No tight end has won the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year award since Mike Ditka did it in 1961. It has basically never happened in modern football. Not even Kyle Pitts’ 1,000-yard season in 2021 was enough for a tight end to take home the trophy.

Given that, it’s not surprising that tight end Dalton Kincaid, the Buffalo Bills' first-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, has +4000 odds to win the award in 2023, per the NFL Rookie of the Year odds at FanDuel Sportsbook.

He's a long shot, but what would Kincaid need to do to take home the title? Let's check it out.

Offensive Rookie of the Year Landscape

Pitts’ rookie season with the Atlanta Falcons produced the most receiving yards for a first-year tight end since Ditka’s award-winning rookie campaign more than 60 years ago. Pitts finished that 2021 season with 68 catches for 1,026 yards and 1 touchdown, leading the Falcons in both receiving yards and receptions.

Pitts ultimately ceded the Offensive Rookie of the Year (OROY) to Ja'Marr Chase, whose excellent campaign needed no caveats or context – Chase amassed 81 catches for 1,455 yards and 13 touchdowns. As impressive as Pitts’ rookie season was, Chase’s was better. Not a single voter put Pitts’ name on their ballot, with Mac Jones, Creed Humphrey and Rashawn Slater being the others to get votes.

Quarterbacks have won this award twice in the previous four seasons, and Kincaid will have to contend with at least three quarterbacks (as it stands right now), with each of Bryce Young (+430), C.J. Stroud (+700), and Anthony Richardson (+700) sitting near the top of the list of contenders.

So without even considering the impressive running backs in the 2023 class, we already need both Kincaid to essentially outproduce his fellow pass-catchers and for the quarterbacks in the class to have middling seasons. If we include those running backs – led by Bijan Robinson (+300) and Jahmyr Gibbs (+900) – there are 15 players with better odds than Kincaid's to win the OROY award this season.

If that seems like a lot, that’s because it is. Many things would have to break right for Kincaid to win the award, which is why he has +4000 odds.

Does Kincaid Stand a Chance?

But if he did win the award, what would need to happen? Let’s reverse-engineer a scenario:

Kincaid leads all rookies in receptions, yards, and touchdowns as Buffalo takes down the AFC East.

Is that possible? Maybe.

Kincaid landed with a really good quarterback, which certainly doesn't hurt things.

Josh Allen has thrown for at least 4,000 yards and 45 touchdowns in each of his last three seasons. Among individual players, Stefon Diggs has accounted for the largest share of those yards and touchdowns, amassing 4,189 yards and 29 touchdowns in that time. But the pass-catchers behind Diggs have been inconsistent, at best, and their lack of dependability was a driving force in the team’s decision to trade up to select Kincaid in the first round this year.

Bills general manager Brandon Beane said the team drafted Kincaid to “solve the middle of the field," which could translate to early production from the tight end. As Beane outlined in that interview, the team really tried to generate production out of the slot in 2022. They gave snaps to Jamison Crowder, Isaiah McKenzie, Khalil Shakir, and Cole Beasley over the course of the season, but that group produced just 662 total receiving yards out of the Bills’ 4,291 on the season.

Tight end Dawson Knox ran 55.1% of his routes from the slot last year but didn't put up big numbers. Allen threw three interceptions when targeting Knox in 2023, and Knox's 36.4% contested catch rate isn't a standout mark. While Knox was heavily utilized in the red zone in 2021, he wasn't much of a factor there last season, getting only nine red-zone targets for the year.

Something that could be a positive for Kinkaid is that the Bills kept Knox in to block on only 7.3% of his snaps on passing downs. Kincaid will need to run a lot of routes to beat out the other pass-catchers from the 2023 draft class, and the Bills' offense seems to have that kind of role already carved out for a tight end. If Kincaid can beat out Knox for that gig, the rookie could become a fully integrated member of one of the most prolific offenses in the league.

Kincaid thrived as a pass-catcher at Utah, with the Utes deploying him as basically a slot receiver. He stayed back as a blocker on just 17 total passing snaps in 2022 and ran a route on 91.8% of Utah’s drop backs while operating out of the slot on 55.1% of his routes. His 2.52 yards per route run from the slot ranked first among all qualified tight ends in college football last year, and it actually ranked 19th when you include wide receivers.

We’ve heard coaches and general managers say things like “he’ll play like a slot receiver for us” about running backs and tight ends so often that it has become a cliche. But it might actually be true for Kincaid.

And if that is true for Kincaid, he’ll have a shot to put up really good numbers in his rookie season.

Perhaps the big blemish in Pitts’ rookie-year effort was his inability to find the end zone. His single touchdown in 2021 paled in comparison to Chase’s 13, but Pitts' lack of production in that department could in part be blamed on the Falcons’ offense scoring the seventh-fewest points in the league that year.

Kincaid is unlikely to have that issue in the Bills’ high-octane offense, which has finished 3rd and 4th in points scored over the last two seasons. Plus, the Bills’ offense skewed toward the passing game in the red zone last year; Allen’s 24 red-zone touchdowns tied for the second-most among all passers in 2022.

So, Kincaid, an impressive receiver at the collegiate level, has an opportunity to establish himself as the go-to slot pass-catcher on a team that emphasizes the pass and has consistently produced top-scoring offenses in recent seasons. That looks like a pretty good recipe for success.

However, even if that near-ideal setup comes to fruition, Kincaid will still have a lot to do if he wants to be in serious consideration to win the OROY award for the 2023 season. He’ll need to put up elite numbers and have a couple of other things go his way -- namely for the rookie signal-callers to underwhelm -- but Kincaid is plenty capable of capitalizing on his good landing spot.

The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author’s advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.