This is what we’ve been waiting for, fantasy football enthusiasts. The NFL Draft is under way, and we finally get to see where the rookie prospects are going to launch their professional careers. And NFL Draft landing spots allow us to start to zero in on fantasy football and dynasty rookie draft pick values. Here, we break down TE Brock Bowers and his fit with the Las Vegas Raiders.
Throughout the draft, we’ll take a closer look at fantasy-relevant prospects, giving you an overview of their strengths and weaknesses, and assessing their fantasy value in both redraft and dynasty formats.
Let’s dig in.
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Fitz’s Fantasy Football Outlook
The Las Vegas Raiders didn’t have a screaming need for a tight end, but they couldn’t pass on Georgia’s Brock Bowers when he fell to them at Pick No. 13, so they happily snatched up one of the best pass-catching TE prospects to enter the NFL in years.
Bowers was a force from the moment he set foot on campus in Athens, catching 56 passes for 882 yards and 13 touchdowns as a true freshman. He had no fewer than 56 receptions in any of his three seasons at Georgia, and he finished with 56 catches for 714 yards and six touchdowns last season even though a high-ankle sprain limited him to 10 games. Bowers had 193 rushing yards and five TD runs during his college career.
An ultra-versatile chess piece, Bowers can line up anywhere – inline, in the slot, out wide, or in the backfield. He’s a crisp route-runner with a bagful of tricks to get defenders off-balance and gain separation. Bowers has spiderweb hands, and he’s an absolute menace after the catch, breaking tackles or using his speed to elude defenders.
Bowers didn’t test at either the NFL Scouting Combine or his pro day, but he’s a terrific athlete who can generate good speed for someone who measures 6-3, 243 pounds.
The knocks on Bowers? Well, he’s probably never going to be an exceptional blocking tight end. Do we care about that in that fantasy game? Not one little bit. Bowers is going to be an extraordinary pass-catching weapon in both real life and the fantasy realm.
The Raiders have a high-volume wide receiver in Davante Adams, they already have a tight end they like in 2023 second-rounder Michael Mayer, and they have one of the shakier quarterback situations in the league, with Gardner Minshew the likely starter and Aidan O’Connell the No. 2. It doesn’t seem like the best of situations for Bowers, but he’s such a versatile Swiss army knife that I’m not inclined to fade him based on his ecosystem. I suspect Bowers is going to catch at least 55-60 passes as a rookie.
The consensus TE1 in this rookie class, Bowers is likely to be taken 1.04 in most 1QB dynasty rookie drafts, after the WR trio of Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers and Rome Odunze. In TE-premium leagues, it’s possible Bowers will go in the top three. Expect him to come off the board near the middle of the first round in superflex rookie drafts. I have the 21-year-old Bowers ranked as the overall TE1 for dynasty.
In redraft, I’m being a bit more conservative, ranking Bowers TE9. He had a predraft FantasyPros Expert Consensus ranking on TE10 in half-point PPR formats, and he had a predraft Underdog best-ball ADP of TE7.
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Thor’s NFL Draft Profile & Player Comp
Brock Bowers (Georgia)
6031/243 | RAS: N/A
Player comparison: George Kittle
These are my tight end rankings. And, as you can see, Brock Bowers tops them. But I would be remiss if I didn’t state, from the top, that it’s a misleading designation on its face. Brock Bowers isn’t a tight end – not in the way your father thinks about tight end play.
Georgia HC Kirby Smart recently spoke to this in an interview with CBS Sports’ Josh Pate: “I don’t think I will see a kid like that at that position the rest of the time I coach, because I haven’t thus far.”
Brock Bowers only spent three years on campus. Each year, he was a first-team All-American. As a true freshman on the national title-winning 2021 team, Bowers set the school’s single-season TE records for receptions (56), receiving yards (882), and TD (13). Bowers went on to lead the 2022 repeat national champions in receiving, as well as the 2023 team that was No. 1 until losing to Alabama in the SEC title game.
Last year, Bowers only played in 10 games due to a high-ankle sprain. He could have shut it down with the NFL Draft on the horizon. But with a three-peat in play, Bowers opted for TightRope surgery and returned 26 days later. He was not 100-percent, but Bowers gutted it out through that narrow loss to the Tide.
