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Rob's fantasy football rookie analysis for Arizona Cardinals tight end Trey McBride. Is this NFL rookie TE a 2022 fantasy football draft sleeper?
The Arizona Cardinals used their 55th pick in the 2022 NFL Draft on Trey McBride, tight end out of Colorado State. He was the consensus No. 1 tight end among draft experts and analysts and that's the way the actual draft played out, which from a fantasy perspective, is always a good thing. Fantasy managers, however, know very well the history of rookie tight ends and it isn't pretty.
There have only been four tight ends since 2000 to have more than 600 receiving yards, only seven have recorded 50 or more receptions, and only nine scored six or more times. Only one rookie tight end – Evan Engram – has done all three since 2000. If you're a believer in the age-old saying of history repeats itself, betting on McBride for fantasy value in 2022 is a bad bet.
Fantasy managers may want to believe in McBride's draft pedigree, but the reality is that the tight end position is one of the more difficult transitions to make. Rookies need to learn two facets of the game – blocking and route running. While the landing spot of Arizona isn't great for immediate success, it's a rather nice one for future potential. So how should fantasy managers value McBride for 2022 and in the future?
Trey McBride's Draft Profile
McBride is a four-year player at Colorado State. He played sparingly his freshman season and put up a pedestrian stat line because of it. He finished with just 15 targets, seven receptions, 89 yards, and one touchdown. He became the full-time starter in his sophomore season and started to display his receiving skills. He recorded 54 targets as a sophomore and caught 45 of those targets and turned them into 560 yards and four touchdowns. His play earned him a first-team All-Mountain West Conference selection.
His junior season was cut short because of Covid-19 and he ultimately only played four games. However, he played really well in the shortened season. He finished with 34 targets, 22 receptions, 330 yards, and four touchdowns. On a per-game basis, he averaged 8.5 targets per game, 5.5 receptions, 82.5 receiving yards, and one touchdown. It was quite the showing and gave NFL teams a teaser of what was to come in his senior season.
His junior season began to show glimpses of just how dynamic he could be in the passing game, but McBride went and took his game to new heights in his final season at Colorado State. He finished with 122 targets, 91 receptions, 1,125 yards, and surprisingly just one touchdown. He was the most targeted tight in the country. His 2.78-yard-per-route run average was the fifth-highest in the country.
When you look for tight ends that can be valuable in fantasy football, there are a few areas fantasy managers should look for. While many will argue – and there are plenty of examples of this – that athleticism is overrated when it comes to receivers, that couldn't be further from the truth when it comes to tight ends and fantasy production.
70% of TE1's in the past decade have a RAS over 7 and 40-time under 4.72.
It's a decent way to just literally remove players off the board.
Dulcich fits the criteria. But he's a rookie TE...
— #DynastyLeverage (@CharlesChillFFB) May 16, 2022
No need to worry about the Jelani Woods and Greg Dulcich part of that tweet above, instead focus on the 70% of TE1s in the past decade that has had a RAS (Relative Athletic Score) ad a 40-time under 4.72. While there will always be outliers, this is a very strong positive correlation and one fantasy managers shouldn't be dismissing. It tells us just how important speed and athleticism are at tight end if their play is going to translate to strong fantasy value and speaking of that...
Trey McBride was drafted with pick 55 of round 2 in the 2022 draft class. He scored a 8.13 RAS out of a possible 10.00. This ranked 191 out of 1014 TE from 1987 to 2022. https://t.co/6tjKFpJt0M #RAS #Cardinals pic.twitter.com/Rg36TthYLE
— Kent Lee Platte (@MathBomb) April 30, 2022
Check and check for McBride. That doesn't necessarily mean it'll translate to Year One production – it rarely does with tight ends – but he's a much stronger bet in 2023 and further down the road because he has the speed and athleticism scores we should be looking for at tight ends.
What to Expect in 2022?
The reality is fantasy managers should be expecting very little from McBride in Year One. The Cardinals have a plethora of receiving options and McBride will most likely find himself at the bottom of it. They traded for Marquise Brown on draft day to pair with DeAndre Hopkins. They also retained A.J. Green and have 2021 second-round rookie, Rondale Moore on the roster. There's also Zach Ertz ahead of him on the depth chart at tight end and James Connor in the backfield. Needless to say, there are a lot of mouths to feed in Arizona.
While fantasy managers may be inclined to have some optimism about McBride early because of Hopkins' six-game suspension, that optimism would be ill-placed. The beneficiary of that early Hopkins suspension will most likely be Brown – a college teammate of Kyler Murray – and Zach Ertz.
Zach Ertz has an Underdop ADP of TE10
- Joined Arizona in Week 7, he was the TE4 in half-PPR.
- Averaged 7.4 targets per game (4th among TEs, 29th among all players)
- Averaged 4th most yards per game among TEs
- Hopkins suspended for 6 gamesErtz will be a PPR beast early. Buy.
— Rob (@RobFFSlayer) May 16, 2022
Staying within a realistic expectation for McBride, the ceiling might be similar to what Pat Freiermuth gave to us last season. Early in the season, he split time with Eric Ebron in something of a tight end committee. That's unlikely to be the case in Arizona – Ertz will be the starter, but the hope is that McBride earns more playing time as the season goes on. That'll become difficult in Arizona because they have historically used 11-personnel under head coach Kliff Kingsbury.
However, should he carve out a role later in the season, fantasy managers are hoping he becomes a red-zone weapon, similar to Freiermuth. That's far from a given and really shouldn't be the expectation, but that's the kind of best-case scenario you're looking at for McBride. The more realistic outcome is that McBride isn't even a streaming option in Year One. The history of rookie tight ends is quite damning in its own right. When you add the number of pass-catchers Murray has to throw the football to, it becomes almost impossible to envision a situation where McBride is able to command enough targets to be a viable option at tight end in 2022.
However, his dynasty value is much higher. Ertz signed a three-year contract this offseason with $17.5 million guaranteed. That amount of guaranteed money likely means Ertz will be in Arizona for 2022 and 2023. It's possible McBride could work himself into a timeshare of sorts next season before finally taking over the starting job in 2024. For dynasty managers, that's not a long wait and a two-year holding period for a rookie tight end is pretty much the norm. He should absolutely be treated as someone who will eventually become a top-10 tight end. He has the pedigree, the speed, and athleticism, and assuming Kyler Murray re-ups in Arizona, he'll be tied to an elite quarterback for the duration of his rookie contract.
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