The New York Jets and fantasy football usually don’t go hand in hand.
Due to many years of inaccurate quarterbacks, poor offensive coordinators, and shoddy offensive lines, there has usually been little reason to add a Jets player in fantasy football, unless it’s in the later rounds or your team is decimated by injuries.
There have been rare exceptions, such as the Jets’ star duo of Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall. These two studs have eaten up such a large chunk of the Jets’ offense that they are still productive in the fantasy world despite New York’s real-world struggles.
In recent years, though, there have been essentially zero relevant Jets players in fantasy football.
That could finally be changing in 2026, as the Jets have surrounded Wilson and Hall with a plethora of young talent. New York’s skill-position group features three players drafted in the first two rounds of the last two drafts.
But it still hasn’t garnered them any recognition across the national landscape.
Pro Football Focus recently published an article that highlighted the top three sophomore players who are due for a fantasy football breakout in 2026. Their list: Bears wide receiver Luther Burden III, Browns running back Quinshon Judkins, and Packers wide receiver Matthew Golden.
All three selections are justified, but there’s a sneaky candidate from New York who should be considered: tight end Mason Taylor.
Is Mason Taylor due for a fantasy football breakout?
When attempting to identify players who could take a leap in fantasy football, the key is to look for significant margins between fantasy production and real-world talent.
If a player’s fantasy production falls short of their actual talent, it means there is untapped fantasy production waiting to be unlocked once the player is put in a better position to generate yards and touchdowns.
In Mason Taylor’s case, we saw a significant difference between fantasy production and talent during his 2025 rookie season.
At just 21 years old, Taylor secured 11 of his 14 contested targets, a 78.6% contested catch rate that placed him second among qualified tight ends behind only George Kittle. Doing this at such a young age, Taylor is on a trajectory to become one of the game’s best contested-catch tight ends.
However, it didn’t translate to meaningful fantasy production in 2025. In 13 games, Taylor caught 44 of 65 targets for 369 yards and one touchdown. He was 37th among tight ends in non-PPR fantasy points (44.9), and 32nd in PPR format (88.9).
Going into 2026, Taylor’s target volume doesn’t seem to be due for an increase after New York drafted tight end Kenyon Sadiq with the 16th overall pick. With a first-round tight end eating into Taylor’s target pie, Taylor should be expected to attract a similar or smaller volume of targets.
That doesn’t mean Taylor can’t have a breakout season in fantasy football.
Taylor scored just one touchdown last season. There is a ton of meat on the bone for him in that department.
As a 79% contested catcher at 21 years old, Taylor could become the Jets’ go-to target in the red zone moving forward. In fact, he may even be favored over Sadiq in the red zone, at least in Sadiq’s rookie season. Taylor had more contested catches as an NFL rookie (11) than Sadiq had across three college seasons (8 of 15, 53.3%), and he was far more consistent, too, coming against better competition.
Sadiq’s immediate impact in the NFL should come as a YAC weapon and route-running mismatch against linebackers. These skills will be prioritized between the 20s, helping the Jets to build long drives. But down in the red area, Taylor figures to demand more targets than Sadiq, and perhaps more than any Jet.
The exciting news for Taylor is that Jets offensive coordinator Frank Reich has a history of attaching himself to a favorite red-zone tight end, and spamming that tight end with red zone targets.
In Reich’s first season with the Colts in 2018, Eric Ebron scored 13 touchdowns, 11 of those coming in the red zone. Across Reich’s two seasons with the Eagles from 2016-17, Zach Ertz led the Eagles with 12 receiving touchdowns, all of those coming in the red zone.
If he becomes a touchdown magnet for the Jets, Taylor can take a major leap in fantasy football without needing to see a higher target volume.
For instance, this past season, Philadelphia’s Dallas Goedert only ranked 14th among tight ends with 591 receiving yards, but his position-high 11 touchdowns were enough to vault him to second in standard-format fantasy points (125.1); he was sixth in PPR (185.1).
On his 65 targets last season, Taylor caught just 67.7% of them for 8.4 yards per reception, which are very low numbers for a tight end (both ranked 26th among the 29 tight ends with 50+ targets). The hope is that, with someone other than Justin Fields and Brady Cook at quarterback, Taylor can catch a higher percentage of his targets while collecting a few extra field-stretching grabs.
Last season, Taylor ate up a good chunk of the checkdowns thrown by a gun-shy Fields, and if Taylor was targeted downfield, Fields often missed. Geno Smith should be more aggressive than Fields at taking chances down the field, and his accuracy should be a significant upgrade.
Projecting a fantasy football leap for Taylor is far from a popular move after New York’s decision to draft Sadiq. But there are reasons to believe he will have a big year as part of a dynamic tight end duo.
Taylor likely won’t see many extra targets now that he has to share the spotlight with Sadiq, but the quality of his targets should improve immensely. Expect him to be a featured target in the red zone, and look for him to secure a higher percentage of his targets for more yards a pop.
