Noah Fant: Career Stats, Bio, and 2026 New Orleans Saints Role

Noah Fant: Eight Seasons, Four Teams, and Still Playing His Best Football Late

From Omaha to the First Round

Omaha South High School doesn’t produce many top-20 NFL Draft picks. Noah Fant is one of them. Born November 20, 1997, Fant arrived at the University of Iowa in 2016 as a multi-sport athlete – track and basketball had shaped his movement before football defined his career – and he left three years later as the most productive tight end in Hawkeyes program history by touchdowns. In 36 games at Iowa, he caught 78 passes for 1,083 yards and 19 touchdowns, setting the school record for career receiving touchdowns at the position. His junior season in 2018 was the one that sealed the first-round conversation: he led every FBS tight end with seven touchdown receptions and earned first-team All-Big Ten honors. He declared for the draft in November of that year.

The Denver Broncos selected him 20th overall in the 2019 NFL Draft – a pick they acquired by trading down from 10th. Trading down and still landing Fant tells you something about how the board fell. Tight ends drafted that high carry specific expectations: not just receiving numbers, but the kind of mismatch production that moves the chains on third down and stresses linebackers all game. Fant had the physical profile to back it up. At 6-foot-4 and 249 pounds, he ran a 4.50 40-yard dash at the combine. That combination – a wide receiver’s speed in a tight end’s body – is why Denver moved up the board to get him even while moving down.

Three Years in Denver: The Foundation, and Its Ceiling

His rookie year was genuinely encouraging. Forty receptions, 562 yards, three touchdowns – enough to earn PFWA All-Rookie Team honors. The 75-yard touchdown against Cleveland in Week 9 was the kind of play that makes scouts feel vindicated: Fant beat a linebacker off the line, caught the ball in stride, and simply ran away. That same game he finished with 115 yards on three catches. A week in December against Houston: four catches, 113 yards, another score. The tools were obvious.

2020 was his best Denver season. Sixty-two receptions, 673 yards, three touchdowns – career highs at the time and the kind of production that, in a stronger offense, might have drawn Pro Bowl attention. He was working with Drew Lock at quarterback, which is another way of saying he was often open on plays that didn’t end well. The Broncos ranked 27th in passing offense that year. Fant’s numbers came despite that, not because of favorable conditions.

2021 added a wrinkle that would define the rest of his time in Denver: he broke a bone in his hand midseason and missed three games. He still finished with 68 catches for 670 yards, his highest reception total. But Teddy Bridgewater wasn’t going to push the ball downfield consistently, and the Broncos were quietly building toward a trade that would reshape Fant’s career entirely. He had posted back-to-back 600-yard seasons. No one in Denver seemed to notice.

The Russell Wilson Trade Sends Fant to Seattle

March 2022. Denver sent Russell Wilson to Seattle and got back, among other assets, Noah Fant, Drew Lock, and three draft picks. Fant was the centerpiece on Seattle’s side of the deal, which created an immediate expectation problem: he arrived in a passing game that already had DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett at the top of the target hierarchy. Geno Smith won the quarterback job. Fant caught 50 passes for 486 yards and four touchdowns in 2022 – solid, not spectacular, and heavily dependent on what Metcalf and Lockett left behind.

The Seahawks picked up his fifth-year option in April 2022, then re-signed him to a two-year, $21 million deal ahead of 2023 while Will Dissly and Colby Parkinson both departed. On paper that cleared Fant’s path to more targets. In practice, Seattle drafted Jaxon Smith-Njigba 20th overall that spring, adding yet another name above Fant in the pecking order. He caught 36 passes for 414 yards in 2023 with no touchdowns – the drought running to 32 consecutive games without a score before he finally found the end zone in Week 18 against a Rams team that was resting starters. His 2024 season followed nearly the same script: 48 receptions, 500 yards, one touchdown in 14 games.

What the raw numbers miss is the snap count story. Fant rarely exceeded 65 percent of offensive snaps across his three Seattle seasons. He was on the field, available, and frequently passed over. The Seahawks drafted Elijah Arroyo 50th overall in April 2025 and released Fant the following July, just before training camp.

One Year in Cincinnati, and Then Another Move

He signed a one-year, $2.75 million deal with the Bengals in July 2025. Cincinnati had Joe Burrow, which made the contract interesting regardless of the dollar amount – Fant had never played for a quarterback of Burrow’s caliber, and the Bengals offense, when healthy, was one of the more efficient in the league. The problem was Mike Gesicki, who had established himself as Cincinnati’s clear TE1. Fant worked primarily as an early-down run-support presence and red zone depth piece.

He caught 34 passes for 288 yards and three touchdowns across 15 games. All three scores came before Week 10. From November onward he had two or fewer targets in four consecutive games. An ankle injury in Week 15 against Baltimore cost him the Week 16 game against Miami entirely, and when he returned for Week 17 he caught one pass for five yards – then fumbled it, his third fumble returned for a touchdown that season. That’s a rough way to close a contract year.

