Strategy
Is Brock Bowers Worth a Top-5 Overall Dynasty Pick?
Brock Bowers fell from TE1 to TE9 in 2025, but a knee injury tells most of that story. Here's why his dynasty value bounces back in 2026.
By Kenny Flermoen · August 8, 2026
Yes — and his 2025 season is a much bigger buy-low signal than a warning sign. Bowers holds the No. 2 Dynasty Value Score of any tight end in our model, behind only Trey McBride, he's fully healthy again, and he just landed a new coaching staff that's already calling him the focal point of the offense.
The quick answer
Bowers scores a 7,028 Dynasty Value Score, second among tight ends behind Trey McBride at 7,687, and comfortably ahead of Sam LaPorta at 6,393 in third. He projects for 189.8 half-PPR points in 2026, 11.2 per game. His 2025 season looked like a decline on paper — TE1 to TE9 — but the real story is a knee injury he played through for most of the year, not a talent or role problem.
What actually happened in 2025
Bowers set rookie tight end records in 2024 — 112 catches, 1,194 yards — and looked like the clear top tight end in football heading into Year 2. Then he suffered a PCL sprain and bone bruise in his left knee in Week 1 and never got a clean run at the season. He played through it for three more weeks, missed a three-game stretch to try to heal, came back for a huge Week 9 — 12 catches, 127 yards, 3 touchdowns — and then re-aggravated the injury down the stretch. The Raiders shut him down for the final two games and placed him on injured reserve in late December.
Even hurt for most of the year, Bowers still led all Raiders pass-catchers with 64 catches for 680 yards and 7 touchdowns in 12 games, and he still made his second straight Pro Bowl. That's not what decline looks like. That's what a talented player playing hurt on a bad offense looks like.
The team around him changed completely
Las Vegas fired head coach Pete Carroll after a 3-14 season and hired Klint Kubiak, fresh off calling plays for a Super Bowl-winning Seattle offense. Early training camp reports already have Bowers looking like the clear focal point of Kubiak's scheme — lined up all over the formation, winning matchups against safeties and linebackers, and building real rapport with a new starting quarterback.
That quarterback is Kirk Cousins. The Raiders traded away Geno Smith this offseason and are set to draft presumptive No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza, but the plan is to start Cousins as a veteran bridge while Mendoza develops behind him. Cousins already knows Kubiak's offense well — Kubiak coached him for three seasons in Minnesota — and that familiarity is exactly the kind of continuity Bowers never had in his first two NFL seasons, each of which came with a different head coach and starting quarterback.
Why this matters more for a tight end than any other position
Tight end is the position where scheme fit and quarterback continuity move the needle hardest. A team-friendly play-caller who knows how to scheme a tight end open is worth more to that position than to receiver, where raw talent alone can win more matchups on its own. Bowers has never had a play-caller like Kubiak, and he's never had a season where his own health matched the offense around him. Both of those line up for the first time in 2026.
Where he stacks up against the field
Bowers now trails only Trey McBride, who leads the position at 7,687, and separates clearly from the rest of the field below him. Behind Bowers, Sam LaPorta (6,393), George Kittle (5,980), and T.J. Hockenson (5,381) round out the next tier, all at least 600 points back. None of them combine Bowers's ceiling — a genuine 1,000-plus-yard receiving tight end in a full, healthy season — with his age. He turns 24 in December, the youngest player in that group.
That combination is why a down year on paper hasn't knocked Bowers out of the position's top tier. The model isn't ignoring 2025 — it's weighing it against a rookie season that set records and a 2026 outlook built on a healthy body and a much better offensive environment.
The bottom line
If you're holding Bowers, last year's TE9 finish shouldn't have you looking to sell. The injury explains almost all of the drop, and the situation around him — coaching, quarterback, health — all point up rather than down heading into 2026. If you're targeting him in a trade, this is likely the cheapest his current owner lets him go for a while. A clean, fully healthy season under a coach who's already building the offense around him is the version of Bowers people were projecting after his rookie year.
Model a trade for Bowers on the Dynasty Trade Calculator — his DVS already reflects a top-of-position asset before accounting for a full bounce-back season.
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FAQ
- Why did Brock Bowers's fantasy points drop so much in 2025?
- A knee injury, not a talent decline. He played through a PCL sprain and bone bruise for most of the season, missed a three-game stretch trying to recover, and was shut down for the final two games once the Raiders were out of contention.
- Does the Raiders' new coaching staff actually help Brock Bowers?
- Early signs point that way. New head coach Klint Kubiak has a track record of scheming tight ends and slot receivers into favorable matchups, and camp reports already describe Bowers as the focal point of the new offense.
- Is Brock Bowers or Sam LaPorta the better dynasty tight end right now?
- Bowers, clearly, on our board — 7,028 to 6,393. Bowers carries more variance given his injury history, but his ceiling and age both edge out LaPorta's, and the model now reflects a real gap between them rather than a near-tie.