- Trey McBride has been incredibly consistent: McBride finished as a top-six fantasy tight end for over 50% of his games last season.
- Expect more of the same in 2025: The Arizona Cardinals kept their coaching staff and offensive players together after a strong 2024, making it easy to expect more of the same from McBride this season.
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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
PFF’s Fantasy Football Player Profile series delivers the most in-depth fantasy football analysis available for the 2025 season.
Using PFF’s exclusive data, we evaluate player performance, competition for touches and how teammates and coaching staffs will impact each player's fantasy football outlook.
Last updated: 7:15 a.m. Thursday, May 8
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Player performance
Trey McBride was the 55th overall pick of the 2022 NFL Draft. He started his career as Zach Ertz’s backup. Ertz was injured midseason, allowing McBride to become the starter. He was held to 22 total receiving yards in his first three starts without Ertz. He showed a little promise at the end of the year, with seven receptions for 78 yards and a touchdown in Week 17. Ertz returned in 2023 but was again out for the season after Week 7.
McBride took over again, and this time, his play was much different. He caught 10 passes for 95 yards and a touchdown in his first start without Ertz. He averaged 15.0 fantasy points per game over the rest of the season. Ertz moved on to the Washington Commanders, allowing McBride to continue his quality play throughout 2024.
McBride led the league in both receptions per game (6.9) and receptions per route (0.21) last season. His yards per game (71.6) and targets per game (8.7) were both second-best. He’s achieved an 89.9 receiving grade over the last two seasons, which is second-best among tight ends behind George Kittle. Only five other receivers have receiving grades in the 80s, including Brock Bowers, Mark Andrews, T.J. Hockenson, Sam LaPorta and Travis Kelce.
Projected role
The Cardinals made minimal changes to their offense this offseason, allowing us to expect more of the same from McBride.
Elijah Higgins and Tip Reiman remain the two backup tight ends. They will continue to play in some two-tight-end sets. The top three running backs and top four wide receivers on the depth chart remain identical to last season. Almost all of the Cardinals' additions in the draft and free agency occurred on the defensive side.
It’s worth noting that McBride has a relatively low average depth of target and is rarely targeted on deep passes. McBride caught 90 passes for 727 yards on short passes or passes from behind the line of scrimmage. Those both ranked second to Brock Bowers, posting over 100 yards between them and third place. On intermediate and deep passes, McBride has 21 receptions for 419 yards, which ranks fifth among tight ends. The relatively low deep target rate might put a ceiling on McBride, making it unlikely he posts an all-time great season, but he can still be a top-two tight end in this role. Out of 18 tight ends with 11 or more intermediate or deep receptions, he was the only one without a touchdown on those passes. He should get a few more touchdowns on these kinds of passes from some regression.
Impact of teammates
McBride will continue catching passes from Kyler Murray with Drew Petzing calling the offense. This has generally been a positive for McBride because the Cardinals are willing to throw him the ball so much. Murray doesn’t throw deep often and is fine moving off a primary target and onto McBride. His passes are generally accurate. Considering these are more unchanged variables, this is even more reason to expect more of the same from McBride.
Bottom line
McBride is one of the safest picks in fantasy football. His role in the offense is consistently catching short passes, which is sustainable. The Cardinals didn’t change the offense, making it easier to pick than most. McBride will likely finish among the top-three tight ends for another season.
Footnotes
- Statistics in tables and charts were chosen based on their ability to predict future fantasy performance on a per-game or per-opportunity basis or to describe the player relative to others at the same position.
- “Opportunities” are defined as passing dropbacks, rushing attempts and routes run as a receiver.
- Numbers are provided either by season or based on the past three years. For rookies, only college statistics are included. For non-rookies, only NFL statistics are considered, regardless of whether they played in college within the previous three years.
- As college competition is easier than NFL competition, most rookies are likely to see a decline from their historical numbers.
- Only FBS data is considered for college players and comparisons.
- Kneel-downs are removed from rushing data to provide cleaner quarterback rushing rate statistics.
- The table colors in this article range from blue (indicating good/high) to red (indicating bad/low).
- All percentiles and color codings compare the given player to others with a high sample of opportunities. Generally, the cutoff is one-third of the possible opportunities in the sample. If a player does not meet the threshold, they are still included in the comparison, though their results may appear better or worse than expected due to the smaller, less predictive sample size.
- Information on utilization classifications and their importance can be found here for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.
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