tight ends making comeback

[rangerous]

from today's wall street journal.  i'm not sure if nfl teams really ignored the position.  there have been quite a few really good tight ends over the years like gonzales, winslow, gronkowski, bavarro, shuler.  even the jets tried to get blue chippers in kyle brady and then with dustin keller.  i remember a few years back when the bellichicken used his first 3 draft picks on the position.  if anything the position has been unsung because they don't catch a ton of passes and most of the ones who can block seem to trip over their feet when catching or have stone hands.

NFL Teams Ignored Them. Now They’ll Decide the Super Bowl.

Kansas City’s Travis Kelce and San Francisco’s George Kittle are the game’s two best tight ends. They brought their teams to the Super Bowl after every other team passed on them.

By 

Andrew Beaton

Jan. 31, 2020 7:00 am ET

MIAMI—At some point during the Super Bowl, two enormous men will barrel down the field at astonishing speed, striking fear into anyone in their path.

The San Francisco 49ers have George Kittle. The Kansas City Chiefs have Travis Kelce. They’re the NFL’s two best tight ends, and it isn’t a coincidence that their teams were the two to reach this Super Bowl. They’re seemingly unguardable weapons who defy human physiology. People so large shouldn’t be so fast, and they certainly shouldn’t have feet graceful enough to be ballerinas with hands nimble enough to be pianists.

These types of players are even rarer than they are valuable. The New England Patriots built an entire offense around Rob Gronkowski because he had the unusual ability to seamlessly morph from an unstoppable pass catcher to a helmeted wrecking ball as a blocker. Kittle and Kelce are the heirs to the now-retired Gronkowski’s throne: superstar tight ends whom defenses can spend weeks trying to figure out, only to realize the task may be impossible.

But there’s something even more curious about Kittle and Kelce than the fact that they may determine who wins this year’s Super Bowl. Every team in the NFL could have George Kittle or Travis Kelce. Kelce was a third-rounder in 2013, with four getting selected before him. Kittle was a fifth-round pick in the 2017 draft, when eight tight ends were taken ahead of him.

The years these players were drafted is even more telling: 2013 was Andy Reid’s first year coaching the Chiefs. Kyle Shanahan took over the 49ers in 2017.

Which means these two teams immediately accomplished something that coaches say is one of the most maddening tasks in football: correctly identifying which players will evolve into these game-changing monsters known as elite tight ends.

There is a litany of reasons for this. Tight ends rarely have played the position all the way through high school and college because the best athletes are often funneled elsewhere. Kelce, for example, played quarterback in high school.

And while the college and pro games have stylistically merged closer than ever in recent years, one of the remaining chasms is how they utilize tight ends, leaving teams to make haphazard guesses about how players’ abilities will translate. The Chiefs and 49ers are here because they aced that task.

“This isn’t a science,” says Kansas City tight ends coach Tom Melvin. “You can’t measure everything.”

What you can begin to measure is just how valuable these players are because of their capacities to affect the passing and running games without leaving the field.

Kelce was the NFL’s All-Pro tight end in 2016 and 2018. Over the last four years, he’s one of five players—including wide receivers—with at least 4,500 receiving yards, and no tight end is within even 1,000 yards of him. He’s closer to a grenade that can wreck the middle of opposing defenses than he is to a simple safety net for Patrick Mahomes.

Kittle was the NFL’s All-Pro tight end this year because of his unmatched ability to steamroll opposing defenders in two distinct ways. He’s a devastating blocker who opens up the giant holes for the 49ers’ aggressive running game. And he’s a feared runner himself: he led all wide receivers and tight ends with 599 yards after the catch this season, and that’s despite missing two games with an injury.

Kittle’s most epic display of this came with the 49ers down 46-45 to the New Orleans Saints with less than a minute left in their December showdown. He caught a pass, broke a tackle and carried a defender more than 20 yards down the field before three Saints managed to pull him down. The 39-yard reception put the 49ers in range for the game-winning field goal. San Francisco won 48-46 because tackling Kittle is so hard.

It took some foresight for the 49ers to see this in Kittle. As a senior at Iowa, he had only 314 receiving yards in nine games. Only 11% of the team’s passes went to him. “He does have a unique skill-set,” says Jon Embree, the 49ers tight ends and assistant head coach. “It’s really unorthodox sometimes on tape.”

It isn’t that NFL teams don’t value tight ends. It’s more that they’ve found identifying the best ones to be utterly perplexing. Since 2013, 23 tight ends have gone in the first two rounds of the draft. Of those 23, only three have even made a Pro Bowl.

