The 2023 NFL Draft is here! After months of waiting, we finally know where the 2023 NFL Draft class will land. This information shapes the outlook for rookies in 2023 and beyond. We’re going to have you covered throughout and following the 2023 NFL Draft to help you prepare for your fantasy football leagues. Next up for many will be dynasty rookie drafts. To help you prepare to make your dynasty rookie draft picks, let’s dive into Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft profile as well as Pat Fitzmaurice’s dynasty rookie draft outlook for Dalton Kincaid.
Dynasty Rookie Picks & Predictions: Bills Draft Dalton Kincaid
Let’s first see what NFL Draft expert Thor Nystrom says about Dalton Kincaid.
Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft Outlook & Player Comp
Player comparison: Todd Heap
Bio
Up until October, Dalton Kincaid was a well-kept secret. You probably didn’t know his name if you weren’t a Utes fan or a diehard college football fan. That’s not really his fault.
From Nevada, Kincaid focused on basketball as a youth. He helped lead his team to an AAU National Championship as a teenager. Kincaid was a physical post player with sweet feet and a “my-ball” attitude on rebounds. He played only one season of high school football and picked up the sport quickly enough that he decided to play it in college. His best opportunity was at FCS San Diego, a program that doesn’t offer athletic scholarships. Kincaid broke out in 2019, earning FCS All-American honors in his second year.
That campaign naturally drew the interest of the FBS, but during Kincaid’s re-recruitment process, the COVID pandemic began, and he ultimately committed to Utah. Restrictions on practices meant Kincaid didn’t get as much work with his new team and teammates as he otherwise would have. The Utes played only five games that season – the Pac-12 drastically slashed its schedule and eliminated non-conference games. Kincaid played 99 snaps over those five games; he caught only one pass.
The following year, in 2021, with an entire offseason under his belt, Kincaid flashed as a compliment to TE Brant Kuithe in Utah’s two-TE offense. Kincaid finished with a 36-510-8 receiving line. He entered the 2022 campaign viewed as a watch-list prospect for NFL scouts – still anonymous to casual fans. He started well in September, reeling in four TD catches in those four games. But it wasn’t until Kuithe’s season-ending injury in late September when Kincaid truly took off.
That injury thrust Kincaid into an actual bell-cow role in Utah’s passing offense. Utah’s game against USC on Oct. 15 was the most anticipated Pac-12 regular season matchup on the schedule. The Utes needed Kincaid to go off to have any chance of keeping up with USC’s powerful offense. This was the last day Dalton Kincaid was unknown. Kincaid went ballistic, catching all 16 balls thrown his way for a 16-234-1 receiving line. The Trojans could not cover him. During the Utes’ ensuing march to the Pac-12 title game and Rose Bowl, we discovered that nobody else could, either.
Kincaid earned third-team All-American honors and a Mackey semifinalist nod for his 2022 work. He posted a 70-890-8 receiving line despite missing the Rose Bowl with a small fracture in his back. The injury prevented Kincaid from testing during the pre-draft process. But he’ll still hear his name called in the first round later this month. Kincaid has a real shot to be the first tight end off the board, an incredible turn of events for a guy who six years ago had never played a serious down of football.
Strengths
Nightmare coverage assignment. Big, fluid, and one of the surest sets of hands at the position to enter the NFL over the past five years.
Last year, Kincaid’s snap distribution was 55.1% in the slot, 9.5% wide, and 35.4% inline. Kincaid is a handful wherever he winds up when the ball is snapped. He’s a route-running natural, and the nimble feet that made him a difficult matchup in the post during his hoop-playing days shine in this area. Kincaid shows good pacing on the hunt and has a real knack for throttling up-and-down into-and-out-of route breaks. He opens up enormous throwing windows in this way – unpredictable pacing, snappy change-of-direction, and quick acceleration out of the break.
Kincaid can beat you in any sector of the field. He’ll shake you in the intermediate area. But you must be careful about crowding him too much within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage because Kincaid will deceive you into biting down so he can gallop past you down the seam. He threatens deep so darn quickly. Where Kincaid truly stands out is the ball skills. You do not need a well-placed ball to complete a pass to Dalton Kincaid. If you put it within his kitchen, it’s a completion. His hands are football magnets. Spears errant throws outside his frame with ease. And he has a bigger catch radius than you’d assume. Kincaid has the same arm length as Luke Musgrave despite being two inches shorter.
