NFL Draft: Initial Reaction to the First Round Landing Spots for Colston Loveland and Tyler Warren.

Different teams, different needs.

Loveland Goes First

Admittedly, I would not have expected Warren to go second, but it’s a great reminder that the order of picks is not always a real big board. Especially at positions like TE and edge rusher, different teams need different skillsets, and when players are of a similar caliber that’s how a selection order gets determined. This doesn’t mean “the league” saw these guys a certain way, but the Bears made the best pick for them. While Warren is more my speed, the more I watched them, the more that gap narrowed. My initial guesses in late February were that they’d go to New York and Denver respectively, and I thought that because they were the ideal picks for those respective offenses. The same applies to Chicago and Indianapolis. They both got their guy, and they were both right to have them at TE1.

Loveland’s Fit in Chicago

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It’s becoming clear that Ben Johnson is already working to evolve his offense. I wrote about it as a fit for Tyler Warren in NY, but I do think that Loveland is a better match for this role. I don’t think Johnson is necessarily looking to reinvent his wheel, but the selection of Loveland suggests to me that he wants his next version of Amon Ra St. Brown to be much, much heavier.

The Lions do a lot out of 11 personnel, with the F role often occupied by a slot-type (St. Brown) and depended on to be that precise, volume-eating presence in the middle of the field. This is going to be Loveland’s big job despite the different position, essentially to give them what they hoped the last regime hoped it could squeeze out of an aging Keenan Allen. On the most surface level, a reliable target in the middle is huge for a developing QB. He will be asked in the slot to work the seams, work nickels on choice routes, beat DBs outside on sails, and settle into underneath zones.

For the most part, his role will be a lot like a huge Drake London who he does remind me of. Mostly in the slot but a little bit outside from time to time While most TEs aren’t going to cut it in this role, there’s a good chance Loveland will be able to.

Above all else, this primary need is what for them separates him from Warren, a less-precise, more yac-heavy pure playmaker rather than that intermediate manager of space. The question becomes why they wouldn’t target a more 1:1 version of St. Brown, therein lies the evolution. I think the Bears want this player to be able to make them a bit heavier. While St. Brown and London can dig out DBs and even LBs in the box, they doesn’t give you that *true* 7th big body on the LOS. Loveland does. He allows them to stay in their 12 and 11 worlds at the same time, which the Lions had to substitute between. Additionally, Cole Kmet, Loveland’s new partner, is a far better pass-catcher than Brock Wright, LaPorta’s 12 personnel sidekick.

As a result, they’re able to be more positionless and overall more heavy and able to hulk up at a moment’s notice. That ability is critical to creating box conflict in the modern age, which is a boon to everyone else in the passing game.

The more they can make teams honor the line of scrimmage, the easier Caleb Williams’ life is. With his ability and the explosiveness of outside route-winners like DJ Moore and Rome Odunze, it all falls into place.

Of course, when they do want to get into true 11 personnel, Loveland can slide in-line and do it well. I anticipate that Kmet will be the main guy in these situations, at least on first and second down, for the bulk of Loveland’s rookie year, but he will eventually seize many of these snaps. With developing technique and physical maturing to do, I’m skeptical that an overly demanding in-line role would go well in the dawn of his career, but like Sam LaPorta (and many others), he can grow into it in year 2. For now I suspect that the main plan is for them to play together and mash teams while forcing them to defend their full passing game, with Loveland seamlessly oscillating between a 2nd TE and a 3rd WR. In the end, Ben Johnson’s passing game has Sean Payton’s DNA, and the reasons I loved Colston to Denver are the reasons I love this even more.

Warren’s Fit in Indianapolis

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Tyler Warren has always been Steichen’s guy. Unlike Chicago, Indy is not going to shift to a 12 personnel world anytime soon and with Michael Pittman, AD Mitchell, Alec Pierce, and Josh Downs in the slot, they shouldn’t. I don’t think Loveland would have created a redundancy with Downs because as I’ve been careful to emphasize when highlighting his WR ability, he can play real TE, but you don’t necessarily need that slot-type precision at the Y spot. A team like the Colts is looking more for a combination of brute force in the run game and in the passing game, the raw ability to out-athlete LBs, pop behind the second level, and create explosives with YAC underneath.

This is where Warren outclasses Loveland.

His pure athleticism and fluidity is something that LBs cannot handle and in an 11-personnel world with the corners and nickel occupied by WRs, that becomes the challenge for defenses. It’s going to be difficult for him to command a ton of receiving volume early on in Indy, but his ability to create matchup issues can be a cheat code with serious value for a team that’s now loaded at pass-catcher. He’s not going to need the finesse and precision Loveland provides, and he is better suited to be a Kittle-ish creator in tight than a Kelce-ish zone shredder at the F.

Make no mistake though, Tyler Warren is a freak and someone who has every chance to be a big play machine. The most exciting part of this fit though is how he completes an explosive and exciting Indianapolis run game.

It’s not just that Warren will be able to impact the run game as a blocker. In this offense, he will be able to impact it as a playmaker too. I’ll get into this in more detail in the coming weeks, but Steichen (a system the Eagles have kept) loves to use the TE as an RPO constraint in the zone-read game. With a QB like Richardson, you can often leave the end unblocked as an option-read which frees the TE up. The best use for that guy then is to get him out into the flat to deal with the next defender. Obviously, he can block that guy, but you can also use him as a third option in the flat and utilize triple-option principles. For a YAC monster like Warren, this is the perfect way to be involved. For an offense like Indianapolis, a triple-option framework of Richardson, Taylor, and Warren in the flat gives you a dangerous ballcarrier at every level.

Of course he will just be blocking the end a lot of the time as well, which they’ll need him to do as the only TE on the field. In a QB run-oriented system the TE is going to be blocking from off the ball a lot almost in a wing. This is done to retain the ability to move that guy into the flats and around the edge as an arc blocker for the QB, but it will present Warren some issues at the start when he has to block in-line as it puts him further from defenders and exacerbates the arm-length issue.

I don’t think it will be a problem long-term but it could produce some growing pains early.

When they find a guy like this, the system (again which the Eagles have kept) is also well-designed to use the TE as a screen target whether on RPO relief, a blitz outlet, or just regular design.

Anytime you have someone who can do this at 260 pounds, it’s not a bad idea to feed him some screens.

Looking Ahead

It’ll be interesting in the next few weeks to hear what Coaches Johnson and Steichen say about what the plans for these guys are. Anytime you use a first-round pick on a position with such a range of uses, you tend to deal with bigger questions on that front than if you take a standard WR or OL. Hopefully, we can gain some insight from what they say, and it’s nice to see TEs taken round 1 who resemble those who are successful in this league and can fit the role. Tonight we’re likely to see 2-3 more guys go including LSU’s Mason Taylor, who late buzz indicated could sneak into round 1. With guys like Taylor and Oregon’s Terrance Ferguson still available, the teams that missed an opportunity at TE in round 1 can still find an excellent player.