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USATSI

In Fantasy Football, no position was impacted less by the 2022 NFL Draft than tight end. Everyone who was in the top five two months ago is still in the top five. Nine of the top 10 are still in the top 10, with Noah Fant being the only exception. And that didn't have anything to do with the draft, it had to do with his paltry projection becoming more of a reality.

The other side of that is that Trey McBride and Greg Dulcich are the only two rookies to crack my top 30 in the rankings below. And neither of them are found in the top 18. This isn't entirely a surprise. Neither were drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft and tight ends are notoriously slow to make an impact in Fantasy, despite what Kyle Pitts and Pat Freiermuth did in 2021. Add in the fact that McBride joined Zach Ertz in Arizona while Dulcich will battle Albert Okwuegbunam in Denver and it's easy to see why we don't expect much from either early on.

Just don't take that to mean they don't have any value. Both McBride and Dulcich should be gone in rookie drafts before the end of the Round 3, and both should be held for at least two years before you cut them loose. Current top 10 tight ends Dalton Schultz and Dallas Goedert are a great example of why you want to hold on to young, talented tight ends even if they aren't giving you much in the way of Fantasy production. And Cole Kmet may be the next to illustrate that point.

Kmet may have been the biggest winner of the draft from a Fantasy perspective. The Bears added no one who will challenge his role as Justin Fields' No. 2 target. The 23-year-old has already shown an ability to earn targets, with 93 in 2021. The key in 2022 will be to start getting into the end zone. He has just two touchdowns on 137 career targets. For reference, Freirmuth scored seven times on 79 targets last season.

There are reasons to hope Kmet's touchdown luck will improve. Justin Fields should be a better quarterback, the offense will likely be more creative, and Jimmy Graham is gone. While that last one sounds like a joke, it's not. More than a third of Graham's 23 targets last year came in the red zone. Assuming Kmet sees more looks in a better system with a better quarterback, he could be 2022's biggest breakout at tight end, proving the virtue of patience with young tight ends once again.

Here are my updated Dynasty rankings at tight end: