Sports Illustrated published its 2026 fantasy football startup dynasty tight end rankings on June 30, and the numbers tell a striking story about how the position is being rebuilt from the bottom up.
Six of the top seven spots belong to players aged 25 or younger, with New York Jets tight end Kenyon Sadiq, just 21 years old, landing at seventh overall.
The lone exception at the top is Trey McBride, who ranks first and will be 26 as of September 30, 2026 — a youth curve that lines up with how the NFL office pool odds market has started pricing these same young pass-catchers into weekly scoring projections.
Age-Forward Projections and the NFL Scoring Ceiling
The editorial team at Live Sports Odds has spent years tracking the NFL weekly odds market, and the pattern in SI's dynasty rankings is one they recognize immediately.
The age-and-role logic driving the dynasty board, specifically the concentration of sub-25 players across the top seven spots and the pronounced gap between Travis Kelce's dynasty standing and where he would rank in a traditional redraft league, mirrors the same projections fans weigh each week when judging a team's scoring ceiling.
A young tight end stepping into a featured offensive role changes what a franchise can realistically put on the scoreboard, and that ripples outward from dynasty leagues into every format where team scoring matters.
The connection is concrete. When a 22-year-old like Colston Loveland emerges as the centerpiece of a passing attack, the ceiling of that offense gets recalibrated, and so does the way analysts project points for that team's opponents and allies alike.
How Dynasty Leagues Differ From Redraft Formats
Dynasty leagues operate on a fundamentally different timeline than the standard redraft model most casual players know. Per Sports Illustrated, these leagues begin with a one-time "all-players" startup draft, in which every relevant player across the league is on the board at once.
After that single founding event, future roster additions come only through yearly rookies-only drafts, repeated for as long as the league runs. The article notes that owners "should expect it to last forever."
That indefinite horizon changes everything about how players are valued. In redraft formats, the question is simple: who produces most this season. In dynasty, the primary difference lies in how rankings weight age and long-term offensive role. A younger player with more projected seasons ahead consistently ranks above a veteran with superior current production. The board is not a snapshot of the present. It is a forecast.
The Top Seven: Six Players Under 26
McBride sits at first overall among dynasty tight ends, anchoring the board as a Cardinals player who brings an established role at a still-young age. Behind him, Brock Bowers of the Las Vegas Raiders ranks second at 23 years old, and Loveland, the Chicago Bears tight end at 22, comes in third. Tyler Warren of the Indianapolis Colts, 24, holds the fourth spot, followed by Tucker Kraft of the Green Bay Packers, 25, at fifth.
Then come Harold Fannin Jr. of the Cleveland Browns, 22, at sixth, and Sadiq of the Jets, 21, at seventh. Sadiq is the youngest player in the top 10 overall. The pattern across those seven names is not subtle: a 26-year-old leads a group otherwise composed entirely of players aged 25 or under, most of them still in the early chapters of their NFL careers.
The board continues with Kyle Pitts of the Atlanta Falcons, 25, at eighth; Sam LaPorta of the Detroit Lions, 25, at ninth; and Eli Stowers of the Philadelphia Eagles, 23, rounding out the top 10. Three more players in their mid-twenties or younger, completing a top 10 that skews heavily toward the future.
Where Veterans Land, and What the Age Clock Costs Them
The established names of the past decade appear further down, and the distances are instructive. George Kittle of the San Francisco 49ers, 32 years old, ranks 12th. Isaiah Likely, who joined the New York Giants and is 26, sits at 13th. The article states explicitly that both Likely and Sadiq carry more dynasty value than Kelce because of the age gap between them.
That framing is worth absorbing. Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end who will be 36 as of September 30, 2026, ranks 20th in dynasty. In a traditional redraft league, his production would place him considerably higher. The dynasty format's logic makes no concession for past greatness: the age clock runs in one direction, and a 36-year-old has fewer projected seasons ahead than a 21-year-old by a margin no amount of current skill erases.
Mark Andrews of the Baltimore Ravens, 31, ranks 17th. Chig Okonkwo of the Washington Commanders, 27, comes in at 18th. Terrance Ferguson of the Los Angeles Rams, 23, lands at 19th, just ahead of Kelce. That Ferguson, at 23, ranks ahead of one of the most decorated tight ends in NFL history is the dynasty format's defining statement made concrete.
A 40-Player List Built Around the Future
The full rankings extend to 40 players, and the structural force running through all of them is the same age clock visible at the top of the board. Dynasty roster building is not an exercise in assembling the best players available today. It is an exercise in acquiring the players most likely to be relevant across a window that, by design, has no scheduled end.
For dynasty managers entering a startup draft in 2026, that reality is already priced into every pick from first to fortieth. The players at the top are not there because of what they did last season. They are there because of how many seasons they are likely to have left.
