Fantasy Football: Will Trey McBride regress in 2026? And how does he stack up vs. Brock Bowers?

In 2025, Arizona Cardinals tight end Trey McBride lit the fantasy football world on fire with his historic season. He set the record for receptions at the position with 126 en route to finishing as the TE1 in fantasy overall. So understandably the narrative going into this season is whether or not McBride will regress on his monumental season.

In fantasy, McBride finished with 242.9 points from Weeks 1 through 17. The TE2 was Kyle Pitts, who finished with 158 fantasy points. That’s a pretty huge gap between the top TE and the next-man-up.

Matt Harmon and Justin Boone examined McBride’s prospects for next season on the latest Yahoo Fantasy Forecast, in which the two discuss the Yahoo staff’s 10-round mock draft.

Harmon starts us off by stating that McBride had a whopping 694 routes run last season. That number didn’t just lead tight ends, it led all receivers in the NFL. Who was in second place, you ask? His teammate, WR Michael Wilson. So it’s tough to expect the Cardinals to repeat this trend with a new coaching staff and the presence of rookie RB Jeremiyah Love.

Harmon still thinks the Cardinals will have a lot of pass-first game scripts in 2026 but McBride should regress, simply from a “raw stats” perspective. Harmon was fine with where McBride went in the mock draft — the third round at Pick No. 22 to Boone — but believes that Raiders TE Brock Bowers should be going ahead of the Cardinals star, as was the case in the mock.

Boone reiterates that it has nothing to do with the talent level of these tight ends. It’s simply the setup. Both tight ends are right at the top of the receiver food chain on their respective teams, which is exactly what you want as a manager. The more Boone looks at it, the more Bowers is prime for a really strong season in Las Vegas under new head coach Klint Kubiak. The Raiders didn’t bring in much competition for Bowers at receiver.

Boone does have Bowers over McBride at the top of his tight end fantasy football rankings for 2026 post-NFL Draft.