If your favorite tight end is not named Rob Gronkowski, then they have not scored more touchdowns than Kyle Rudolph's 20 over the last three years.
Rudolph and Gronk are also the only two tight ends to score at least 7 touchdowns twice in that stretch, and there is is also nobody other than Rudolph (Gronk included), that has scored at least 5 in each of the three seasons.
Even in exclusive company like that, it can be dangerous to chase raw touchdown numbers, as we touched on in the intro. For Rudolph, there's plenty of data backing up that this domination hasn't been a fluke though.
In 2017, he accounted for 26.2% of the red zone targets for the Minnesota Vikings -- the third-highest market share of any tight end that season. Looking back further, we see that huge workload repeated:
| Year | Targets | Touchdowns | Target% |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 16 | 6 | 26.2% |
| 2016 | 25 | 6 | 32.9% |
| 2015 | 11 | 3 | 25.0% |
| Total | 52 | 15 | 28.8% |
Jimmy Graham is the only tight end to see more red zone targets than Rudolph over the last three years, leaving little surprise that Rudolph is hanging around the top of the touchdown rankings.
The dominant market share is particularly interesting for Rudolph, because that has come with three different starting quarterbacks in Teddy Bridgewater, Sam Bradford and Case Keenum. Yes, the Vikings have a new offensive coordinator, which could shake up their play-calling. But the fact that Rudolph's dominance has already spanned two offensive coordinators as well as three quarterbacks means that we are unlikely to see his role diminish this year.
As far as efficiency goes, Rudolph's 28.8% touchdown rate inside the 20 stacks up right around the 26.7% average for all players with 40-plus red zone targets since 2015.
Over small-ish samples like this, I'm really only looking at efficiency at the extreme ends, where someone may either be dealing with huge amounts of variance or may be especially good or bad at what they're doing. Rudolph stacking up in the middle of the pack means that there's nothing to be worried about on the efficiency front, and that we can go on chasing that big red zone volume with little concern.