What the expected-points record, the coverage data and the market say he is worth at 158.6 overall.
Dalton Schultz scored 188.6 fantasy points in 2025. The volume he earned was worth 203.4. That gap of 14.8 points is the single most important thing to understand before drafting him at 158.6 overall.
Rather than reading a season average, it is worth finding the point the season actually turned. Our shift detector flags in-season changes large enough to clear a statistical threshold, then asks what moved around them.
The largest single move was Week 16: target share went down from 20 to 14.8, a 25.9% change, at 3.07 standard deviations. The cause was structural — the offense around him got worse at moving the ball. He also missed Week 6.
Year over year the engine classifies 2025 as a breakout that leaned on touchdown luck. That is the label to carry into the projection, because it separates a player who lost snaps from one who kept them and converted worse.
He finished 9.93 points per game on 112 targets — a 42.1% jump on his 2024 rate with HOU. Every part of that is real and none of it is in dispute.
What is worth separating is how much of it he earned. Expected points strip out the finishing and ask a narrower question: given the targets he drew, where they came from on the field, and how far downfield they traveled, what was that usage worth? For 2025 the answer was 203.4 points — 10.7 per game. He scored 14.8 FEWER than that, a 7.3% shortfall.
The expected line underneath the season was 80.8 catches for 840 yards and 6.4 touchdowns — and he came in under it.
Against the expected line, he finished 87 catches, 836 receiving yards, 3 touchdowns — against 80.8, 840, 6.4 expected.
76% of the entire shortfall came from touchdowns alone. He hit 47% of his expected touchdowns, against 108% of his expected catches and 100% of his expected receiving yards.
That matters because touchdowns are the least repeatable part of a scoring line. Volume and yards reflect a role; touchdowns reflect a role plus a quarterback putting the ball where it can be caught in a nine-yard window. A player who holds his catches and yards while losing five touchdowns has not lost his job — he has lost the coin flips.
Not one of his 17 games cleared 25 points. His best was 21.6 in Week 15. He wins with volume rather than with weeks that swing a matchup.
A steady floor has its own value in a lineup that needs one. 8 games came in under 10 points, including Week 1 against LA (5.8) and Week 2 against TB (5.9).
The three largest overshoots — Week 16 (+5.4), Week 15 (+5.3), Week 18 (+4) — are the same games. The spikes were not extra volume. They were finishing.
1 of his 6 seasons ran hot: 2021 (+14.9%). 1 came in below what the usage justified: 2024 (-19.3%). Across all 6 he has scored 28 points fewer than his usage was worth.
The reflexive read is regression. Finishing above expectation is unstable, and a player who does it repeatedly is usually one whose luck has not run out yet.
But an expected-points model has a specific blind spot, and it is worth naming: it converts usage at league-average rates. A target twenty yards downfield is worth what the average receiver does with a target twenty yards downfield. If a player is reliably better than average at winning a particular kind of target, he will beat the model every single year, and calling that luck is just mislabelling a skill.
So the question is not whether he beat the number. It is whether there is a mechanism.
Across 411 targets and four seasons, he has been a fundamentally different receiver depending on what the defense played. Against man he has caught 55.1% for 6.21 yards per target and 0.077 expected points added per target. Against zone: 74.8%, 7.38 yards, 0.273 EPA.
That is a gap of -0.196 EPA per target on a sample of 136 man targets against 274 zone. The catch rate goes the other way — he catches more against zone — which is exactly what you would expect from a receiver whose value is in winning contested downfield throws rather than in finding soft spots underneath.
The shell detail sharpens it. Cover 1, single-high man is the look he has faced most: 101 targets, 6.33 yards per target, 0.042 EPA. His best is 2-Man at 0.483 on 19 targets.
The weakness is specific. Against Cover 0, all-out pressure with no safety help he has caught 50% for 3.69 yards a target and -0.187 EPA across 16 looks — a gap of 0.7 expected points a target between his best coverage and his worst.
