Outpoll | Trey McBride far-and-away the top tight end in fantasy football during record-setting season

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In a fantasy football landscape where the tight end position has often felt like a barren wasteland outside of Kansas City, the 2025 season delivered a seismic shift, and his name is Trey McBride. The Arizona Cardinals' pass-catcher didn't just have a good year; he authored a historic campaign that will be dissected by analysts and cherished by championship-winning fantasy managers for years to come.Capping it off in Week 17 against the Cincinnati Bengals, McBride snagged 10 passes for 76 yards and a touchdown, a cool 18. 6 fantasy points that sealed many a league title.More importantly, that final reception was his 117th of the season, officially breaking Zach Ertz's single-season NFL record for catches by a tight end, a mark that had stood since 2018. This wasn't a fluke or a product of garbage time; it was the exclamation point on a year-long masterclass in volume and reliability, etching McBride's name into the proverbial stone alongside the greatest fantasy tight end performances of all time.When you stack his season up statistically, the numbers are staggering. In half-PPR scoring, McBride rocketed to 242.9 fantasy points, a figure that places him in the most elite company. Since 2018, only a handful of tight ends have breached the 200-point threshold, a list dominated, unsurprisingly, by Travis Kelce.Kelce's 2022 (254. 5 points) and his monstrous 2020 season (260.3 points in a 16-game schedule) represent the pinnacle. Yet, what makes McBride's 2025 eruption so profoundly impressive is the context.Kelce, a future Hall of Famer, has operated for his entire peak with the generational talent of Patrick Mahomes delivering him the football. McBride, for the bulk of his record-setting year, had journeyman Jacoby Brissett under center following Kyler Murray's early-season injury.To produce at such an astronomical level without a top-tier quarterback is a testament to McBride's own skill and the Cardinals' offensive scheme, which funneled targets his way with ruthless efficiency. The historical comparison to Ertz is particularly telling.Ertz's 116-catch season in 2018 netted him 219. 3 fantasy points (or 222.3 if you include a Week 17 most fantasy leagues had already concluded). McBride didn't just break the catch record; he surpassed the fantasy production, highlighting a more efficient usage.Even Evan Engram's 114 catches in 2023 only translated to 173. 3 points, underscoring how McBride's work translated directly into elite fantasy value.

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