How contextually impressive was it for Bowers to lead all three of those dominant Georgia teams in receiving? When Bowers arrived on campus, Georgia’s receiving room featured George Pickens, Adonai Mitchell, Ladd McConkey, Jermaine Burton, Kearis Jackson, and Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint, and the Bulldogs had another NFL tight end in Darnell Washington (along with a premier pass-catching NFL RB in James Cook).
To hear Kirby Smart talk about it, Georgia only scratched the surface of Bowers’ utility. The Bulldogs gave Bowers 19 carries over three seasons – which he converted into 193 yards and five TD (10.2 YPC). Smart said if they had shifted Bowers to RB, Bowers would have been the team’s best running back. In the NFL, Bowers’ bonus running utility, which can be leveraged on gadget plays and near the goal line, gives him a Deebo-of-TEs feel.
Offensive coordinators love Bowers, because he’s a hide-the-ball-in-the-cup game every play against the opposing coordinator. You can – quite literally – line Bowers up anywhere. Georgia did just that, in the highest-leverage situations possible.
Put Bowers inline, put him in the slot, get him out on the boundary, line him up offset, use him as a lead-blocker, shift him around pre-snap so the defense has to tip its hand, and, if you really want to ramp up the defense’s confusion, come out of the huddle with Bowers as a single back once or twice a game. I hate the terms “offensive weapon” and “chess piece.” But, as descriptive designations, they more accurately fit Brock Bowers than “tight end.”
Bowers didn’t test at the NFL Combine or at UGA’s pro day after he tweaked a hamstring in pre-draft training. I don’t care. His athletic traits are all over his film – he used them to repeatedly beat NFL-caliber defenders in the SEC as the focal points of Georgia teams that went 42-2 the past three years.
From the scouting report during team meetings during game week, every back-end defender on the field knows Bowers can win at all three levels. So those defenders are prepared for anything. This also has the effect of keeping them back on their heels. Bowers wastes no time elevating their discomfort off the line, manipulating their calculus.
Brock Bowers is a smooth, controlled, tempo-adjusting route-runner with an eye for detail and a bloodlust for using a defender’s leverage against him. Along his route, you notice all kinds of subtle false tells, unorthodox upper-body movements, head deeks, false steps. He keeps you off-balance into the route-break and brings precise, sudden footwork into them, with turbo-button acceleration out the other side.
Now that he’s won separation and the ball is headed his way, it’s a given that it’s a completion so long as the ball is anywhere near his area code. Bowers’ 4.4% drop rate in college is miniscule – and I don’t remember seeing an easy flub.
Once the ball is in his hands, the fun begins. Bowers is a tackle-breaking menace. In 2023, he led this class with 18, despite playing in only 10 games, multiple of those at less than 100-percent! Over his three-year career, Bowers broke 44 tackle attempts. Last spring, readers will recall me waxing poetic about Sam LaPorta‘s aptitude in this area… LaPorta broke 36 over four years.
With the ball in his hands, Bowers combines elite speed and change-of-direction for the position. He also, to Kirby Smart’s earlier point about his theoretical RB-skillset, has sublime open-field vision, the ever-rare tight end who will do things like cut back against the grain, or slow down to allow a teammate to execute a block.
Despite being undersized, Bowers is a solid blocker with anyone who won’t overwhelm him with size and strength. The thing with Bowers is he is full-go every rep. With blocking, effort and technique carry the day for him in every interaction he is physically capable of winning. You’re obviously never going to ask him to block on a passing down. So merely avoid assigning him to a power EDGE in a phone booth on a running concept, and he’s going to be just fine in this area.
The only nitpick I have is the obvious one: By traditional tight end standards he’s undersized. Then again, for what Bowers actually is – a multi-dimensional weapon who can be deployed anywhere and whose function is “advance the ball forward” – his size is borderline elephantine compared to his athleticism.
Check out more NFL Draft profiles and player comps from Thor in our 2024 NFL Draft Guide
Dynasty Rookie Draft Rankings
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