off the board, because the market spent four years learning not to trust him. The Muffed 2026 preview.
The 2025 season was the breakout: eighty-eight catches on a hundred eighteen targets for nine hundred twenty-eight yards and five touchdowns, twelve-four a game, the number-five tight end per game and second in total, all seventeen games. The signature was an eleven-catch, a hundred sixty-six-yard, three-touchdown eruption against Tampa Bay in Week 15 — a forty-five point game, the ceiling everyone always saw. The volume finally matched the talent.
The arc is four years of frustration and one of arrival: a ten-four-a-game rookie, then three seasons stranded in the sevens and eights as the Falcons' quarterbacks failed him, and now twelve-four. The talent was never the question; the targets were, and in 2025 they came.
What the data says: a hundred eighteen targets is genuine alpha-tight-end volume, the sticky foundation, and his touchdown share — a low fourteen percent, just five scores — is a positive-regression candidate, not a fade. He finished TE2 in total on volume that repeats and a touchdown rate that should climb. There's nothing in the numbers arguing the price is right.
The situation, per the reports, is mostly tailwind: new head coach Kevin Stefanski has a long history of featuring tight ends, and Pitts is on the franchise tag, motivated for a long-term deal. The honest caveat is the quarterback — Michael Penix is recovering from a knee injury and the Falcons added Tua Tagovailoa to compete, so the passer feeding Pitts isn't settled.
The price: pick ninety-four, the seventh tight end. Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. He finished TE2 in total on alpha volume with a touchdown rate due to rise, under a tight-end-friendly new coach, and he's priced TE7 because of four years of scar tissue. The counter: the quarterback situation is genuinely unsettled, and Pitts has disappointed enough that skepticism is earned. But the volume and the finish say the price is a tier too low.
September watch: who's at quarterback and the target share under Stefanski — the volume is the thesis; and the touchdown rate, where five has room to climb. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.
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2025: 88 catches for 928 yards, 5 TDs on 118 targets (17 games)
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2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026Kyle Pitts 2025 Season in Review
TE2 on the season — 17 games, 12.4 PPR/game
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Kyle Pitts 2025 Season in Review
TE2 on the season — 17 games, 12.4 PPR/game
Show notes & transcript
Kyle Pitts finished 2025 as the number 2 tight end in total fantasy points and the number 5 tight end in per-game scoring — and the gap between those ranks tells you almost everything about his year. This was the season Pitts finally cashed in as a full-time, every-week presence in an Atlanta offense that needed him to be exactly that. He played all 17 games as the verified number one receiver on the Falcons and led the team outright in catches and yards. It wasn't a vintage explosive breakout — it was something more useful for fantasy: a workhorse pass-game role on a team whose passing attack ranked just 21st in the league by total expected points added. When the Falcons threw, they threw at Pitts.
Now let's dig into the numbers. Pitts racked up 88 catches for 928 yards and 5 touchdowns on 118 targets — 210.8 fantasy points, 12.4 per game. The usage was elite: a 23 percent target share and 22 percent of the team's air yards, meaning he was the centerpiece by both volume and downfield intent. But the per-game number masks a genuinely boom-or-bust profile. Pitts cleared 15 fantasy points in just six of 17 games, and dipped under 8 in seven — including a brutal Week 9 through Week 12 stretch of 7.8, 5.8, 3.4, and 4.5. The ceiling was real — a 45.6-point eruption against Tampa Bay in Week 15, 18 against Washington, 18.7 against Arizona. The floor was the problem. Just 5 touchdowns on 118 targets is light for a target hog, and it's the single biggest reason the per-game rank slips to fifth despite finishing second in total scoring.
The defining beat came in that Week 15 win at Tampa Bay: 11 catches, 166 yards, 3 touchdowns, 45.6 fantasy points in a single afternoon. One score was a 17-yard deep-right strike from Kirk Cousins in the second quarter — the vertical seam shot the Falcons had been hinting at all year and finally connected on. That one game accounts for more than a fifth of his entire season total, which is the boom-or-bust profile in a single data point: when Pitts hit, he hit harder than almost any tight end in football. The challenge was that the other 16 weeks didn't look like that one.
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