There is an acknowledged Big 5 among NFL tight ends and San Francisco 49ers TE George Kittle is near the back end of that cluster. He is a priority player whose current ranking has him being taken on the cusp of the 5th and 6th round – and after he’s off the board, according to ADP numbers, there is only one tight end taken in the next 26 picks.
Below, we look at George Kittle‘s 2022 fantasy football average draft position (ADP) and where you should draft him.
Kittle has more than 70 receptions in 3 of the last 4 seasons and in the one year he didn’t, he was on pace for a career year — 96 receptions for 1,268 yards — before being sidelined by injury and playing just 8 games. He has been as key a receiving weapon as the 49ers have and he has been capable of stringing together the type of production needed in tight end-mandatory leagues.
George Kittle’s ADP: 50.71
(ADP data courtesy of MyFantasyLeague.com; last updated at time of this publishing – ADPs continually change as more drafts occur)
The Big 5 consists of those rare tight ends that come off draft boards when the rest of those in a fantasy draft are skeletonizing the running back and wide receiver depth charts, those who choose to take a tight end do so with the knowledge that they have to make up for that by going after the ignored RB and WR positions heavily in the subsequent rounds.
Kittle is the 4th of the Big 5 currently coming off draft boards. Travis Kelce (Kansas City Chiefs) is deserving of his absurdly high (for a tight end) ADP at 16.63. Mark Andrews (Baltimore Ravens) is next at 25.10. Kyle Pitts (Atlanta Falcons) comes in 3rd at 36.55. After that, it’s a dogfight between Kittle and Darren Waller (Las Vegas Raiders) at 50.71. The drought hits after that with only Dalton Schultz (Dallas Cowboys) at 64.76 being taken in the next 26 ADP picks.
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George Kittle’s 2021 stats
Games: 14
Receptions | targets: 71 | 94
Receiving yards: 910
Receiving touchdowns: 6
Where should you draft Kittle?
The bottom line is that, with all his talent, Kittle is near the bottom of the Big Boy list because he doesn’t score touchdowns with any regularity. He has never scored more than 6 touchdowns in a season and has 20 career touchdowns in 67 games.
Also factored in is that those who draft Kittle do so with the expectation he is going to miss games because he tends to get injured trying to extend plays rather than going down easy and seeing the chains move. He last played 16 games in a season in 2018.
With the move to Trey Lance at quarterback there is some uncertainty as to how he and Kittle will click, but never forget that the tight end is a young quarterback’s best friend because he translates into completions in soft spots of the coverage.
Having Kittle is like having Mark McGwire in a home run competition when injuries meant he would miss 25 percent of the season. When he was in your lineup, he produced. When he wasn’t you need to have a No. 2 ready to go. Those who draft Kittle are in the Big 5, but they will need to make sure to be the first of that group to lock down a TE2 – a double investment in a position ignored by half of the owners in a fantasy league.
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