Everybody wants to draft league-winning players in fantasy football. That's the whole point.

Often, true league-winners at tight end are found early on in the draft.

And year after year, certain tight ends are able to outperform their average draft position (ADP), but how likely is it that a late-round TE ends the season as the TE1? (Hint: not great!)

But if we played out the 2024 NFL season 10,000 times, there will be a few instances where surprises happen, where studs bust, and where sleepers hit.

So, while anything is possible in a sense, we should also be trying to seek out what is most probable when it comes to our fantasy football drafts.

And that's why I like to simulate out the season thousands of times to see how likely each player is to reach certain fantasy football benchmarks.

I've already taken a look at the quarterback league-winner odds, running back league-winner odds, and wide receiver league-winner odds. Let's take a look at the TEs.

Simulating the NFL Season

I love fantasy football projections. I really do. I like to build my own that account for regression from the year prior and personnel changes.

But in most instances, projections are giving us a singular outlook for a player. What is "most likely" to occur.

But we only get one crack at the 2024 NFL season, and a pulled hamstring or bad touchdown luck can derail even the most precise preseason projections.

Which is why I like to look at a range of outcomes based on numberFire's fantasy football projections and a whole lot of math beyond that to figure out how the season may look.

The real litmus test for me is to make sure that the results I'm seeing are somewhat reflective of fantasy football history.

With that in mind, I pulled ADPs and fantasy outputs for tight ends since 2016 from numberFire's database to see how often players in certain ADP buckets reached certain fantasy rank thresholds for that season.

The below table shows how likely a TE from a certain ADP bucket finished as the top fantasy scorer (or top-five, etc.) since 2016.

This is showing us that 14.6% (7 of 48) of the tight ends to have a top-six ADP (i.e. TE1 to TE6) ended up finishing as the overall TE1 for the season, so we should expect the top of the player pool to have TE1 odds roughly in that range -- unless there is a huge outlier like there has been in recent seasons with Travis Kelce. That's not the case this season, so the simulations resemble history a lot more closely by default.

But before we dig into those, let's pause on actual TE1 odds.

With Kelce (six times) and Mark Andrews (once) comprising seven of the eight TE1 seasons since 2016, we've seen seven TE1 seasons come attached with a top-five preseason ADP.

The lone outlier is Sam LaPorta, last season's TE1 despite an ADP of TE18.

If we expand our search range to look at top-five TE finishers for the season, we do see a bit more room for leeway.

However, of the 41 TEs to finish as the TE5 or better (including ties) since 2016, 31 of them (75.6%) had a top-15 ADP.

When we're talking about probabilities, top-five seasons from outliers at TE are still pretty rare.

2024 Fantasy Football League-Winning Tight End Odds

Here are the results from the 10,000 simulated seasons.

Again, these are meant to account for historical injury rates, outlier performances in touchdown rates (above or below expectation), and other factors that can impact a baseline fantasy projection.

Of course, within all this discourse, the term "league-winner" is very subjective. Having the TE1, the player who outscores all the other TEs is definitely a league-winner.

But getting a weekly starting TE late in the draft (or off the waiver wire), can feel like a bit of a league-winner, too.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at how likely each TE is to reach certain benchmarks this season -- again, with numberFire's fantasy football projections as the baseline.

Travis Kelce Has Competition

Travis Kelce's fantasy football impact is hard to understate, but we saw Sam LaPorta take over the mantle as the TE1 in 2024 when LaPorta went for 889 yards and 10 touchdowns on 86 catches.

Notably, LaPorta pops as the most obvious touchdown regression candidate among tight ends after a double-digit TD season on sub-900 yards.

However, LaPorta's baseline projections remain high: 99.4 catches, 147.3 targets, and 1,043.2 receiving yards.

What's most interesting here (to me) is that Kelce underperformed in the TD column during his 93-catch, 984-yard, 5-touchdown regular season (in 15 games) and is expected to be back to his old ways, via numberFire's projections.

Tier 2 Is Loaded

While it's true that only LaPorta (208.2) and Kelce (206.7) are projected for more than 200.0 half-PPR points by numberFire's model this season, four more names sit above 180.0:

• Trey McBride (193.6)
• Dalton Kincaid (186.4)
• Mark Andrews (185.5)
• Kyle Pitts (182.3)

McBride chipped away in 2023 to the TE9 season across 17 games. He finished the year with 106 targets, 81 catches, 825 yards, and just 3 touchdowns. McBride should've had 5.1 touchdowns based on his underlying data, and with 5 scores instead of 3, he'd have finished as the TE7.

Kincaid is actually projected for 139.2 targets via numberFire, a top-three number and within a single target of being the TE2 by projected volume. That would represent a huge volume bump for Kincaid, who saw 91 targets across his 16 games in 2023 as a rookie. He scored only twice but should've had 4.1 scores.

There's definitely a chance Mark Andrews reminds us that he is the real competition for Kelce at the top of the position. Andrews played only 10 games last season but finished as the TE4 by half-PPR points per game (11.3, just 0.2 points shy of LaPorta and Kelce, who averaged 11.5).

Kyle Pitts is set for a career-best situation in terms of quarterback play with Kirk Cousins under center. Pitts should see a career high in volume (he's projected for 128.4 targets after seeing 110, 59, and 90 targets through his first three NFL seasons).

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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.