Fantasy Football Regression Candidates: Trey McBride And More TEs To Follow In 2025
Jonathan Fuller dives into three tight ends who will regress in 2025 for fantasy football, focusing on Trey McBride, Hunter Henry, and Jonny Smith.
We have fewer than 40 days until the NFL regular season kicks off. Every day the news cycle is spitting out information on players and their situations that could impact where we are drafting them in August. In less than a week, we will have real preseason football at the Hall of Fame Game. These are very important times in the football calendar because in about a month fantasy football drafts will commence, which means the next 4-5 weeks are crucial for identifying player targets, evaluating ADP, and strategizing for your drafts.
One of the easiest traps to fall into is assuming that what happened last season is the baseline for a player. In reality, production ebbs and flows from season to season as circumstances change. Most fantasy leagues, and therefore ADP, tend to overvalue what happened last season, which can lead to overreactions. This, in turn, creates opportunities that smart fantasy managers can exploit.The goal of this article is to identify players who performed above or below a reasonable baseline expectation for their talent and situation last season. We know there will be outliers in 2025 like there are every season, but I like to think of the positive regression candidates as players with the wind at their back while the negative regression candidates face a headwind when it comes to repeating last season's performance.
Positive Regression Candidates at TE For Fantasy Football 2025
Trey McBride | ARI
This is becoming an annual tradition, but one these years Trey McBride is going to score a number of receiving TDs that is appropriate for his overall receiving production. Through three professional seasons, McBride has just 6 total receiving TDs despite hauling in 221 passes for more than 2,200 yards. There are a bunch of ways to try to contextualize how ridiculous that stat is, but my favorite is just the fact that there were eight TEs who scored 6+ TDs just last season, and six of those eight did it on 66 receptions or fewer. Of course, the usage for TEs is different across teams so that comparison is only so helpful. What really drove the point home for me was looking at PFF's Expected Points model, which had McBride at 8.5 expected TDs last season. That was the second most expected receiving TDs at the position and the difference of 6.5 fewer TDs than expected was the widest among TEs.
Once again, McBride projects to be among the league leaders in targets and receptions at the TE position. Even with what I would call a conservative TD projection, Dwain McFarland projects him to easily double his receiving TD tally from last season.
Given his long track record of poor TD production, I understand why Dwain's projections come out the way they do. That probably is a reasonable median outcome for McBride, but if he is getting close to 100 receptions it also wouldn't be surprising to see him score 6-8 TDs if things break his way.
When I began researching this article, I expected to find that Kyler Murray's red zone passing stats would be a major hurdle for McBride to hit an average TD rate. I was mildly surprised to find Murray was a perfectly competent passer inside the 20 and 10-yard lines. His completion percentage and TD totals aren't spectacular but they are solid. For some reason, he just hasn't connected with McBride.
It isn't for a lack of trying either. McBride's 24% end zone target rate ranks seventh among TEs and his 0.6 end zone targets per game is tied for second best at the position. Broadening our metrics even more, McBride's 13 targets inside the 10-yard line last year ranked fifth among all pass catchers, but his 30% catch rate on those targets was among the worst for anyone with real target volume.
Simply put, McBride's role and talent are too good for him to continue putting up such low TD totals. One of these years he is going to be on the right side of TD variance, and when that happens he has a good chance to be the top fantasy TE by a wide margin. Hopefully that is what happens in 2025 so I don't have to write something similar at this time next year.
Hunter Henry | NE
The case for Hunter Henry is pretty similar to McBride because Henry significantly underperformed his expected TD totals. Henry scored just 2 receiving TDs last season despite tying for the sixth most receptions among TEs and posting a very strong 24% end zone target rate in the Patriots offense. Going back to the PFF Expected Points model I mentioned earlier, they had Henry at 6 expected TDs last season. So even if the offensive environment and role stayed the same, it would be reasonable to expect a better TD output for the veteran TE. However, there is a real chance the offense could get better in 2025, which could be a big boost to Henry's fantasy outlook.
Henry drafters should be hoping for a meaningful second-year leap from QB Drake Maye. He flashed as a rookie, but the Patriots were still a bad offense and Maye had his rookie moments. Another year of experience, a better offensive line, and improved weapons should all help Maye take the next step and hopefully elevate the entire offense. If that happens, the overall scoring opportunities should increase, which would directly benefit Henry since his role as the top TE is pretty secure.What I really hope to see are more downfield targets for Henry to complement his role as a reliable chain mover and red zone target. For his career, Henry has averaged an aDOT of 9.3, but he was all the way down at a career-low 7.9 in 2024. Similarly, his 10.2 yards per catch was decently below his career average of 11.5. If those numbers return toward his career averages he'll have a decent shot at topping 700 receiving yards for the first time in his career. If Maye has more confidence and more time to throw, we should see more opportunities downfield for all the pass catchers. A few more big plays and some positive regression in the TD department should be enough to vault Henry into a top-10 TE spot. He is going late enough that you might not need to draft him, but he is a player to keep an eye on early in the season as he could be a priority waiver add or top streaming option.
Negative Regression Candidates at TE For Fantasy Football 2025
Jonnu Smith | PIT
I have only one negative regression candidate for the TE position, but it is a really interesting one. Jonnu Smith broke out in a big way in 2024 with career high for targets, receptions, and yards along with 8 receiving TDs, which tied a career high. His production was concentrated in the back half of the year after injuries limited some of Miami's top pass catchers. Seven of his 8 TDs came from Week 11 on and three of his four highest receiving yardage games also came in that stretch. Even if he were still in Miami, he would be a negative regression candidate because he set career highs by such a wide margin in his eighth pro season and ran a little bit hot on TDs.
Of course, Jonnu's entire outlook changed in a big way when he was traded from the Dolphins to the Steelers. Arthur Smith will almost certainly make him a big part of the passing game, but Pittsburgh is still expected to be a low passing volume offense. Also, Pat Freiermuth isn't going to go away entirely (unless he is traded), which will further cut into Jonnu's target total.
By most efficiency metrics, Jonnu's 2024 season wasn't that much of an outlier compared to his historical averages. He did post career highs in YPRR and catch rate, but his average depth of target, yards per catch, and yards after catch were all in line with his career averages. The real story was the fact that he had 40 more targets than he had ever had in a single season. That includes multiple seasons playing in an Arthur Smith offense in both Tennessee and Atlanta.
Regardless of what team he is on, Jonnu is unlikely to repeat what he did from a target and catch rate standpoint last season. But now that he is playing in a run-first offense with a 41-year-old QB and strong competition for targets at the TE position, we really need to lower our expectations. That is what is reflected in Dwain's projections, which have Jonnu back down at 64 targets.
I'm not totally out on Jonnu in fantasy but his ADP is most likely going to be too high because fantasy managers remember what he did to close last season. He's someone who could be a streaming option on waivers later in the year when the manager who drafts him gets sick of watching this Pittsburgh offense.
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