The Baltimore Ravens cared about finding a tight end so much they took Hayden Hurst with the 24th pick of the 2018 draft—eight picks before they selected Lamar Jackson. They also quickly found out how confounding the position can be because then they took another tight end in the third round, Mark Andrews, who has turned out to be even better than Hurst and made this year’s Pro Bowl.

When NFL coaches scratch their head over this, they point their fingers at how the best colleges utilize—or don’t utilize—the position. In some college offenses, the tight end is an afterthought. Both the Chiefs and 49ers tight ends coaches lamented how collegiate tight ends hardly ever play from a traditional “3-point” stance—when someone starts the play with his hand on the ground—which is just one sign of the steep learning curve these players face.

These factors, combined with the blend of strength and athleticism it takes to be elite at the position, produce tight ends from surprising backgrounds. A number of top ones in recent years, such as Antonio Gates and Jimmy Graham, converted from being collegiate basketball players. And because not every college tends to value the tight end position, it has become an unlikely export of a group of brainiac schools: of the 22 Ivy League players who began this NFL season with teams, eight played tight end—more than any other position.

And when teams can solve this riddle like Kansas City and San Francisco have, it’s hellish for whoever they play. Former star defensive back DeAngelo Hall says the problem that Kelce and Kittle present is straightforward: They’re too fast for linebackers to cover but too big for defensive backs.

“It’s just a matchup nightmare,” Hall said. “You saw New England do it for years and years,”

The decisive roles Kelce or Kittle could have in this Super Bowl was made clear by New England in last year’s Super Bowl. The Rams and Patriots were tied 3-3 in the fourth quarter. Then Tom Brady hit Rob Gronkowski for an 18-yard gain. A few plays later, Brady connected with Gronkowski again for 29 yards. The following play was the game’s only touchdown.

The team with the best tight end won the Super Bowl.

[Jetster]

Kittle.....4th round....yea, but Shanahans a genius....thank Lynch. 

49ers added Samuels, Bosa too. Good Oline, very good Dline...oh...surprise, surprise, Kyle Sahnahan looks pretty damn good now instead of 4-12 & getting Bosa RIGHT B4 the more needy Jets. 

[rangerous]

5 minutes ago, Jetster said:

Kittle.....4th round....yea, but Shanahans a genius....thank Lynch. 

49ers added Samuels, Bosa too. Good Oline, very good Dline...oh...surprise, surprise, Kyle Sahnahan looks pretty damn good now instead of 4-12 & getting Bosa RIGHT B4 the more needy Jets. 

no doubt shanahan is the flavor of the month.  without the players he goes nowhere.  we'll see if these boy wonder like him and mcvay have lasting power.

[BurnleyJet]

Gronk says Hi they never went away.

How the hell did Kittle not get drafted sooner?

[Philc1]

And the jets have their own good young TE if he can actually stay healthy

[Barry McCockinner]

I must have missed the part where TE's were being ignored by the NFL. 

[Jet Nut]

4 minutes ago, BurnleyJet said:

Gronk says Hi they never went away.

How the hell did Kittle not get drafted sooner?

Was just going to say this.  

The league has had a long history of good offensive teams who had or have top TEs.  Gronk and Hernandez were deadly.  Especially Hernandez.  ?

[NYJ37/12]

6 minutes ago, BurnleyJet said:

Gronk says Hi they never went away.

How the hell did Kittle not get drafted sooner?

Agreed. Jets were running three TE sets including the H back when Parcells was here. Pats have been doing this for years, Packers, Cowboys, ect....

[Philc1]

2 minutes ago, Barry McCockinner said:

I must have missed the part where TE's were being ignored by the NFL. 

I think the author thinks it’s still the 90’s

[Warfish]

Tight Ends never went away.  

[Adoni Beast]

11 minutes ago, rangerous said:

no doubt shanahan is the flavor of the month.  without the players he goes nowhere.  we'll see if these boy wonder like him and mcvay have lasting power.

This goes for just about every coach in the NFL. Even Beli had the best QB ever.

[New York Mick]

I still prefer ghetto booties.

[Barry McCockinner]

8 minutes ago, Adoni Beast said:

This goes for just about every coach in the NFL. Even Beli had the best QB ever.

Nah.

[Adoni Beast]

Just now, Barry McCockinner said:

Nah.

I like that. Lol

[nycdan]

57 minutes ago, BurnleyJet said:

Gronk says Hi they never went away.

How the hell did Kittle not get drafted sooner?

