Dalton Schultz

Where He's Expected to Land

Nova projects a median season of 137 points, 8.42 PPR points per game, with a range running from a 52-point floor to a 229-point ceiling. The likely finish sits TE11-TE34, a wide band that reflects a genuinely two-sided outlook rather than model uncertainty. Per-game, Nova gives him a 58% bust rate (<10 pts), a 40% solid rate (10-20 pts), and just a 2% boom rate (>20 pts), grinder production, not spike weeks. The DNA grade of B (Baseline) confirms it: steady week to week, but the ceiling barely exists. Nova puts his tier-1 season at 14% and tier-2-or-better at 28%.

The Last Three Seasons

(2023 PPR points calculated from official receiving stats: 1 pt/reception, 0.1 pt/yard, 6 pts/TD; 2024 and 2025 totals sourced directly.)

Durability isn't the issue, he's missed two games in three Houston seasons. The issue is the touchdown line, which has gone 5-2-3 while his targets climbed every year and peaked at a career-high 106 in 2025. He's never caught more balls or been more central to the passing game, and it's translated into fewer scores than his lower-volume 2023 season. That gap between usage and output is the entire profile.

What Changed for Him This Offseason

Schultz signed a one-year extension worth $12.6 million on March 6, 2026, with $17.6 million now guaranteed combining 2026 and 2027, a veteran retention move that followed the Texans' extension of Danielle Hunter. Nothing about his role changed; he enters his fourth Houston season as the unquestioned starter after leading the offense in receiving in 2025. The stability is the story here, not a shakeup.

What Changed Around Him

Coaching continuity is real. Houston GM Nick Caserio confirmed offensive coordinator Nick Caley isn't going anywhere: "I would anticipate Nick [being here next year]. All of us are just trying to improve and do what we can to make the team and the organization better," Caserio said at a press conference, per NBC Sports' Josh Alper on January 21, 2026. Caley, hired after Houston fired Bobby Slowik following the 2024 season, previously coached tight ends and ran pass-game coordination for the Rams, a background that lines up with Schultz's target spike. Under Caley in year one, Houston's offensive output rose roughly two points per game, though the season ended with eight total turnovers across two playoff games, seven of them by QB C.J. Stroud, a real red flag for the passing offense's floor heading into 2026.

The tight end room isn't a threat to Schultz's role. Foster Moreau is the early favorite for TE2 duty on blocking downs, Brevin Jordan is a dark-horse candidate working back from two straight knee injuries, and second-round rookie Marlin Klein (Michigan) already suffered a hamstring injury in offseason workouts that's limited his evaluation window, per SI's Texans site (Onsi). None of it touches Schultz's snaps. With Nico Collins still drawing the defense's top coverage attention at WR1, the target volume that produced his 106-target 2025 has no obvious reason to shrink.

What They're Saying

Beyond Caserio's coaching-stability comment, there's no beat-writer quote yet specifically pricing Schultz's 2026 target share, camp hasn't started. What's on record is structural: SI's Texans site frames him as "firmly entrenched" atop the depth chart after his 2025 workload, with the TE2 competition described as a battle for scraps, not a threat to his role. That's a paraphrased finding, not a quote, and it's worth naming as such, the loudest confirmation of his role so far is roster math, not a coach's press conference.

The Buzz

The industry consensus has quietly buried him. FantasyPros' Michael Moore ranked Schultz TE20 in expert consensus as of May 29, 2026, calling him the top candidate among "TE2s with top-5 potential" specifically because touchdown scarcity, not target share, is what's kept him off the leaderboard; Moore notes the rookie Klein is "too raw for redraft leagues" and expects Schultz's volume to hold. Dynasty markets are even less interested: Dynasty Nerds has him at TE35, a "Roster Fringe" dynasty asset, reflecting his age-30 season and the position's usual cliff. Neither market is hyped. Nova's own +87 edge number says that apathy has drifted past where the actual role justifies.

Swing Factors

• Touchdown regression (+40 pts): 106 targets and 82 catches producing only 3 TDs is an outlier against his own 5-TD seasons on lower volume; positive regression alone could push him a full tier.
• Target-share durability (±30 pts): the open question is whether 2025's career-high workload was earned role growth or an injury-driven outlier elsewhere in the offense that reverts toward his 2024 floor of 53 catches.
• Stroud's turnover issues (-20 pts): seven giveaways in two playoff games raises real doubt about the passing offense's floor, and Schultz's points ride on Stroud staying upright and accurate.
• TE2 room crowding red-zone snaps (-15 pts): Moreau's blocking-first role and Jordan's/Klein's development curves could still nibble at 12-personnel goal-line work, precisely where touchdowns get scored.
• Coaching continuity (+10 pts): no third offensive coordinator in three years means the system that already fed him a career-high target total carries over unchanged.

If Everything Goes Right / If Everything Goes Wrong

If everything goes right: Caley's second year in the building leans further on Schultz as Stroud's outlet, the touchdown rate reverts toward his career norm, Stroud's turnover issues fade, and the target volume holds. He rides that combination to Nova's 90th-percentile track, roughly 229 points, comfortably a top-12 tight end. Nova prices the tier-1 season at 14%.

If everything goes wrong: the touchdown outage repeats even at 100-plus targets, the TE2 room eats into short-yardage work, and Stroud's turnover problems bleed into the passing game's overall efficiency. Schultz drifts toward Nova's 52-point floor, a weekly non-factor in most formats. The 58% weekly bust rate isn't a tail risk in this profile; it's closer to the baseline case Nova is already pricing in.

Nova's Edge

The gap worth naming is between raw usage and market price. Schultz just posted the single highest-target season of his career and turned it into one of his least efficient touchdown outputs, the same touchdown-scarcity problem FantasyPros flagged independently through a TE20 consensus rank rather than a distribution model. Where FantasyPros and Dynasty Nerds both effectively write him off, TE20 in redraft consensus, TE35/"Roster Fringe" in dynasty, Nova still slots him 100th overall in Tier 6 and shows a +87 rank edge versus its own market read, specifically because no live ADP exists to challenge yet. There's no DraftKings prop line on Schultz at this writing either, so a Vegas cross-check isn't available, a real gap in the data, flagged rather than papered over. What Nova is pricing instead is structural: a 106-target role with essentially zero market attention on it.

The Bottom Line

Treat Schultz as a late-round TE2/streamer, not a name-value pick, Nova's own -1.1 VORP says the median outcome is replacement level, and the 58% bust rate is real. But the target volume behind that median is a legitimate every-down role, and with no ADP yet fixing his price, drafting him around or slightly after FantasyPros' TE20 consensus costs you almost nothing for a real shot at touchdown regression. Grade it in January: a top-15 PPR finish means Nova's read on an underpriced 106-target role was correct; a repeat sub-5-touchdown season outside the top-24 means the 58% bust rate was the right read all along.