CHI · TE
Projected Points (PPR)
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Colston Loveland sits atop the Chicago depth chart at tight end, and the numbers through five games confirm it: he is playing 85.4% of the offense's snaps, up sharply from the 63.1% share he carried across all of last season. He has started all five games this year after starting eleven of sixteen as a rookie. The volume is real even if the production lags it — twenty-three targets, thirteen receptions, five of those targets coming in the red zone. Quarterback Caleb Williams is clearly willing to look his way near the goal line, which matters more than the raw catch total. The surrounding skill-position group is still developing around him: Luther Burden III is the nominal top receiver, Rome Odunze is the second option, and D'Andre Swift handles the backfield work. None of that threatens his snap count. A tight end playing this high a share of snaps on a weekly basis is, by definition, part of the base offense rather than a situational piece, and that is the foundation his role is built on going forward.
The case for Colston Loveland starts with opportunity. He is seeing eighty-five percent of Chicago's snaps, he is drawing red zone looks, and last season he scored six receiving touchdowns on just fourteen red zone targets, an efficient rate that suggests real chemistry near the end zone. His catch rate last year sat at 70.7%, and 58 receptions on 82 targets across sixteen games is a solid foundation for a young tight end still learning an offense. The yards per reception figure of 12.3 last season indicated more than just checkdown work. If Caleb Williams continues to trust him in scoring position, the touchdown equity alone can carry weeks where the yardage is thin. The case against him is sitting right in the 2026 numbers. Catch rate has dropped to 56.5% from 70.7%, yards per reception has fallen to 8.5 from 12.3, and his points per game have cratered to 4.8 from 10.3 a season ago. He ranked twelfth among all players at his position in PPR scoring last year; through five games this season he ranks thirty-fourth. That is not a marginal regression — it is a near-total collapse in per-target efficiency even as his snap share has grown. Twenty-three targets over five games is a reasonable rate, but turning that into only thirteen catches and 110 yards says the offense is either misfiring around him or he is being deployed in a way that doesn't generate easy completions. The red zone opportunity of five targets in five games is roughly in line with last year's rate, so touchdown equity hasn't vanished, but touchdowns alone will not sustain a tight end who isn't otherwise producing. The honest read is that the role is secure and the production is not yet following it. A second-year tight end seeing this much playing time inside an offense still sorting out its passing identity under Caleb Williams can look wildly different from month to month. The snap share argument says stay the course; the per-game scoring says the trust has not yet translated into results. Both things are true at once, and a manager has to decide how much patience that mismatch is worth. Nothing in the data suggests the role is shrinking — if anything it is growing — but opportunity without conversion only pays off once the conversion rate turns back up. Snap share do not win fantasy weeks. He has to.
Treat Colston Loveland as a hold for managers who already have him, but not as a confident weekly start based purely on his current scoring pace. The snap share of 85.4% and the five red zone targets through five games are exactly the kind of opportunity indicators that typically precede a scoring rebound, but right now the 4.8 points per game and a position rank of thirty-fourth are the results on paper. If you need a tight end play with upside and are willing to ride through a flat week or two, his volume justifies a flex spot, especially in any week with a plausible red zone script given Caleb Williams's willingness to target him near the goal line. If you have a more productive weekly option at tight end, bench him and watch for the efficiency metrics — catch rate and yards per reception — to climb back toward last year's levels of 70.7% and 12.3 before trusting him in a true must-start slot. He is not a wire-to-wire drop under any circumstance; the role is too entrenched and the target log too live for that. The clearest signal to upgrade him back to an every-week start is a return to his 2025 catch-rate range alongside continued red zone involvement, which would suggest the current dip is matchup noise rather than a real change in how the offense is using him.
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