While rookies are the hot topic this time of year, it’s important to zero in on those that are going to be relevant in redraft leagues. Let’s take a look at redraft-relevant 2022 rookies in tight end premium leagues, including rankings and player notes.

Player rankings based on our redraft Expert Consensus Rankings for half-PPR leagues.

• Top Redraft-Relevant Rookie Rankings & Player Notes: Running Backs
• Top Redraft-Relevant Rookie Rankings & Player Notes: Wide Receivers
• Top Superflex Rookie Rankings & Player Notes: Quarterbacks

Top Redraft-Relevant Rookie Rankings & Player Notes: Tight Ends

Trey McBride (ARI): TE32
With DeAndre Hopkins slated to miss the first six games of the season, the Arizona Cardinals might have no choice but to feature more 12 personnel early and utilize their shiny new second-round pick, Trey McBride. The three-year contract that Zach Ertz just inked to stay in Arizona has turned McBride into southwest Dallas Goedert. A player with the talent to become an upper-echelon receiving tight end that the volume-sucking Ertz blocks. The Cardinals can move on from Ertz as soon as 2023 by saving 2 million against the cap if they cut him, but the more likely outcome, if they were to go that route, would be in 2024. If they cut him before that season, they would save eight million, so McBride could be stuck in this purgatory for the next two seasons.

Greg Dulcich (DEN): TE41
No tight end has moved up my board more than Greg Dulcich leading up to the 2022 NFL Draft. The UCLA tight end weighed in at 6-4 and 243 pounds at the NFL combine and tested extremely well: 122″ broad jump (88th percentile), 4.69 40-time (70th percentile), 34″ vertical (63rd percentile) and 7.05 3-cone (75th percentile). Per Next Gen Stats, Dulcich averaged 18.0 yards per reception over his four-year career at UCLA, which is the third-most by a tight end invited to the combine since 2003. In 2021 alone, he ranked fourth in yards per reception (17.3). It’s hard to watch Dulcich’s tape and not see hints of Dawson Knox.

Jelani Woods (IND): TE44
Jelani Woods now resides with tight end committee zealot Frank Reich. While the Colts have utilized the position regularly in the passing game and in the red zone, they have religiously done so with multiple players. This shrapnels the target share into obscurity. This easily could be the fate for Woods. The upside hope for Woods resides in his insane athleticism taking over the room and the Colts not wishing to take him off the field. He also has the fact that Mo Alie-Cox will be 29 this season and is on a team-friendly deal that they can get out of with no dead cap hit as soon as 2024 in his corner.

Jeremy Ruckert (NYJ): TE51
Jeremy Ruckert‘s lackluster stat lines don’t tell the tale of his talent. Ruckert is a solid blocker with the ability to stretch the seam. It was nothing for Ruckert to make an outstretched one-handed catch when he was targeted in college. The biggest obstacle Ruckert will have to overcome in New York is the two tight ends they just signed this offseason. C.J. Uzomah and Tyler Conklin aren’t top-shelf talents, but their presence for at least the next two seasons (possibly three) could render Ruckert a rotational player who never breaks out.

Other 2022 rookie tight ends:

• Daniel Bellinger (NYG): TE53
• Isaiah Likely (BAL): TE55
• Cade Otton (TB): TE57
• Charlie Kolar (BAL): TE61
• Jalen Wydermyer (BUF): TE65

FantasyPros Staff Consensus 2022 Redraft Fantasy Football Rankings