OJ Howard, David Njoku, Evan Engram to name a few.  There were a lot of supposedly good TEs in that draft.  Kittle wasn't really even on the radar for top-5 at the position.  PFF was the only place that I think had him ranked there: https://www.pff.com/news/draft-ranking-the-top-10-te-draft-prospects

He's just one of those guys who plays better in the NFL than he did in college.  We took Leggett 4 picks after Kittle was drafted.  But the Broncos took Jake Butt, also a TE, with the pick right before him.  That's gotta leave a little mark.

[Apache 51]

Eagles been using TE's for years.

[rangerous]

1 hour ago, Adoni Beast said:

This goes for just about every coach in the NFL. Even Beli had the best QB ever.

yep.  it was more a reply to the other poster.  shanahan and mcvay are these supposed wunderkinds who can conquer all when in truth they both fell into teams that had a good deal of talent to work with.  this doesn't mean they're bad coaches just that even vince friggin lombardi couldn't win with some of the teams out there.

[Creepy Lurker]

Darnold needs more TE options. He seems to like them and made both Herndon and Griffin look great the last 2 years. 

[themeangreenkillingmachine]

Thank goodness Mac knew to draft Chad Hansen 10 picks before Kittle. 

[Jet Nut]

21 minutes ago, Creepy Lurker said:

Darnold needs more TE options. He seems to like them and made both Herndon and Griffin look great the last 2 years. 

5 lineman and 5 TEs sounds workable

[HawkeyeJet]

1 hour ago, nycdan said:

OJ Howard, David Njoku, Evan Engram to name a few.  There were a lot of supposedly good TEs in that draft.  Kittle wasn't really even on the radar for top-5 at the position.  PFF was the only place that I think had him ranked there: https://www.pff.com/news/draft-ranking-the-top-10-te-draft-prospects

He's just one of those guys who plays better in the NFL than he did in college.  We took Leggett 4 picks after Kittle was drafted.  But the Broncos took Jake Butt, also a TE, with the pick right before him.  That's gotta leave a little mark.

He was a beast in college too.  He was just constantly hurt.  When he was healthy, he showed elite blocking and top flight speed and pass catching skills for the position.  He arrived on campus as WR.

Between the injuries and just Iowa's general style offensive philosophy, he never produced the stats that would make people include him in that conversation.  The flashes were there though.  

[slimjasi]

“Making” ?

Good TEs have been dominant for a long time 

[Blackout]

Don't forget the Aaron Hernandez documentary

[Jetsfan80]

The article seems to be ripping teams for not using a 1st or 2nd round pick on a TE like Kelce or Kittle.

The problem is for every Kelce/Kittle, there are lot of guys like Eric Ebron, Tyler Eifert, David Njoku, Adam Shaheen, Austin Seferian-Jenkins, Jace Amaro, Dustin Keller, Troy Niklas, Jermaine Gresham, Brandon Pettigrew, John Carlson, Marcedes Lewis, Tony Scheffler and Joe Klopfenstein.

1st/2nd round TE's disappoint or bust hard quite often.  Thus, while everyone agrees you need a quality TE (or 2), it's hard to predict which ones will become stars.  Gronk was a 2nd round pick, after all.  That means every NFL GM passed on him once as well.

[playtowinthegame]

13 hours ago, New York Mick said:

I still prefer ghetto booties.

I thought jiggly booties were making a comeback. 

[Philc1]

19 hours ago, Blackout said:

Don't forget the Aaron Hernandez documentary

He always had a shot at being a good player

[Philc1]

19 hours ago, slimjasi said:

“Making” ?

Good TEs have been dominant for a long time 

There was a period in the 90’s in which the position was ignored in the nfl and just used as a 6th OL

 

Shannon Sharpe was the only good TE for a few years and he was really a wideout

 

[Philc1]

12 hours ago, Jetsfan80 said:

The article seems to be ripping teams for not using a 1st or 2nd round pick on a TE like Kelce or Kittle.

The problem is for every Kelce/Kittle, there are lot of guys like Eric Ebron, Tyler Eifert, David Njoku, Adam Shaheen, Austin Seferian-Jenkins, Jace Amaro, Dustin Keller, Troy Niklas, Jermaine Gresham, Brandon Pettigrew, John Carlson, Marcedes Lewis, Tony Scheffler and Joe Klopfenstein.

1st/2nd round TE's disappoint or bust hard quite often.  Thus, while everyone agrees you need a quality TE (or 2), it's hard to predict which ones will become stars.  Gronk was a 2nd round pick, after all.  That means every NFL GM passed on him once as well.

Interesting considering most of the names you listed are or were serviceable to good players