Fantasy Football Week 8 Tight End Rankings: Does Pat Freiermuth belong in the must-start tier? Pretty much!

The Steelers tight end is moving up the ranks

By Chris Towers

Oct 30, 2022 at 11:06 am ET • 1 min read

I'm done trying to convince you to start Kyle Pitts in your Fantasy Football lineups. I'm still going to rank him as a fringe top-12 option because I think the Falcons eventually have to wake up and realize it's 2022 and use their gigantic talented receivers (including Drake London) the right way, but I can't make the case for him in any given week anymore. He profiles as a touchdown-or-bust TE because his team refuses to use him in any other way.

And I can't keep telling you to sit someone like Pat Freiermuth for him. In fact, I can't tell you to sit Freiermuth for many other tight ends at this point – for Week 8, I would only say Mark Andrews, Dallas Goedert, and George Kittle should definitely be ranked ahead of him. Freiermuth is now a top-five option for me in Week 8, and he might just be one for the rest of the season.

To a certain extent, that says something about the lack of viable options at the position, but that is underselling Freiermuth, too. He has played five full games this season, and he has nine or more targets in three of them; he had seven in one of the others. That has led to three games of 75 yards or more – only Andrews and Travis Kelce have more than two such games otherwise.

Freiermuth has taken a small step forward in efficiency this season, upping his yards per target from 6.3 to 7.6, mostly because he's making more plays down the field, with his average depth of target jumping from 5.3 to 8.0. I don't think Freiermuth is much of a threat to crash the Kelce/Andrews tier, but even in a crowded Steelers receiving corps, he's doing enough to justify a spot in Fantasy players' lineups every week. He's a top-five tight end this week for me, and he might just be one the rest of the way. Here's how the rest of my tight end rankings look for Week 8.