Analyze Hunter Henry's matchup for week 7
Henry’s three-week slide (5.7 PPR avg, 6 targets total) is scary, but Tennessee’s league-worst TE defense (8.06 FPPG, 0.33 TD/pg) keeps him in the low-end TE1 conversation for desperate managers.
Tennessee has bled production to tight ends all year, ranking 7th-most generous and allowing 0.33 TE touchdowns per game while their linebackers struggle with intermediate routes. New England will likely throw to stay in a track-meet with the surging Titans, giving Henry a pathway to 5-6 targets and red-zone work against a defense that hasn’t stopped the position since Week 1.
Elite 21-point eruption in Week 3 has been followed by three straight clunkers (5.7 PPR avg) and target counts of 3, 3, 3; snap share and red-zone usage are both trending down as the offense shifts toward a more balanced approach.
Hunter Henry’s 2025 season is a weekly coin-flip: when the Patriots remember he exists, he can win you a week (8-90-2 vs. Pittsburgh), but when they don’t he vanishes (3-27 vs. NO). The underlying usage is the red flag—his target share has cratered from 11 looks in that Week 3 explosion to just six total over the last two games, and his snap rate has dipped below 70% in back-to-back weeks. OC Alex Van Pelt has leaned heavier on 12-personnel, but Henry is splitting those reps with a blocking TE and losing red-zone priority to the emerging wideouts. Even so, tight end remains a wasteland: Henry’s 6.5-point projection slots him around TE16-18 in most formats, which means he’s technically a starter if your alternative is someone like Luke Schoonmaker or a banged-up Dalton Kincaid.
The matchup is the lifeline. Tennessee runs a lot of Cover-3 and man-under looks that leave their linebackers isolated on crossers and seams; they’ve already allowed five different tight ends to finish top-12 at the position this year. Henry still owns the 6'5" frame and sure hands that made him a red-zone monster in years past, and the Titans have allowed a TE touchdown in four of their last five games. If New England gets inside the 20 more than twice—something Vegas expects (implied total 24.5)—Henry’s probability of cashing a score jumps to roughly 35-40% based on historical red-zone share, which would single-handedly return TE1 value on a day when 5-6 catches might be enough for a top-eight finish.
Bottom line: you’re not starting Henry with confidence, you’re starting him because 1) the position is brutal, 2) the opponent is complicit, and 3) his ceiling is still 15-plus in any given week. Treat him as a volatile TE2 who needs a touchdown to pay off, keep a safer floor play (Tyler Warren, Taysom Hill) on speed dial if news trends worse, and accept that you’re chasing 7-60-1 rather than the 8-90-2 we saw in September. In 14-team or deeper leagues, that dice roll is absolutely worth it; in 10-teamers with shallow benches, you can probably find a steadier floor.