We read the 45 tight ends with 30-plus targets in 2024: the two highest PPR totals were built on volume, not touchdowns

We read the 45 tight ends who saw 30 or more targets in the 2024 NFL regular season, per the nflverse season log, so you didn't have to — and the scoring composition told a different story than the box score suggests. The pool's top two finishers built their seasons on yards and catches. Brock Bowers logged 153 targets, 112 receptions, and 1,194 receiving yards — and 5 touchdowns; those touchdowns made up 11.4% of his 262.7 PPR total. Trey McBride logged 147 targets, 111 receptions, and 1,146 yards — and 3 touchdowns (two receiving, one rushing); his touchdown scoring accounted for 7.4% of his 243.8 PPR total. Travis Kelce, fifth in the pool at 195.4 PPR, scored 3 touchdowns — 9.2% of his total. The pool's top two finishers averaged 9.4% of their PPR from touchdowns. Mark Andrews finished sixth (188.8 PPR) on 11 touchdowns and 69 targets. Those 11 scores contributed 66 points — 35.0% of his total. His non-touchdown production (122.8 points) ranked him 11th among the 45 qualifying tight ends. The five tight ends who finished sixth through tenth averaged 26.6% TD scoring — nearly three times the 9.4% average of the top two. Across the 45-TE pool, 16.4% of PPR scoring came from touchdowns. Within the top 12, individual TD dependence ranged from 7.4% (McBride) to 35.0% (Andrews) — a 27.6-percentage-point spread. The median qualifying tight end derived 11.9% of PPR from touchdowns.

The following is analysis, not fact. The conventional tight end picture centers on the touchdown — the view that the position runs fewer routes per game than wide receiver but sees more red-zone looks per touch, so an end-zone opportunity outsizes the payoff per snap ^sspeculative. The 2024 scoring composition complicates that picture at the top of the position. Bowers and McBride each reached at least 147 targets, 111 receptions, and 1,140 receiving yards — exceeding every other qualifying tight end in the pool by more than 40 yards and more than 14 receptions. Their model is volume underneath: high catch rates, consistent opportunity, high target share from their respective offenses ^sspeculative. Touchdowns were a component, not the spine. George Kittle finished third (236.6 PPR) on 8 touchdowns, with 20.3% of his scoring from the end zone — between the two archetypes. Andrews' profile inverts the Bowers-McBride model. His 69 targets were the fewest of any top-12 finisher — and 19 of the 45 qualifying tight ends drew more targets over the full season. What his targets disproportionately produced was touchdowns: 11 in 69 opportunities, a rate consistent with a player whose snaps concentrate near the goal line, though target location is not available in this dataset ^sspeculative. Remove the 11 touchdowns and his remaining 122.8 non-TD points rank him 11th in the pool — five spots below his actual finish. The 27.6-percentage-point spread within a single position's top 12 is consistent with two structurally distinct production models operating inside the same fantasy position: one that accumulates a volume floor without scoring often, and one that scores enough to carry a lower volume floor ^sspeculative. Whether either model is more stable from year to year is a question one season's cross-section cannot answer ^sspeculative.

The counter-view holds: the TE6-through-TE10 tier averaging 26.6% TD scoring is a meaningful share at any position, and touchdowns are what separate a viable TE start from a borderline one in most weeks. Bowers and McBride are exceptional cases — both operated in offenses that deployed them at target counts (153, 147) far above the pool median, and both were rookies or second-year players in breakout years. One season in which two volume-dominant tight ends finished at the top does not mean the position's traditional reliance on end-zone production has diminished. The median pool player's 11.9% TD share is lower than the TE6-10 tier, but two or three touchdowns still represent a meaningful swing in the PPR standings at the position level.