Tyler Warren vs. Harold Fannin: Who Should You Draft In 2026 Fantasy Football?
Fantasy

Tyler Warren vs. Harold Fannin: Who Should You Draft In 2026 Fantasy Football?

Jonathan Fuller breaks down who to draft between Tyler Warren and Harold Fannin, two TEs neck and neck in the 2026 TE rankings for fantasy football.

Published

Fantasy football draft season is in full swing. Whether you’re playing best ball, dynasty or redraft, you’ll probably be on the clock soon, maybe even while you are reading this. Throughout your drafts, you will face several tough decisions where it almost feels like you should flip a coin to make your decision. When you're on the clock, you have to make a decision in a short amount of time, so we at Fantasy Life are going to help you be prepared to make those decisions by putting those players under a microscope to arrive at a final verdict on who to take. 

For this series, I will be evaluating players on three primary criteria:

  1. Talent
  2. Opportunity
  3. Bust risk

Talent and opportunity combine to create the upside profile, but we must always balance that against the risk of a player letting you down. How you weigh the upside vs downside can be subjective and format-specific, but I will do my best to lay out how I am thinking about those tradeoffs.

For the third edition of this series, I am looking at two second-year TEs who each had a stretch of elite production in 2025. Tyler Warren and Harold Fannin Jr. are both highly talented but will need to overcome questionable offensive environments to break into the top tier of fantasy TEs in 2026. Let's dive into the case for each and see who comes out on top.

IND_colts-logo.svgThe Case for Tyler Warren

When looking at second-year players, I still put some stock into their prospect profile and draft capital. Tyler Warren wins on both. Warren had a higher rating in the Rookie Super Model and was selected more than 50 spots earlier in the NFL Draft (yes, that is accounted for in the RSM). When considering those factors, we should expect Warren to be the better pro. 

image.png

Warren's situation is far from perfect, but what we saw from the Indianapolis offense for the first 10 weeks of the 2025 season is a ceiling that I believe is out of reach for the Cleveland Browns. I can't confidently say that Indy will reach those heights again in 2026, but I do believe that their upside is significantly higher than that of the Browns.

From a target competition standpoint, Warren should actually have it easier this year with Michael Pittman no longer on the roster. Indianapolis did not add any significant pass-catching weapons this offseason, so the path to an increased target share is easy to imagine. Alec Pierce and Josh Downs are quality role players, but this offense should flow through Jonathan Taylor and Tyler Warren, which gives the second-year TE potential to crack the top three fantasy TEs.

CLE_browns-logo.svgThe Case for Harold Fannin Jr.

Despite being a third-round pick and playing in a worse offense for most of the season, Harold Fannin still managed to put up a very similar stat line to Tyler Warren in 2025. That is a meaningful achievement for a rookie TE, a position where it is notoriously difficult to produce in your first year. 

Fannin had a very strong prospect profile, with the only real concern being that his production came at a lower tier of college football. In my opinion, we can write off those concerns now that he has proven himself capable at the NFL level. It's also important to remember that Fannin was a young prospect and earned 100+ targets as a 21-year-old rookie. He still has a lot of room to develop and improve physically with a couple of offseasons in an NFL-caliber training program. I am highly confident that there is a significant untapped ceiling for Fannin as an NFL player and fantasy asset.

The main concerns I still have about Fannin are the offensive environment he plays in and the increasing competition for targets in the Cleveland offense. David Njoku is gone, but Cleveland added KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston to the WR room with a first- and second-round pick, respectively. Concepcion ranked 4th among WRs in the rookie super model while Boston ranked 7th, and their presence will create a lot more competition for targets. 

The other question is how good this passing game will be, considering the uncertainty at quarterback. Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel did not impress as rookies, and Deshaun Watson hasn't played good football since the 2020 season. That group of passers does not instill much confidence. If the offense is bad, that will be a headwind for Fannin to improve on his production from last season. If the QB play is a pleasant surprise, he will still have to compete with an improved WR room for targets. He may still be the most talented pass catcher on the team, but he does have more risk of being surpassed than Tyler Warren does.

The Final Verdict - Should You Draft Tyler Warren or Harold Fannin?

I like both Tyler Warren and Harold Fannin Jr., so I would be happy to have either of them on my team, but that is not the point of this exercise. 

Of the articles that I have written so far, this is the pairing that I expect to have the widest fantasy football ADP gap, with Warren going a couple of rounds earlier than Fannin. That matters when evaluating who is a better pick in fantasy drafts. In a vacuum, I would clearly prefer to draft Warren over Fannin on my fantasy team. However, Warren is drafted nearly three full rounds earlier than Fannin in best ball drafts. If that difference carries through to redraft leagues, it will likely be enough to tip the scales in Fannin's favor. 

Any time we are evaluating two players with a meaningfully different cost in drafts, we need to consider the opportunity cost of drafting each player. Warren is a mid-sixth-round pick in best ball drafts, going around players like Brian Thomas, Jordyn Tyson, Marvin Harrison, Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels. Fannin is drafted in the early ninth round around players like Xavier Worthy, Jakobi Meyers, Brock Purdy and Matthew Stafford. When thinking about the 2v2 of taking each TE and one of the players that goes in the same range of drafts as the other, I do prefer the pairings that include Fannin. This is especially true when thinking about the QBs. Drafting Jayden Daniels alongside Fannin feels a lot better than pairing Warren with Stafford or Purdy. 

As long as the three-round ADP difference holds, I will lean towards Fannin as the better pick, although both are good options.

Players Mentioned in this Article

  1. Tyler Warren
    TylerWarren
    TEINDIND
    PPG
    8.7
    Proj
    156.5
  2. Harold Fannin
    HaroldFanninQ
    TECLECLE
    PPG
    9.4
    Proj
    131.8

Published