I've had my doubts about Kyle Pitts in redraft for most of his NFL career. But that's generally had very little to do with his talent and far more to do with his surroundings and his ADP. For more than a year now, I've been down on Pitts in redraft, but he's been my clear No. 1 in Dynasty. I even wrote in June that even though I expected him to be a bust at a third-round cost in 2022, his spot as TE1 in Dynasty was secure. Unfortunately, I was underestimating just how bad 2022 could be.
Pitts has played five games this year and topped 25 yards in just one of them. This isn't entirely a Pitts problem. He only has two games with more than four targets, which is a product of the fact that his Falcons are averaging 22.8 pass attempts per game. Only the Bears are throwing less.
I could maybe overlook all of this if the Falcons were losing, but they're 3-3. And they still play the Panthers (twice), Bears, Commanders, and Steelers. It seems really unlikely they're going to get a top-five pick, and they may actually compete for a wild card spot. The problem with that success is twofold. One, Arthur Smith and his run-first preferences will be in charge longer. Two, they're much less likely to land an elite quarterback in the NFL Draft. In other words, my confidence is waning that Pitts will actually be in a considerably better situation next year.
At some point you have to score Fantasy points, and 26-year-old Mark Andrews has already scored 114.8 of them in just six games. He is TE1 now and it will take something significant to change that. As I often do, I ran a Twitter poll -- just as a sanity check -- and 60% of the first 1,800 voters agreed Pitts is no longer the Dynasty TE1.
Going to work on tight end Dynasty rankings update today. There is a question that I did not think would be a question already, but I have to ask it.
— Heath Cummings (@heathcummingssr) October 19, 2022
Is Kyle Pitts still TE1 in Dynasty?
On a positive note, David Njoku and Greg Dulcich made a leap into the top 12 this week. I was shocked that in the very first game Dulcich played of the season that he played 71% of the snaps and Albert Okwuegbunam was a healthy scratch. One more week with that type of usage and we'll be looking at Dulcich as a redraft top-12 tight end as well.
Here are my updated Dynasty tight end rankings:
