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Isaiah Likely sits atop the depth chart at tight end for the Giants, with Theo Johnson behind him in a clearly secondary role. The snap share tells the story of how that depth chart translated into a job: Likely is now playing 73.8% of the offensive snaps, a workload that places him firmly in every passing-down package and most early-down sets as well. Through six games he has been targeted fifty-nine times, hauled in thirty-nine of those for 383 yards, and found the end zone five times. That is a target volume that places him among the most heavily used tight ends in the league at this point in the year, and it comes attached to red-zone usage of eight targets inside scoring range, which is where touchdown equity gets built. The quarterback throwing him the ball is J.J. McCarthy, now entrenched as the starter, and the rapport between the two has visibly grown — Likely's role has expanded from a rotational complement into the primary safety valve in New York's passing game. Malik Nabers remains the outside focal point of the passing attack, and Cam Skattebo anchors the backfield, but neither of those roles subtracts from what Likely is doing over the middle. If anything, the attention defenses must pay to Nabers appears to be opening space underneath for exactly the kind of work Likely has been doing. This is no longer a complementary role. It is a featured one, and the target count is the proof.
The case for Isaiah Likely begins with the gap between last season and this one. A year ago he finished as the forty-fifth tight end in PPR scoring with 61.7 points across fourteen games, a modest 4.4 points per game that reflected a part-time role buried behind other priorities in the passing game. This season, through six games, he has already produced 109.3 PPR points, averaging 18.2 per game and sitting at the top of the position in scoring. The targets have nearly doubled on a rate basis — fifty-nine already, compared to thirty-six for the entire previous season — and the five touchdowns compared to one a year ago suggest the red-zone role has changed as dramatically as the overall volume. A tight end seeing eight red-zone targets and converting at this rate is doing exactly what fantasy managers want from the position: catching touchdowns, not just accumulating garbage-time yardage. The honest counterpoint is the efficiency underneath those gaudy marks. The catch rate has actually dropped, from 75% last season to 66.1% this year, and the yards per reception figure has fallen from 11.4 to 9.8. That combination — more volume, lower catch rate, shorter average gain — suggests some of this production is touchdown-dependent rather than built on explosive, reliable targets. Tight ends who score five touchdowns on relatively short average catches can see that number regress hard if the red-zone opportunities dry up or if the touchdown rate normalizes. A counter-steelman worth taking seriously: is this a sustainable role change, or a hot run of touchdown luck layered onto a real snap-share increase? The snap share argument favors sustainability. Going from 57.8% of snaps a year ago to 73.8% now is not a touchdown-variance story — it is a genuine expansion of playing time, and more snaps generally means more targets even if the scoring rate cools. The relationship with J.J. McCarthy also matters here: as a quarterback gets more comfortable with his personnel, a reliable, big-bodied tight end working the middle of the field tends to become more featured, not less, as the season progresses. Malik Nabers drawing coverage attention on the outside only reinforces the space Likely is working in underneath. The realistic expectation is some pullback in touchdown rate paired with continued strong target volume, landing him somewhere between last year's forty-fifth finish and this year's current number-one pace — but much closer to the latter given the structural snap and target gains.
Start Isaiah Likely without hesitation in all current fantasy formats. A tight end seeing fifty-nine targets and 73.8% of his team's snaps through six games is not a streaming option or a matchup-dependent flex play — he has earned a weekly start regardless of opponent. The volume alone, independent of the touchdown rate, supports this: thirty-nine receptions and 383 yards on this target share would be productive even without the five touchdowns layered on top. Managers who already rostered him through the lean 61.7-point season a year ago should feel vindicated rather than nervous about regression, because the underlying driver of this breakout is snap share, not a hot streak of touchdown luck alone. The one thing to watch is the catch rate decline from 75% to 66.1% and the drop in yards per reception from 11.4 to 9.8 — if those trends continue without the touchdown rate compensating, the weekly ceiling could shrink even as the floor stays respectable because of target volume. If Likely's red-zone targets start disappearing — a stretch with zero shots inside the eight-target pace he has shown — or if Theo Johnson begins eating into his 73.8% snap share, that would be the signal to treat him as more touchdown-dependent and less of a true weekly lock. For now, none of those warning signs are evident, and the role, the volume, and the production all point toward a confident start every week.
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