Eli Stowers

Nova has Eli Stowers 195th overall, Tier 6, a -56.2 VORP, and there's no market ADP to argue with yet, so this read stands alone. The 82-point season budget isn't even a real projection; it's a draft-capital prior, Nova's honest way of saying "second-round pick, TE3 on the depth chart, essentially zero signal to model from yet." Nova gives him an 8% shot at a tier-1 season (16% at tier-2-or-better) with outcomes ranging from a 4-point disaster to a 195-point ceiling. That's not a forecast. That's a placeholder for a rookie who's third in line behind two veterans who both just got paid to be ahead of him.

Where He's Expected to Land

The likely finish is TE20-TE56 across every format Nova tracks, a streaming afterthought in the median case, with almost no format sensitivity because tight end scoring rarely swings much on PPR rules.

Nova doesn't publish a divergence number here, there's no formal ADP yet to measure against, so there's nothing real to compare the model's rank to. Bye week is 10; early-season SOS (weeks 1-4) sits at 20.3 and playoff SOS (weeks 15-17) grades out average, per Nova's own read, neither is a real lever here given how far down the target tree Stowers currently sits.

A Rookie: The College Career, Not an NFL History

Stowers has zero NFL snaps, so his track record is entirely collegiate, and it's an unusual one. A high school quarterback at Guyer HS in Denton, Texas, he played QB at Texas A&M in 2021-2022 (five games, mostly backup reps), then transferred to New Mexico State in 2023 and split time at QB and tight end (35 catches, 366 yards, 2 TD). He landed at Vanderbilt for 2024-2025 as a full-time tight end and broke out: 49 catches for 638 yards (13.0 YPC) and 5 TD in 2024, then 62 catches for 769 yards (12.4 YPC) and 4 TD in 2025, a season that earned him the John Mackey Award (nation's top tight end), the William V. Campbell Trophy, unanimous All-American honors, and back-to-back first-team All-SEC nods. He was good enough to opt out of Vanderbilt's bowl game to protect his draft stock. At the combine he ran a 4.51 40, a 45.5" vertical and an 11'3" broad jump at 6'3", 239 pounds, pure workout-warrior numbers for the position. Philadelphia took him 54th overall, the second round, this April.

What Changed for Him This Offseason

Everything, in the sense that he's now an NFL rookie instead of a college All-American, but the on-field reality hasn't moved in his favor yet. Per RotoBaller (Patrick McGrath, July 4), Stowers suffered a leg injury at minicamp that limited his spring reps; PhillyVoice's Jimmy Kempski (July 3) confirmed he "was quiet during spring practices, and even seemed limited in practice due to an injury," wearing a sleeve on the leg throughout OTAs. Jeff Kerr of On SI (July 6) put it plainly: Stowers "did not have a good spring, as Dallas Goedert and Johnny Mundt were clearly ahead of him in terms of learning the offense."

What Changed Around Him

The bigger story is the room he walked into. Philadelphia traded A.J. Brown to New England this offseason, vacating Brown's team-leading 120 targets, a real opportunity pool, even if tight ends rarely inherit alpha-receiver looks. At tight end, Dallas Goedert took less money to return for a ninth season as the clear TE1 after a career-high 11 touchdowns in 2025 (60 catches, 591 yards), even as his per-game yardage (39.4/game) hit its worst mark since his rookie year. The Eagles also signed veteran blocker Johnny Mundt as the TE2. Per Kempski's PhillyVoice depth chart, the order is Goedert, then Mundt, then Stowers, with Grant Calcaterra, E.J. Jenkins and Stone Smartt behind him. New offensive play-calling under Sean Mannion is reportedly tight-end-friendly, per Kerr's citation of Mannion's history with Green Bay's Tucker Kraft and Luke Musgrave, a scheme note, not a target-share promise for a rookie third on the depth chart.

What They're Saying

The scouting-report consensus is athlete-first, blocker-second. Nick Sirianni, speaking on draft weekend (April 24-25) after the Eagles made the pick, said Stowers "can do things athletically that nobody else can," per PhillyVoice's July 3 recap. But Kempski also reports that Sirianni, GM Howie Roseman, and Stowers himself have all separately acknowledged he still needs development as an in-line blocker, the skill the Eagles need most from him. Kempski's own historical table is blunt: the average rookie season for a second-round tight end over recent draft classes is 28 catches, 267 yards, 2 touchdowns, and only Sam LaPorta and Pat Freiermuth of the last 16 topped 400 receiving yards as rookies. Kerr's July 6 framing, Mundt and Stowers "will likely interchange and split the snaps in the TE2 role", is the realistic range of outcomes, not a path to a workhorse role.

The Buzz

RotoBaller (McGrath, July 4) has Stowers as its TE37 for 2026, outside redraft relevance, but calls him "a wise dynasty investment with plenty of room for long-term growth." That's the shape of the fantasy conversation right now: dynasty buyers are patient and optimistic; redraft players are told to look elsewhere. Nova's median outcome (TE20-TE56, effectively streamer-or-worse) lines up with that industry view, there's no gap to exploit yet, which is itself useful information for a name this deep on the board.

Swing Factors

• Blocking reps (largest lever): every source agrees this is the swing skill. League-average blocking snaps by midseason would let his route-running already outstrip his experience level.
• Injury recovery (±moderate): the minicamp leg issue already cost him install-period reps behind two players who didn't miss any.
• Mannion's scheme (+modest): a tight-end-friendly system helps at the margin, but only once Stowers earns real snaps.
• Goedert's workload (±modest): Goedert is 31 and posted his worst per-game yardage since his rookie year; a step back opens the door faster than the depth chart suggests.

If Everything Goes Right / If Everything Goes Wrong

If everything goes right, the leg heals clean before Week 1, Stowers wins the jumbo-slot package outright over Mundt by midseason, and Mannion's scheme funnels him the seam and slot work that made Tucker Kraft a Green Bay weapon. That's Nova's 90th-percentile tail: a 195-point ceiling, a TE1-caliber second half, and the tier-1 season the model prices at 8% today.

If everything goes wrong, the blocking limitations keep him glued to obvious passing downs, Goedert holds his job by default, and Stowers spends his rookie year exactly where the historical second-round-TE table says he should: sub-300-yard, streaming-irrelevant. That's the 4-point floor of Nova's range, a non-event more than a bust, and the far more probable outcome given a Year 1 sample of essentially zero NFL usage.

Nova's Edge

There's nothing to diverge from yet, no ADP, no consensus finish, just an internal draft-capital placeholder. That absence is the edge: every other outlet talking about Stowers right now is projecting off vibes, combine testing, and a strong college resume, while Nova is honest that an 82-point budget is a prior, not a forecast, until real target-share data exists. The one number worth watching is Nova's 8% tier-1 shot, low, but non-zero, and tied directly to the athletic profile that makes this profile interesting at all.

The Bottom Line

Stowers is a stash, not a start, a redraft afterthought (TE37 per industry consensus, TE20-56 per Nova) and a legitimate but patient dynasty buy given the Mackey Award pedigree and elite combine testing. Don't spend a 2026 redraft pick on the hope that a rookie blocking liability leapfrogs two well-compensated veterans; do watch camp reports for blocking-snap counts, because that's the single stat that will move this profile more than anything else this summer. If Stowers is running real two-tight-end sets by Week 6 with Goedert, that's the signal his ceiling is starting to look real.