Welcome back to the 2025 Dynasty Rookie Rankings Battle. While last week we broke down the quarterback class, this week we’re moving on to the top of the tight end class. In particular, we’re looking at Penn State’s Tyler Warren (6’ 5”, 256 lbs) and Michigan’s Colston Loveland (6' 6”, 248 lbs), two tight ends who accomplished the rare feat of leading their team’s passing games this past season.
This article will rate each player using the categories in the Get Better at Dynasty Series, copied here for your convenience. Recall that the highlighting in the template reflects the relative importance of each trait, whereas the actual prospect report represents how strong they are in that skill.
Fantasy-Relevant Traits
Run-After-Catch
Both tight ends check an important box here, namely that they’re not the “catch and fall down” type of tight end that accumulates half a fantasy point at a time. Beyond that, both players are fast enough to make the occasional big play, but tackle evasion is not a huge part of their game. Nobody is going to confuse them with Brock Bowers or Trey McBride here.
Tyler Warren brings excellent buildup speed to the table and can create an explosive play if he has a runway. However, there is very little lateral agility to his game, and he struggles to evade tackles. Warren is capable of dropping his head and plowing forward for an extra couple of years but isn’t the type to stiff-arm a tackler and keep rumbling ala Tucker Kraft.
Colston Loveland has a good sense of where the sticks are and can transition from catching the ball with his back to the defense to twisting or diving toward the line to gain. While he’s much more fluid than Warren, it doesn’t show up in the tackle-evading department, potentially because he’s such a long strider. He, too, is capable of dropping the shoulder to gain extra yardage, but it’s not a true strength of his game either.
Endzone Usage
Tyler Warren gets a boost here because there is potential for his team to employ him occasionally as a “Tush Push” or wildcat type of player since he did this in short-yardage situations at Penn State on occasion. As for the rest of his game, he was on the field in these situations and caught his fair share of touchdowns, but wasn’t a priority option around the goal line in the games I watched. He’s involved, but they didn’t draw up plays for him like the Cleveland Browns do for David Njoku.
To his credit, Warren is excellent in contested catch situations. He uses late hands and adjustments to snatch the ball away from the defensive back. Interestingly, this showed up more on long passing plays than on fades as far as contributing to his gaudy touchdown totals.
Colston Loveland, however, put up mundane touchdown totals over his career. He is involved around the goal line, but he’s not his team’s Plan A down here as often as you’d like to see. To be fair, Michigan strongly preferred to rush the ball around the goal line, and they still trusted him to get on the field in these situations.
Route Running vs Zone
This is the first category where you see a major difference between the two prospects. Colston Loveland has an excellent feel for sitting in the hole in the zone and catching the ball with his back to the defense. He settles, stays on his toes, and shows the QB a target to fit the ball into.
However, Loveland sometimes struggled to hold on through contact, though, to be fair, that’s partly because his quarterbacks were often late in delivering the ball. In any case, Loveland’s lankier frame and tendency to let the ball come into his body make it a little too easy for the defensive back to separate him from the ball.
Tyler Warren, meanwhile, really disappointed me in terms of feel for route running vs zone. His tendency is to jog and drift, but he does not really present his quarterback with a throwing window because he does not seem to feel like he’s open. It’s night and day compared to Loveland.
On the bright side, Warren has the potential to be excellent in this facet. Because he has a much sturdier frame and is a more confident hands catcher compared to Loveland, his leverage is much safer to throw into. It’s really hard for a defensive back to play around him or play through him, which affects the play. There is hope that his feeling of sitting in zones will be an easy fix once NFL coaches get their hands on him.
Intermediate Usage
While both players are strong prospects here, they win in wildly different ways. Tyler Warren looks nearly unstoppable on horizontally breaking routes. He’s very physical at the top of his stem and delivers a jolt that gives him an early advantage against the defender.
Additionally, he is fairly explosive when cutting sharply off his right leg and is comfortably fast enough by this point in the route (remember, good buildup speed) to maintain his lead on the defender he’s just gotten a step on. The one thing missing from his intermediate game is that he’s not fluid or explosive in the first few steps of his route.
Colston Loveland, on the other hand, is very explosive in his first few steps and is an extremely fluid mover for his position. Michigan frequently lined him up outside and asked him to run wide receiver routes for this reason.
However, Loveland gets extremely disrupted by defensive physicality during his route. He loses a lot of speed, and the defender has an easy time sticking to him for the rest of the rep. This is a major weakness and meant I had to significantly downgrade what otherwise would have been a strong rating in this area.
