The most highly discussed development of the 2026 offseason has been seemingly every NFL team’s emphasis on their TE2 and even TE3 positions, both in free agency and in the draft. NFL fans and pundits alike have had little trouble connecting the dots and extrapolating that we’ll see a big increase in multi-tight-end sets across the league in 2026.
This is a copycat league after all, and seeing Sean McVay’s efficiency passing out of 13-personnel, it’s no stretch to imagine other offensive coordinators will try to recreate that success, likely to widely varying degrees of success.
For us dynasty owners, the key question becomes “who stands to benefit, and who stands to lose” from this trend towards heavier personnel groupings. Whenever a team starts taking receivers off the field, there are several opposing forces at play that push and pull on our dynasty assets’ fantasy production.
On one hand, wide receivers are typically much more efficient in 12- and 13-personnel than they are in 11-personnel, because they’re competing for targets with fewer wide receivers and more blocking tight ends. However, receivers also run the risk of being subbed out in these personnel groupings, and of their team going more run-heavy when the big boys sub in to block.
Today, I’m going to dive into each team’s 2025 heavy personnel tendencies, and each fantasy pass catcher’s production in these groupings, to figure out which players stand to gain the most from the likely trend towards 12- and 13-personnel.
Note: Throughout the rest of this article, all charts will be in terms of all personnel groupings with 2 or fewer wide receivers on the field, but for brevity I will still say “12-personnel” occasionally even if that’s not strictly accurate.
Team 12-Personnel Tendencies
Let’s start off with a very simple chart. Here, I show each team’s usage of heavy personnel, defined as having two or fewer wide receivers on the field, and each team’s pass rate out of heavy personnel groupings.
Now, I fold this data into each team’s overall rate of pass attempts from heavy personnel groupings. To be clear, this chart is not the team’s pass rate out of heavy personnel groupings. It is the overall rate of their total snaps that are specifically pass plays out of heavy formations.
From this chart, we can come up with a few notable conclusions related to playcaller movement over the previous offseason.
One notable change is that Kevin Stefanski, who in Cleveland was in fourth place with over 28% of his total called plays being pass attempts from heavy groupings, is now the playcaller in Atlanta. Atlanta wasn’t low in these rankings by any means, but they may now lead the charge in heavy personnel usage.
Consequently, you can expect big things from Drake London this year. Also, I’m aware Kevin Stefanski handed off playcalling duties at times in 2024 and 2025, but the offensive design is still his.
Another seismic shift will occur in Los Angeles, where the Chargers will go from being third-last in the entire NFL in pass plays out of heavy personnel, to being top-6 or so with Mike McDaniel calling plays. For the receivers who stay on the field, expect them to receive a big bump to their efficiency and production. Fair warning however, the Chargers likely think of Tre Harris as their best blocking receiver, and you may be surprised at how many snaps he vulches from Ladd McConkey and Quentin Johnston.
Watch out for the Detroit Lions, who will likely move from middle of the pack to among the top in the league after hiring Drew Petzig from Arizona. This could be a bit of a red herring, though. Last year, Arizona’s pass rate was incredibly high overall, as they were chasing games all season, so don’t expect the Lions to lead the league in pass rate all of a sudden. Still, looking at Detroit’s roster, I would argue they’re perfect for a pass-heavy 12-personnel team, with two wide receivers who stand way above the rest, and an excellent pass-catcher at tight end.
One surprising artifact of this analysis is that Seattle was actually so run-heavy out of heavy personnel groupings that Jaxon Smith-Njigba might actually see *more* opportunities in heavy packages than he did last year. Let that sink in for a second.
Player 12-Personnel Landscape
For a player to feast in 12-personnel, first and foremost he needs to stay on the field. Once that is accomplished, we can start to think about efficiency gains. To that end, I plot each wide receiver’s snap rate in heavy personnel groupings against their yards per team pass attempt in such situations.
Note: I use yards per team pass attempt rather than yards per route run because I have access to play-by-play data but not individual player tracking data. If somebody wants to let me know where to find this, that would be great.
From this chart, we can make a couple key takeaways. Among the star players leading the pack in efficiency, we see Alec Pierce. With Michael Pittman leaving and Alec Pierce stepping into a more concentrated receiver room, he could surprise as the next big name in dynasty.
Once again, Drake London is going to the absolute moon. I’m always cautious about recommending wide receivers in quarterback purgatory, but everything else about him is a screaming buy, even at his already high price.
Also, Josh Downs famously never saw the field in heavy personnel groupings, but all of the smoke out of Indianapolis is that his role will expand this year. He seems like another key buy while the price is still low.
Finally, Oronde Gadsden’s newfound competition is somewhat concerning, but if we think Njoku has aged poorly, then Gadsden is clearly in a smash spot. Keep in mind, we’re talking about the offensive playcaller who made Jonnu Smith a league winner.
If we look to the more pessimistic side of things, Jameson Williams was not efficient in heavy personnel groupings, and he’ll likely see a lot more such snaps in 2026. The Chargers’ wide receivers will also have to be much more efficient in 12-personnel, otherwise their surging prices won’t pay off.
Counterfactual Receiver Production
The last question I want to answer is, “which receivers would have seen their production increase the most if their team used more heavy personnel?” The idea here is to get a more concrete sense of how sensitive each receiver’s production is to their playcaller’s 12-personnel choices.