The career totals heading into 2026 free agency: 334 receptions, 3,593 yards, 18 touchdowns in 110 games across seven seasons. He had posted at least 30 receptions in every single year since entering the league – one of only eight active tight ends to manage that streak.

New Orleans Signs Fant on a Two-Year Deal

The Saints announced the signing in March 2026, terms reported as a two-year contract. EVP and GM Mickey Loomis described Fant as bringing “a rare combination of size, speed and strength” to the offense, which is the kind of thing front offices say at signings and occasionally mean. In this case the athletic profile backs it up – at 28 years old, Fant still moves like the track athlete he once was. The concern isn’t whether he can play. It’s how many snaps he’ll actually get.

Juwan Johnson had the best season of his career in 2025: 77 receptions, 889 yards, three touchdowns, 102 targets – second on the Saints behind Chris Olave. Johnson is signed to a three-year extension. Taysom Hill remains on the roster in his hybrid capacity. Fant is the third option at tight end in a passing game that also needs to feed Olave and accommodate second-year quarterback Tyler Shough’s development. The math on Fant’s targets is fairly clear: low floor, small ceiling, meaningful only if Johnson misses time.

What the Saints are buying is depth and professionalism. Eight NFL seasons. At least 30 catches every year. A player who has blocked on the edge, run seam routes, and survived four different offensive systems without becoming a distraction. That’s worth $X million over two years when you’re building around a young quarterback who needs reliability around him.

What Kind of Player He Actually Is

The scouting report that SportsForecaster published has held up across eight years: “a prototypical move tight end” with “the hands, speed and athletic gifts to become a feature in the passing game.” The background in track and basketball shows in specific ways – his release off the line is quick for someone his size, and his stride covers ground efficiently rather than just powerfully. He’s not a bruising in-line blocker who demands attention in the run game. That’s part of why Denver, Seattle, and Cincinnati never quite built an offense around him.

His best games have almost always come on seam routes and intermediate crosses against linebackers. The 75-yard touchdown against Cleveland in 2019. The 32-yard catch against the Jaguars in Cincinnati in 2025. Those plays don’t require elaborate scheming – they require a mismatch, a quarterback with the confidence to throw to the second level, and a tight end fast enough to create separation after the catch. Fant checks all three. The frustrating part of his career is that he’s had maybe three seasons where the quarterback consistently threw those passes.

The red zone is where the picture gets complicated. He has 18 career touchdown receptions across 110 games – less than one every six games. For a 6-foot-4 target with that combination of size and speed, that number should be higher. He went 32 games without a score at one point. His lack of consistent involvement near the goal line has been the persistent ceiling on his production, and no coaching staff has consistently solved it.

Career Statistics by Season

Year-by-year, here’s the full picture:

The consistency across the middle of that table is real – he never dropped below 36 catches in a season, never posted fewer than 414 receiving yards. That’s a reliable floor. But the yards-per-reception number tells its own story: his 14.1 average as a rookie, when he was being used as a downfield weapon, has never returned. By Cincinnati it was down to 8.5. He became a shorter-range target over time, which either reflects the offenses he was in or a gradual shift in how defenses schemed against him. Probably both.

Fantasy Football Value in 2026

Standard 12-team league: leave him on the wire unless Juwan Johnson gets hurt. That’s not a knock on Fant’s ability – it’s just the depth chart. Johnson had 102 targets in 2025 in an offense that was throwing to maybe four or five consistent options. Fant might see 30 to 40 targets in a full season if Johnson stays healthy. That’s a TE2 ceiling in a good week and nothing in a bad one.

Two-TE formats and deep leagues change the math a little. He’ll play a meaningful number of snaps, he’s a reliable short-yardage option, and the Saints offense is trending up under Shough. If Johnson misses two or three games, Fant becomes a genuine starter-grade option for those weeks. CBS Sports puts it plainly: “Anything more than 2-to-3 targets per game likely would depend on Johnson missing time.” That’s about right.

Dynasty managers shouldn’t be adding Fant at this stage of his career unless they’re extremely thin at tight end. He’s 28 years old, in the last realistic contract of his career, and blocked by a younger player on his own roster. His upside for the next two years is as a reliable role player – not a breakout candidate.

Quick Facts

Current team: New Orleans Saints (signed March 2026, two-year deal). Position: Tight end, number 87. Age: 28 (born November 20, 1997, Omaha, Nebraska). Size: 6-foot-4, 249 pounds. College: University of Iowa, 2016–2018. Draft: First round, 20th overall, 2019 NFL Draft, Denver Broncos. Career: Broncos (2019–2021), Seahawks (2022–2024), Bengals (2025), Saints (2026–present). Through 2025: 334 receptions, 3,593 yards, 18 touchdowns in 110 games.

One detail that doesn’t show up in any of those numbers: Fant has started 90 of 110 career games. For a player who has never been the unambiguous TE1 on any of his teams, that’s a durability record worth noting. He’s missed three games to injury in eight years. The Saints knew what they were signing – a veteran with a track record of availability, a still-useful athletic profile, and a ceiling that depends almost entirely on what happens to the player in front of him on the depth chart.