Traits That Matter For Earning a Role
Blocking
Tyler Warren shows a lot of potential here, but he’s not exactly an NFL-ready blocker yet. While he’s naturally strong with long levers, I felt he was missing a certain amount of attentiveness and grit while blocking. He also had trouble getting hands on quicker players who darted around him.
There are reps here and there on his tape where he drives a helpless opponent into the sideline and finishes, but snap-to-snap he’s much, much too easy to disengage from. Also, while he’s naturally strong, he tends not to actually get good push in his blocking reps, instead just holding his ground.
Colston Loveland, on the other hand, significantly lacks in play strength, but I thought the effort was there. Loveland is extremely intentional about playing with low pad level on blocking reps, to the point that he’s essentially tipping that a run play is coming with how low he gets into his stance.
He also stays engaged and keeps his hands on his assignment throughout the rep. However, Loveland is too easy to shed, walk back, or even just manhandle because of how much play strength he gives up against front-seven defensive players. Additionally, he really struggles to cut off blocking assignments that are flowing inside of him.
At the NFL level, there is a significant concern that Loveland loses playing time to a blocking tight end. Just ask Dalton Kincaid owners how much fun it is to watch Dawson Knox steal fantasy points.
Hands
Both players have excellent hands for the position. Tyler Warren has soft hands, looks really natural, and is fluid, plucking the ball away from his frame. He has some “wow” catches on his tape and is comically reliable in adjusting to the ball down the sideline.
Colston Loveland also has good hands for the position, but on occasion, he falls into the habit of body-catching. Both he and Warren are good at high-pointing balls that are overthrown.
In-Line Usage
Despite being naturally lankier and missing some play strength, Colston Loveland saw plenty of in-line usage, including in short-yardage situations, showing Michigan trusted him enough to keep him on the field even in obvious run plays.
Michigan did frequently line Colston up in the slot or out wide, which, in my opinion, tends to be fool’s gold for fantasy because you prefer your tight end not to be matched up against outside corners. On the other hand, if the in-line usage continues in the NFL and is supplemented by wide receiver alignments, fantasy owners will be happy.
Tyler Warren famously lined up in a variety of alignments, including in-line. However, he got a ton of snaps as an H-back, which, in my opinion, doesn’t translate very well to the NFL level. The hope is that at his size, NFL teams are comfortable appending him to the offensive line.
Overall
Tyler Warren
Profile
Tyler Warren gets the edge over Colston Loveland for me because he projects more cleanly to a full-time role with added upside for a package of designed touches that supplements his normal tight-end role. With excellent hands and textbook physicality at the top of his route, plus serious ability down the seam, it’s not hard to envision a highly valuable fantasy role for Warren in the near future.
Warren’s major areas for improvement are his feel for running routes against zone coverage and a lack of sustained effort while blocking. I think both are potentially easy fixes, which would make Warren a perennial Pro Bowl tight end.
Best Case
A top-five tight end in real life with enough designed package plays to make him a top-three dynasty option at the position.
Worst Case
The route running versus zone doesn’t improve, and he doesn’t get enough fantasy production relying solely on the routes versus man, particularly because his clunkiness getting into his routes means he can’t run too diverse a route tree.
Colston Loveland
Profile
He is a primarily pass-catching tight end who is effective versus zone and gets some juice from his reps as an outside receiver. This is a profile that has historically not done fantastic at the NFL level, but there is enough potential in his blocking to hope for more here.
Loveland needs to be a top-three receiving option on his team for the juice to be worth the squeeze in fantasy, but there is a layer of upside he could unlock if his play strength improves. Loveland could settle in as a middle TE1 but would more likely return some high-end TE2 seasons mixed with some TE1 seasons in his peak years.
Best Case
Loveland is efficient enough in the receiving game to overcome splitting time with a veteran blocking tight end during his rookie season and quickly becomes a security blanket for his quarterback as an easy option against zone coverage. Combined with juice as a downfield route-runner, we get some TE1 finishes.
If Loveland packs some muscle onto his frame, he could develop into an outstanding blocker and really unlock a high-end fantasy outcome as a TE1.
Worst Case
NFL defenses catch on quickly that he can be disrupted with physicality, and Loveland becomes a non-factor against man coverage. The play strength never improves, so Loveland gets stuck as a part-time player who doesn’t realize his potential for explosive receiving plays, only catching a smattering of short targets against zone.
This type of profile would be more of a streamer than a true fantasy asset, failing to return an investment on his high placement in my 2025 NFL draft rookie rankings.