Leap To Elite: Dalton Kincaid Is Primed To Explode

Last season my attempt at identifying the breakout TE of the year was a big fat bust. I wrote about why the Titans’ Chigoziem Okonkwo’s metrics pointed to a breakout, but ignored some important factors. This season, I’m eyeing Dalton Kincaid as a breakout candidate, because he may well be the top target for one of football’s elite QBs.

Kincaid, a first round pick last season, didn’t quite live up to his hype. In fact, fellow rookie Sam LaPorta had the season a lot of people were hoping for from Kincaid, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t good. Kincaid finished the 2024 season with 73 receptions and 673 yards, the 10th-most for a rookie TE ever. And while his season-long rates – 4.6 receptions, 42.1 yards per game – weren’t special, he was a much more impactful player in the games where Dawson Knox wasn’t on the field with him. In Weeks 8-12, without Knox, Kincaid’s numbers ticked up to 6.2 receptions per game and 56.2 yards. For context, the receptions per game would be tied with Travis Kelce for the season, and the yardage places him in between Evan Engram and David Njoku. That’s solid company for a rookie at a position where, typically, rookies are largely useless to fantasy managers.

Kincaid wasn’t the most efficient pass-catcher last season, and most of his best games game with increased volume. In the seven games in which he saw seven or more targets, Kincaid eclipsed his average yardage five times, and only fell below 45 yards once in that span. Volume is clearly Kincaid’s friend, and that’s promising heading into this season because he figures to see a massive workload increase. The Bills traded Stefon Diggs this offseason and bid adieu to Gabe Davis, vacating 241 targets; that number jumps up to 285 targets when accounting for the departures of Trent Sherfield and RB Latavius Murray. Kincaid was already second on the team in targets in 2023 with 91, so he very well may be among the elite TEs in terms of target share.

Kincaid was drafted with the idea of being a primary weapon for Josh Allen, one of the elite QBs in the game, and after one season Buffalo has decided to move on from their top receiver and replace him with a rookie (Keon Coleman) and a veteran (Curtis Samuel), whom I’m high on, but is also entering Year 9. It’s not clear who will benefit the most from Diggs’ absence, and this could potentially be a Chiefs-esque scenario in which Allen spreads the ball around to the point no one player becomes a needle mover. But Kincaid has the pedigree to be a candidate for a leap into elite territory, a clear path to the necessary volume, and an impressive body of work as a rookie.