2025 Rookie Profile: TE Tyler Warren (Fantasy Football)

Penn State’s Tyler Warren is one of, if not the, best TEs in the 2025 class. Highly regarded by many in the NFL Draft community, Warren checks in as Daniel Jeremiah’s 5th overall prospect, while he’s 8th in PFF’s Big Board and 10th on The Athletic’s Dane Bruglar’s Top-100 List. In other words, Warren is largely viewed as one of the top talents in the 2025 NFL Draft, regardless of position.

Obviously, that’s extremely exciting for fantasy football, especially when we’re always looking for the next difference maker at TE. Could the Nittany Lion be the next Sam LaPorta or Brock Bowers that delivers fantasy production right away as a rookie? Let’s dive into his production profile and tape to see what’s in store.

Editors Note: This article is part of our Rookie Profile series going on until the 2025 NFL Draft. For more on each rookie, check out Andy, Mike, and Jason’s exclusive rookie rankings and production profiles found only in the Dynasty Pass, part of the UDK+ for 2025.

College Production Profile

It was a bit of a slow start for Warren at Penn State. When he arrived on campus back in 2021, he was just then learning how to play TE. In fact, Warren was a high school QB, who wasn’t even recruited to play at Penn State because of his football tape. He was actually brought to Happy Valley because of his insane basketball highlights and athleticism he displayed as a three-sport athlete. If you’re interested in his background and profile coming out of high school, you can check out this interview with the Big Ten Network.

So when we look at Warren’s late breakout age and lack of production early in his career, it’s not all that surprising that it took some time for Warren to learn how to 1) revamp his body from playing QB to TE and 2) learn how to actually play the TE position, something that he never did until he got to PSU. Given the context of his journey, I’m personally not all that concerned about Warren’s lack of production at a young age.

Additionally, Warren was playing next to/behind NFL talents in Brenton Strange (JAX) and Theo Johnson (NYG) for most of his career. Once the runway was cleared for Warren as the starter, he took off in 2024 with a massive season that awarded him the John Mackey Award, given annually to the nation’s top TE. Awards can sometimes be overrated when prospecting, but the list of Mackey Award winners since 2017 does give some really strong signal here for fantasy:

• 2017: Mark Andrews
• 2018: T.J. Hockenson
• 2019: Harrison Bryant
• 2020: Kyle Pitts
• 2021: Trey McBride
• 2022: Brock Bowers
• 2023: Brock Bowers
• 2024: Tyler Warren

In 2024, Warren dominated for Penn State with over 1,200 receiving yards and 218 rushing yards. His usage in the offense was WR1-esque: 36% of the team’s receptions, 34% of the team’s receiving yards and 27% of the team’s TDs. For context on those numbers, he had a higher best season reception share than each of the top WR prospects in this year’s class: Luther Burden, Tetairoa McMillan, Emeka Egbuka and Travis Hunter.

It’s extremely rare for a TE to command the offense, but that’s exactly what Warren did in 2024 with PSU using him as a true Swiss Army Knife. Lined up as a true inline TE frequently, Warren was also flexed out as a slot or perimeter WR while even getting snaps and carries as a wildcat QB. Here’s where PFF charted Warren’s snaps in 2024:

• Inline: 419 (60%)
• Slot: 166 (24%)
• Wide: 50 (7%)
• Backfield: 60 (9%)

This is pretty rare usage for a college TE and speaks to Warren’s athletic upside and multi-faceted skillet. If you’re interested, Kyle put together a video of every snap of Tyler Warren playing wildcat QB last year. It’s a pretty fun watch!

Measurables

Warren didn’t participate in any drills or testing at the NFL Combine, so as of this writing we don’t have any athletic testing data on Warren. We’ll see if he participates in Penn State’s Pro Day on March 28. Historically, highly athletic TEs perform well in fantasy football, so let’s hope we get some good numbers on Warren in a week or so, but even if Warren doesn’t test, the NFL seems to be extremely high on him as a talent, so I don’t expect his NFL Draft to change regardless of what happens over the next week or two.