To be clear, I’m not simulating or predicting anything here. All I’m doing is plotting how many more receiving yards each wide receiver would have gotten if their team had used heavy personnel groupings 5% more often (in absolute terms, not relative terms) last year. Here is a long list of important caveats:
There is no underlying model here, and the assumptions used will absolutely not hold up. Much of the league has new playcallers, and many players are on new teams. I don’t account for any of that, because this is just a counterfactual based on 2025 data. Also, many teams might change their run-pass balance if they change their personnel groupings.
Additionally, the teams who led the league in 12-personnel usage last year have a lot less room to increase their heavy personnel usage in 2026. In practice, the teams at the bottom of 12-personnel usage last year will probably see the biggest increases this year. We can’t reasonably expect Zay Flowers, for example, to benefit from significantly more heavy personnel usage with him playing for the already league-leading Ravens.
Finally, players won’t have exactly the same playing time last year as they did this year. This exercise is just to get a sense of which players are most sensitive to their team’s personnel choices. It is *not* a prediction.
To me, by far the most interesting takeaway from this plot is that, higher efficiency notwithstanding, most pass catchers in the league stand to lose if their teams go with heavier personnel groupings. The reason for this is obvious in retrospect: NFL offenses are more run-heavy out of heavier personnel groupings.
If you take nothing else away from this article, you should remember the following: Your average fantasy wide receiver is going to lose value from this trend, unless the NFL accompanies increases in heavy personnel usage with significant increases in pass rate out of heavy groupings.
On the bright side, it is extremely reasonable to expect teams will be more pass-heavy out of 12- and 13-personnel next year than they were this year. The entire point of this trend is to force defenses to match with bigger defenders, and to exploit the resulting mismatches in coverage. While there might be one or two oblivious offensive coordinators who miss the boat on this, we’re pretty likely to see the NFL pass more out of heavy personnel groupings than ever before.
To that end, I ask a different counterfactual. How would receivers’ production be affected if their teams were 5% more pass-heavy in specifically heavy personnel groupings?
Here, the high-end WR1’s obviously shine, but we can learn something from the receivers who join them at the top.
First off, the drumbeat for Colston Loveland is only getting louder. His offensive playcaller is already solid in terms of passing out of 12- and 13-personnel, but Loveland was extremely efficient and saw the field very often in these situations. Drake London continues to look like he’s in a smash spot.
Besides the star receivers, it’s hard to ignore how often Wan’Dale Robinson comes out surprisingly well in these situations, though a large part of that could be due to Malik Nabers’ injury. I’m not a Wan’Dale believer personally, but if you want to cheaply fill out one of your flex spots, the data at least supports your hunch.
As mentioned previously, Alec Pierce looks great in these results, and D.K. Metcalf is yet another pleasant surprise here. Fair warning though, under Arthur Smith the Steelers led the entire league in percent of their offensive plays that were specifically 12-personnel passing plays. One has to assume that will decrease under Mike McCarthy.
Harold Fannin may also be in a smash spot with Todd Monken coming over from Baltimore, but the Browns did add a lot of competition at pass-catcher this year.
Just for the sake of completion, here is what it looks like if each player’s team used 5% more heavy personnel, but also was 5% more run heavy in those situations.
Jaylen Waddle ends up looking really good here, but this chart relies on so many assumptions I wouldn’t run very far with it.
I also can’t ignore how Ladd McConkey keeps coming out towards the bottom of these rankings. I believe in him as a talent, but my gosh what happened last year? Not even Keenan Allen can explain all this, since he wasn’t on the field in 12-personnel groupings.
Conclusion
I ended up coming to a much different conclusion than I expected when I set out to do this analysis. Essentially, a lot of the offseason discourse on 12-personnel usage has centered around “figure out who had high yards per route run in these groupings, and they’re probably the breakout candidates”. At this point, I actually want to push back on this.
Playcallers’ run-pass splits out of heavy personnel groupings are actually going to be more important. The onus therefore might be more on the playcaller movement over the previous offseason than on the player side of the equation.
Some “high-leverage” playcallers in this regard are:
Liam Coen: He can call a great pass game, but he had pretty massive run-pass splits between 11-personnel and 12-personnel. He needs to substantially increase his heavy personnel pass rate for me to get behind any of their pass catchers.
Klint Kubiak: He can get otherworldly efficiency out of his receivers, but he has been extremely run heavy in these situations too. If that offense is going to support anybody other than Bowers and Jeanty, that will have to change.
Drew Petzig: His game scripts will be much more favorable this year, but an absolutely massive year for Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam Laporta might be incoming regardless.
As far as some players to target, Drake London is the high-end player who might not be acquirable at all after this season, and Alec Pierce is the cheaper option who is being slept on among all this 12-personnel smoke.
Many of the pass-catching specialists at tight end might be more consistent going forward than the archetype has shown in years past. Sam LaPorta is back on the menu, and I see no reason to project regression for Oronde Gadsden and Harold Fannin Jr.
Time will tell if this is also a subtle signal to bump up Dalton Kincaid and Eli Stowers, who previously couldn’t block well enough to be full-time players, but who may now outsource that to a blocking tight end while they run routes against linebackers.