This does not prove the overshoot repeats. It does mean the pattern has a stated cause rather than being a coin that keeps landing heads.
Across 60 graded prop lines, he has gone over 56.7% of the time. On receiving yards specifically the number is 56.7% across 30 lines, beating the posted number by an average of 17.5%.
That is close enough to a coin flip that the market has him fairly priced on his primary market. There is no edge to claim in either direction.
Touchdowns are the control. His anytime-TD market implied a 26.4% rate and he converted at 16.1% — a gap of -10.3 points, which is worth noting.
Houston returns 5 of 6 continuity slots — qb1, wr1, te1, hc, oc — with CJ Stroud at quarterback, Demeco Ryans as head coach and Nick Caley calling it. The offense projects to 34.02 pass attempts a game at high confidence.
The pie is stable. His slice is the question. Our share model has him at 14% against the 17% he ran, with a range of 12.7% to 16.9%. The biggest competing claim on that pie is Nico Collins at 21.3%, 7.3 points ahead of him.
That number is built from 25 comparable players — same age band, same prior share, same team, same coordinator — not from a depth chart. The closest three went Evan Engram 17.2% to 23.5%, Dalton Kincaid 17.7% to 18.6%, Tyler Higbee 18.1% to 13.2%. Two held, one did not.
Across 4,488 player-seasons we swept every stat for whether it predicts NEXT year's points, and kept only the ones that replicated in all five. target share (r 0.247), WOPR (r 0.218), air-yards share (r 0.142) carry. receiving EPA per game (r -0.127) and yards per target (r -0.114) and week-to-week volatility (r -0.075) run negative — a player who was hyper-efficient on low volume tends to come back down, so a gaudy per-touch number is a warning rather than a selling point.
So the figures worth weighing for him: a 17.9% target share, 14.1% of the air yards, a WOPR of 0.37, a 71.1% snap share. He averaged 3.83 yards of separation, with -0.15 YAC over expected.
Vegas sets an implied total for every team every week, and some offenses beat theirs systematically. Over 107 games, HOU has come in +0.33 points against its own implied total, clearing it in 45% of weeks.
That is close to neutral — the offense performs about where the market expects, so there is no environment bonus or penalty to apply to him either way.
One related finding worth carrying: across 1,280 cases we measured what happens after a team's implied total slides, and the correlation is -0.37 — negative, meaning the market over-corrects. A falling team total is more often a buying window than a warning.
Our board has him at 111.3 points, 7.3 per game across 15.2 expected games — 49 catches, 467 yards, 2.6 touchdowns. That is TE5, 163 overall, and -43 points of value over a replacement starter.
It is a step down from 2025, and the reason is volume rather than efficiency. The projection assumes he keeps doing what he does on slightly fewer looks.
The books do not agree on him. Dalton Schultz is a board split: Yahoo takes him ~129, Sleeper lets him slide to ~171 (41.7-pick gap). That 41.7-pick gap between Yahoo and Sleeper is the practical thing to act on: in a Sleeper-priced room he is available later than his consensus number suggests.
He goes at 158.6 overall on consensus, and the books are far apart — 41.7 picks between cheapest and priciest, which is a real value window. He is latest on sleeper and earliest on yahoo: sleeper 170.5, espn 167.6, yahoo 128.8, underdog 168.5, cbs 167.3.
He goes at 158.6 and our board has him 163. That is 4.4 picks of premium on a TE5 projection — the room is paying ahead of where the numbers put him. That does not make him a bad player; it makes this a bad price.
The case for: a 60% boom rate.
The case against: a floor of 6.2 points per game, which is the outcome you are underwriting if the role moves.
The call: let the room have him at that price, and be glad to take him if he falls.
Ask the Coach about Dalton Schultz Every number in this piece, plus your league's roster and scoring, in one answer.Expected points are computed from realized usage — targets, air yards and field position — against league-average conversion, not from projections. Prop records cover 60 graded lines. Projections are anchored to consensus with our engine applied as a capped tilt; the raw engine figure is stated where it differs. Nothing here is betting advice.