In terms of his size, Warren absolutely checks the boxes here with the PSU Senior weighing at over 250 pounds at 6’6″. As you can see in the table above, those are typical TE1 numbers for NFL producers, and when you think about that frame, NFL coaches should have no issues getting Warren on the field as a near every down player. We’ve seen some recent athletic “move” TEs struggle to find consistency in the NFL due to their lack of size and lack of ability to play as an every down inline TE. Guys like Kyle Pitts, Dalton Kincaid and even Evan Engram at times in his career have been very scheme dependent, which can limit playing time if coaches aren’t comfortable with these guys as inline players. With Warren’s frame and ability to contribute in the run blocking game, I’m not worried about that happening to him at all at the next level. He should be able to play a ton of snaps and have the route share we’re looking for in fantasy football.

What’s On Tape

Games viewed: USC, Ohio State, Boise State, Maryland, Wisconsin, Oregon

1. Excellent YAC ability with the ball in his hands. 

In order for TEs to be difference makers in fantasy, they’ve got to be able to pick up yards with their legs. Uhhhhh, have you seen this dude’s tape as a wildcat QB?! This play against Ohio State is a perfect display of what Warren can do with the ball in his hands. 3rd & 6, game on the line, and they dial up a QB draw with their TE…this folks, is not normal! Also, shoutout to #16 for excellent downfield blocking.

2. Warren is very willing to contribute as a run blocker.

I’m no blocking technique expert, but I’m at least watching to see that these tight end prospects are functional run blockers so that they’ll be able to get on the field for 80+% of the snaps. As noted above, guys like Dalton Kincaid or Kyle Pitts aren’t really traditional TEs, yet they’re not athletic enough to be able to win against corners on the perimeter on a consistent basis. As a result, we see some issues with playing time and route rate. With Warren, he’s good enough as a run blocker that I don’t foresee that being an issue at the next level. According to Lance Zierlein of NFL.com, “He’s very capable as a lead/move blocker but will need a little improvement at sustaining blocks when blocking in-line.”

3. Warren is a strong route runner for his size, and he’s great in contested catch situations. 

Whether it’s targets up the seam, gimme looks on short play action targets in the flat, TE screens, or targets across the middle of the field or on the boundary, Warren’s usage during his final season in terms of his route tree was quite diverse. According to Sharp Football’s Rich Hribar, no FBS player (WRs included) had more receiving yards vs man coverage than Warren’s 521. Against man looks, Warren averaged a silly 3.98 YPRR and was targeted on over 40% of his routes against man coverage. He could be a big time mismatch on safeties and linebackers at the next level if he’s schemed up the right way by his NFL OC.

Fantasy Outlook

According to GrindingTheMocks, which looks at various mock drafts across the industry, Warren has an expected draft position of 11.7. If we assume he goes inside the top-20 picks, Warren will have excellent NFL Draft capital to go along with a strong production and size profile. Per our own Marvin Elequin’s TE prospect model, Warren is a 97th percentile prospect in his database, making him a really strong pick in the first round of dynasty rookie drafts.

Warren isn’t as strong of a prospect as Brock Bowers, but if there’s one rookie who can hit the ground running in year one and have a Bowers-esque impact right away, it’s most likely going to be Warren. Bowers was a much better prospect, but there’s a lot of similarities in their game – Both were used as the alpha in their collegiate offenses, and the fact that coaching staffs were able to use both guys as weapons in the run game says a lot about the versatility of these players.

In terms of redraft outlook, rookie TEs have historically not been great bets in fantasy, but Warren definitely has the tools to be able to contribute right away. In order for TEs to really make a difference in fantasy, they generally need to be the #1 or #2 option in terms of the target pecking order. With Warren frequently mocked to teams like Jets (7th), Bears (10th) and Colts (14th), it’s certainly possible for him to step in and be a target earner right away.