Kincaid’s adjustments when the ball is descending are a thing of beauty. The subtle pivots and body-positioning that give him the best shot of reeling the ball in – his hands are like two shortstop’s mitts once it arrives. Nothing gets through his wickets. Ducks, spirals, short, long – doesn’t matter. Last fall, Kincaid posted the No. 1 PFF receiving grade in this tight end class. On eight fewer targets than Notre Dame TE Michael Mayer – Kincaid’s competition for TE1 in the class – Kincaid had three more catches for 81 more yards.
Kincaid also finished No. 3 in PFF hands grade last fall. The only surprise on this end was that he wasn’t No. 1. Despite getting peppered with targets while drawing ample coverage attention, Kincaid logged an incredible 2.8% drop rate. Only two tight ends in this class have bigger mitts than Kincaid’s 10 1/4-inch hands. Vice grips.
Kincaid’s body control, concentration, and sticky hands emphatically play in traffic. Kincaid was 9-for-18 on contested catches last year, a superb conversion rate. And while Kincaid lacks prototypical play strength for the position overall – we’ll delve into that below – he’s a handful after the catch. Kincaid converts from receiver to runner as smoothly as you’ll see in this class. He has a great sense of bodies around him in space, and his movement makes it difficult to hit him squarely. Last year, Kincaid finished No. 2 in this TE class with 16 missed tackles forced. He has a never-say-die ethos with the ball in his hands – those legs keep kicking until the whistle blows.
And not for nothing: The kid is tough as nails. He played through a back fracture in the Pac-12 Championship, and Utah beat USC again. And they may not have without Kincaid as a decoy.
In that game, Kincaid clearly wasn’t at 100 percent – every movement hurt. But so badly had Dalton Kincaid spooked USC in the previous matchup that the Trojans couldn’t stop throwing multiple guys at him in coverage, opening up spacing and opportunities for his teammates. It was legitimately incredible to watch live – the highest compliment one team can pay an opposing player. USC went into that game saying: Dalton Kincaid will not beat us again. The Trojans got their wish and lost anyway.
Weaknesses
Kincaid lacks prototypical size, a sub-250-pounder who measures a shade under 6’4. As a receiver, he plays far bigger – partly because of that distended catch radius and the conversion rate of balls placed within it. But Kincaid categorically doesn’t have the playing strength to tango with war-daddy edge rushers in the NFL as an inline guy. He wasn’t moving Pac-12 edge rushers off their spot in the run game at Utah and isn’t going to do so at the NFL level, either.
Kincaid graded out 60.0-or-lower in PFF’s run block grade in 4-of-5 college seasons, despite playing in space more than 60% of plays. His contribution to his team’s running attack is getting the strong safety out of the box – that’s about it. For this reason, Kincaid needs to be considered a big slot with the versatility to move around the alignment. I’d want to slash down his inline snaps even further than how Utah used him. And to be fair to the kid, Kincaid’s blocking in space – deployed either in the slot or out wide – is certainly passable. He doesn’t shirk his assignments. Just don’t assign him ones he has no chance of winning.
2023 Dynasty Rookie Draft Outlook: Dalton Kincaid
The Bills weren’t thought to be in the TE market in this year’s draft — at least not in the first round — but they made an aggressive move to trade up two spots (leapfrogging the TE-hungry Cowboys in the process) and draft Dalton Kincaid, who’s widely considered to be the best pass-catching tight end in the Class of 2023.
The 6-4, 246-pound runner is an outstanding route runner with sure hands, good speed and exceptional ball skills. Kincaid’s high school basketball background is evident in his fluid movements. He’s also extremely difficult to deal with after the catch — Kincaid forced 16 missed tackles last season, second-most among this year’s TE prospects.
While Kincaid is a terrific pass catcher, he isn’t much of a blocker. He is a true “move” tight end and isn’t going to succeed if he’s asked to play in-line and try to block NFL edge defenders. Since he’s relatively one-dimensional and not a true two-way tight end like Notre Dame’s Mike Mayer, it’s possible that Kincaid won’t be a full-time player and will be used situationally. Even if he’s used in a way intended to leverage his pass-catching skills, part-time duty would lower Kincaid’s fantasy ceiling.
In 1QB dynasty leagues, Kincaid is worth a late-first-round pick in rookie drafts. In superflex dynasty leagues, he should come off the board early in the second round. Kincaid’s execeptional pass-catching talents could make him immediately roster-worthy in redraft leagues, though the historical performance of rookie tight ends suggests that Kincaid should be considered a low-end TE2.
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