When preparing for your fantasy football drafts, knowing which players to target and others to avoid is important. The amount of information available can be overwhelming, so a great way to condense the data and determine players to draft and others to leave for your leaguemates is to use our expert consensus fantasy football rankings compared to fantasy football average draft position (ADP). In this way, you can identify players the experts are willing to reach for at ADP and others they are not drafting until much later than average. Let’s dive into a few notable fantasy football sleepers below. And check out all of the fantasy football sleepers experts love in our consensus sleeper rankings.
Fantasy Football Sleepers Experts Draft: Tight Ends
Here are fantasy football sleepers the experts love to target in drafts.
Who are Fantasy Football Sleepers?
Fantasy football sleepers are players who have a strong chance to exceed expectations and become surprise difference-makers for fantasy managers.
Fantasy Football Sleepers Rankings: Tight Ends
Our TE sleepers are based on a poll of experts who selected their favorite TEs with high upside. Each TE has a consensus draft rank below #15.
| Rank | Tight Ends | Team | Bye | Num Experts | ECR | ADP |
| 1 | Tyler Warren | IND | 11 | 5 | 12 | 10 |
| 2 | Kyle Pitts | ATL | 5 | 4 | 18 | 17 |
| 3 | Zach Ertz | WAS | 12 | 3 | 19 | 20 |
| 4 | Hunter Henry | NE | 14 | 3 | 17 | 19 |
| 5 | Brenton Strange | JAC | 8 | 3 | 22 | 22 |
Fantasy Football Sleepers: Tight Ends
Zach Ertz still appears to have gas left in the tank at age 34. He had 66 catches for 654 yards and seven touchdowns last season, finishing TE8 in half-point PPR scoring. After scoring only one touchdown over his first 10 games of 2024, Ertz scored six touchdowns over Washington’s last seven regular-season games. He scored another TD in the playoffs and went out with an 11-catch, 104-yard performance in the Commanders’ season ending loss to Ertz’s former team, the Eagles. After playing a full season for the first time since 2021, Ertz agreed to a one-year deal that will keep him in Washington. He and young QB Jayden Daniels developed strong chemistry. Despite his age, Ertz could be a sneaky-good late-round TE option in 2025.
A great many fantasy managers have vowed to never again roster Kyle Pitts, as the young tight end has repeatedly failed to meet expectations. The fourth overall pick of the 2021 draft, Pitts played his first NFL game at age 20 and became the first rookie TE to have a 1,000-yard receiving season since Mike Ditka 60 years earlier. But after finishing TE6 in PPR fantasy scoring as a rookie, Pitts hasn’t finished as a top-12 fantasy tight end in any of the last three years. He had 47 catches for 602 yards and a career-high four touchdowns last year. Pitts is still only 24, so there may be hope for him yet. Pitts had to acclimate to new offensive coordinator Zac Robinson’s system last year, and Falcons QB Kirk Cousins was a disappointment. Perhaps there’s hope for Pitts now that he has greater familiarity with the system and will be playing with talented young QB Michael Penix Jr.
Hunter Henry is a wonderful late-round tight-end target this season if you’re looking to punt the position in 2025. Last year, in Drake Maye’s full starts, he had a 19.2% target share, averaged 49.9 receiving yards per game, had 1.70 yards per route run, a 22.7% first-read share, and 0.098 first downs per route run (per Fantasy Points Data). I’ll also add on top that he averaged 11.3 PPR points per game in that sample. Last year, among all tight ends with 25 targets, those marks would have ranked seventh, sixth, 14th, fifth, eighth, and the points per game production would have made him the TE8 in fantasy. Yes, since that time, New England added Stefon Diggs and Kyle Williams to the passing equation, but that doesn’t mean that Henry still can’t emerge in 2025 as Maye’s number two option in the passing offense and flirt with TE1 output.
Brenton Strange enters the 2025 season as the team’s undisputed starter after Evan Engram’s departure. Last year, Strange had seven games in which he played at least 60% of the snaps, where he averaged 9.2 fantasy points per game. In those games, he also saw a 14.8% target share with a 17.3% first-read share while producing 1.39 yards per route run, 36.1 receiving yards per game, and 0.071 first downs per route run (per Fantasy Points Data). Those are pretty much TE2-worthy numbers across the board outside of the first-read share, which will decline some with Travis Hunter and Dyami Brown in town. If Hunter plays more defense than I’m currently projecting, Strange may have a Zach Ertz type of season where he racks up the volume because of a lack of receiving options and flirts with TE1 value.
