Why Cade Otton is the late-round tight end you should be targeting

It was a big day for NFL tight ends on Tuesday, as Travis Kelce announced his engagement to Taylor Swift. So let’s celebrate with a tight ends post here at Fantom Thoughts, specifically a late-round tight end that I think is currently being extremely undervalued.

I’d say my recommended fantasy strategy for tight ends this season is either take one of the three elite options early (Brock Bowers, Trey McBride, George Kittle) or punt on the position entirely until the double-digit rounds. This tight end I’m going to highlight works with either strategy because he’s going so late in drafts. So he can either be a safer backup option to one of the elite tight ends or potentially end up as an upside play who you could start early in the season if you wait on a tight end.

My favorite late-round tight end this season is Cade Otton, and let’s dive into why.

Here at Fantom Odds, we create customized odds for your fantasy football leagues (ESPN, Yahoo and Sleeper) for you and your leaguemates to use. One of our markets is alternate over/under player fantasy points, where you can adjust a player’s final fantasy point tally to whatever number of your choosing and the odds will adjust.

For instance, Ja’Marr Chase’s Week 1 Yahoo projection in a PPR league is 19.8, meaning the true odds of Chase going over 19.8 points is +100 and going under 19.8 points is +100. But let’s say you think Chase will have a monster performance against the Browns and you want to adjust his point total to 28.0. Chase over 28.0 points is now +501 at Fantom Odds, while Chase under 28.0 points is -501.

Anyone is able to use Fantom Odds for any league for completely free this season, so make sure to sign up at www.fantomodds.com. Now I’ll explain why I’m taking Cade Otton late in every fantasy draft I’ve been doing.

When looking for late-round darts for tight end, it’s different than for running backs. With running backs, you want to target players late who could be an injury away from getting valuable touches in a good offense. With tight ends, starting tight ends still go late in fantasy drafts, so ideally you want one who is on the field often. The more snaps a tight end gets, the more routes he’s running, the more targets he could earn and the more fantasy points he could wind up getting.

When it comes to snap count percentages (via Pro Football Reference), here are the top 5 from last season. Tied for fifth at 85% were Brock Bowers, Sam LaPorta and Tucker Kraft. Fourth was George Kittle at 86%. Third was Cole Kmet at 88%. Second was Trey McBride at 90%. First, as you could probably guess by now, was Cade Otton at 92%.

Look at the names on that list. Bowers, Kittle and McBride are the clear top three tight ends this season, and LaPorta is the consensus No. 4. Tucker Kraft has been mentioned frequently as one of the top tight end “sleepers” for this season. Kmet would be more interesting if the Bears didn’t draft Colston Loveland with the No. 10 overall pick, with Loveland being viewed as another top sleeper.

So why isn’t Otton getting any love? He is still the TE22 on Underdog with an average ADP of 176.9. And that 92% snap count percentage isn’t a fluke; he was at 97% for the 2023 season as well. He finished sixth among all tight ends in routes run in 2024 despite missing three games and was second in this stat in 2023 when he played all 17 games.

Now I would get it if Otton played in a bad offense or didn’t produce at all, but both of those aren’t the case. Otton took a nice step in target share in his third NFL season in 2024, going up from 12.2% in 2023 (his second NFL season) to 19.0%.

Otton particularly shined after Mike Evans reaggravated a hamstring injury halfway through the second quarter against the Ravens in Week 7, causing Evans to miss the second half of that contest as well as the next three games. Chris Godwin also suffered a dislocated left ankle at the end of that Ravens game, which ended his season.

Starting with that Ravens contest, here were Otton’s targets in that 4-game stretch: 10, 10, 11 and 8.

This is already a Buccaneers pass-catching group that will be without Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan at the start of the season. First-round rookie wideout Emeka Egbuka’s ADP has soared over the past few weeks, but certainly not all first-year receivers hit the ground running. Otton is a guy that Mayfield has trusted in the past and has fantasy upside in an explosive passing attack on a team with a bad defense.

Otton faces the Falcons in Week 1 and is projected for 7.0 PPR points in a game with high shootout potential. The Falcons offense was humming with Michael Penix Jr. at quarterback, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that this game is being played in a dome. The Falcons’ defense gave up the 11th-most fantasy points to tight ends last year, and Otton had 11 catches for 125 yards and two scores in his meetings against them in 2024.

At Fantom Odds, you can get Otton over 10.6 PPR points at +203 odds. Considering it’s a potential high-scoring game where Otton will find himself as the third option at worst, you can do worse than giving him a start in Week 1 at tight end if you didn’t pony up early for the position.

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