Is Kyle Pitts Ever Going to Live Up to the Draft Capital?

For the first time since his rookie year, there is a real case for yes. Kyle Pitts entered 2025 on an expiring fifth-year option with trade calls attached to his name. He left it as a TE2 with a reported record contract. Both the year and the money happened. Whether 2026 looks like 2025 is the part that still has to be earned.

The quick answer

Pitts scores a 5,050 Dynasty Value Score — 9th among tight ends — and projects for 160.4 half-PPR points in 2026, 9.4 per game. He finished 2025 as TE2 on 88 catches for 928 yards and 5 touchdowns. That is a genuine spike after TE14 and TE15 seasons, and a 10-game 2022. The 2026 line is a small step back from last year’s 166.8, not a copy of it. The breakout is in the score. A repeat TE2 finish is not.

How close he came to a different offseason

Heading into 2025 he was in the last year of the rookie deal. Reporters had Atlanta taking calls — not shopping him in the open, but not hanging up either. The 2024 target list was the public tell: Drake London 158, Darnell Mooney 106, Ray-Ray McCloud 87, Pitts 74. Bijan Robinson was 72. A fourth-overall pick sitting fourth on his own offense is how you end up in June trade blurbs.

What actually changed

He played 88% of Atlanta’s offensive snaps in 2025, up from 62% the year before, and led the team in targets (118). The counting line — 88-928-5 — is his best fantasy season, even if the 1,026-yard rookie year still owns the yardage high. Week 15 against Tampa Bay was the spike: 11 catches, 166 yards, three touchdowns, 40.1 half-PPR. Opportunity data says he scored about 12% more than the expected half-PPR from his touches. Volume plus a couple of finishing plays, not a new after-catch profile.

Atlanta responded. The club tagged him in February 2026, then signed a reported three-year, $54 million extension in June with $36 million guaranteed — the largest three-year tight end deal on record, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, and enough to put him among the highest-paid tight ends in the league. General manager Ian Cunningham cited the consistency and the growth. London had already been paid. That is a front office saying 2025 was the player, not a one-off.

The part that still has to show up twice

Even in the TE2 year he scored 5 touchdowns while ranking 2nd of 35 qualifying tight ends in air yards share. Yards after the catch above expectation: last of those 35. Average depth of target fell from 11.4 to 7.4 over two seasons. That is a volume-and-air yards profile. It holds up if the 118 targets hold up. It looks ordinary if they do not.

The quarterback is still the variable

2025 was already a split: Michael Penix Jr. threw 276 passes in 9 games, then tore his ACL in November. Kirk Cousins threw 269 in 10. Our depth chart as of August 17 has Tua Tagovailoa listed QB1 and Penix QB2, still working back. London and Bijan are still the other two pillars. The passing-game question for 2026 is which quarterback is healthy and starting — not a rewind of the Ridder years.

Where he stacks up against the field

Pitts’s 5,050 sits behind Sam LaPorta at 6,162 and a cluster of younger tight ends — Tyler Warren, Harold Fannin Jr. — not ahead of them. Colston Loveland at 4,960 is the name just behind. We covered that board in the tight end dynasty rankings. One TE2 season plus a real contract is enough to be TE9. It is not enough to jump the guys who already score higher.

The bottom line

If you are holding Pitts, the year and the contract are both real. Keep him. If you are buying him, you are paying for a featured tight end on a new deal whose 2026 projection already shades last year’s TE2 finish, with a quarterback room that is still sorting itself out. The talent was never the question. Repeating 118 targets is.

Model a trade for Pitts on the Dynasty Trade Calculator — his score already weighs one genuine spike against four years of waiting on the fourth pick.