The True Value of a Tight End: What Teams Need From The Position
Blocking Roles, Defensive Responses, and the "Wide Receiver Test."
To understand how offensive coordinators use Tight Ends, you first need to understand their role in the run game, not the passing game. It’s simple, a TE that can block in-line can play in any personnel package and situation, but a TE that can’t has limitations on when they can be on the field. For the same reason you wouldn’t simply put a Wide Receiver in-line to get favorable matchups, you can’t do the same with just any TE. Defenses need credibility to honor something, and you won’t get the matchups you’re after.
Unless you’re Mike Leach, may he rest in peace, you need at least one TE on the field at all times. Per Sumer Sports, the most any team has used 10 personnel (1 RB, 0 TE, 4 WR) this season is the Cleveland Browns at 2.5% of the time. The most anyone has used 20 (2 RB, 0 TE, 3 WR) personnel is Baltimore at 4.5% of the time, and this doesn’t even count, as Fullback Patric Ricard plays Y Tight End (in-line) somewhat frequently in their offense. There’s virtually never a situation where no TE is fielded. So with that in mind, let’s look at the bare minimum you need from your TE deployment and the needed skillsets.
If you’re a team that doesn’t want to spend premium assets at TE (Bengals, Rams) and build around heavy football, your needs at the position differ from a group like the Steelers. The bare minimum for TE purposes is 11 personnel. In 11, you need the TE to be able to block and handle EDGE defenders on his own. Foundationally, you need one TE on the field who can block, and in 11, with only one TE on the field period, you can easily figure out why it has to be him! There are gadgety/creative ways to avoid having him block the end, but these can’t be used all the time as they are heavily limiting/predictable by nature or involve the Quarterback as a run threat. In general, someone has to block that guy, and on many core run schemes, namely Inside Zone, Outside Zone, and Duo, the line is occupied with interior guys. These tough blocks of on-ball, first-level defenders are what I call primary blocks.
On Outside Zone, the TE is often tasked with the frontside EDGE which is the key defender. He’ll either have to be turned outside to clear an alley inside of you, or beaten outside and pinned in. He can’t be left free to blow up the run. OZ is a little easier for smaller TEs than downhill runs as he doesn’t have to anchor and push, but it can still produce difficult blocks like the above.
On Duo, which is the most popular run in football right now, the Y TE has *the* block. If he allows the edge to collapse the bounce lane, the run is dead. Your 11-personnel TE is functionally the starter, the first guy on the field by definition, but he can’t just be your biggest name.
It’s awfully difficult to run the ball with only 5 credible primary blockers on the line of scrimmage. If you can’t run the ball, teams don’t have to play you honestly, and then you’re eating into the effectiveness of your passing game. You don’t have to be dominant like George Kittle or Dallas Goedert (though it helps), you simply have to be credible. Guys like TJ Hockenson and Trey McBride are better suited to running routes in space and blocking DBs than they are playing in-line, but they’re passable enough primary blockers to spare the OC serious limitations. Here the Steelers walk a Safety (Fitzpatrick) down to the edge instead of an OLB like you normally would. In the coverage call, Fitzpatrick is responsible for Mark Andrews man to man, so walking him down is a nice way to deny an easy release off the line. If this were George Kittle or Josh Oliver, however, you would never make the Safety your primary edge defender (which is generally how credibility in blocking generates better matchups in receiving). Even still, Andrews, a weak blocker, misses and the play is dead. On standard downs, it’s impossible in the modern game, where teams are pass-D oriented, to put guys like this in 11 personnel without functionally abandoning the run to the D, allowing them to sell out against the pass with 2-high safeties and empty boxes if that’s what they want to do in coverage.
Because of this liability, OCs often need to handcuff pass-only TEs to another TE who can handle the primary blocks. For the Ravens, this is “Fullback” Patrick Ricard. For the Lions, it’s Brock Wright, for the Seahawks, it’s AJ Barner, with others league-wide. That doesn’t mean teams like San Francisco wouldn’t play multiple Tight Ends, it simply means they don’t *have* to do so to keep their best pass-catching TE on the field consistently.
When you handcuff a pass-catcher to a blocker in 12 personnel, it allows the receiving TE to take on what I call secondary blocks. These get him placed on smaller bodies in the blocking scheme, shielding him from difficult point-of-attack physicality. I wrote about this divergence a couple of years ago, and for a lot of teams, it’s a great way to access the full run and pass menu at all times to keep defenses spread thin between the two worlds. There is, however, a bit of a problem…
As I mentioned in my last post, Wide Receivers can and do make these blocks. Among the biggest revolutions of the Shanahan era so far has been the increased requirement and capacity of slot receivers to block like Fullbacks or second TEs. This generates a serious opportunity cost proposition. As I said previously:
The big difference is found in pass-catching. Kincaid sits at 1.9 yards per route run while Shakir is at 2.65. With limited opportunity cost either way in the run game, which of those guys would you rather have in your primary slot role down to down? Obviously, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum and there are situations where both can be out there, but in general, only one of them can play in the slot in most situations and naturally, one will eat into the other’s snaps a bit. The difference in pass-catching quality isn’t just in the (rather stark) statistical figures. Receivers are faster/more agile and rangier, even pure slot types like Shakir or Amon-Ra St. Brown, and can threaten on a wider array of routes. With all that in mind, in a broad sense, would you rather have Shakir take snaps from Kincaid? Or Kincaid from Shakir?
This proposition is what the “Wide Receiver Test” boils down to. To maximize value, teams would be wise to consider these thresholds, especially when burning premium draft capital like the Bills did on Kincaid.
Passing The Test
The Wide Receiver test is a threshold, not a barrier. The premise is that you simply have to be so good, and so unlimited as a route runner relative to comparable slot receivers above replacement level, that the OC has no problem living in 12 personnel like Georgia in 2021 or the Patriots in 2011. Otherwise, you have to come off the field for the offense to access certain things. If you’re not, I’d rather my second TE be another bruiser so that I can use 12 personnel as true 12 personnel, rather than a diminished 11. This is a higher bar than you’d think, especially when it comes to the draft. Guys like Kincaid and Chig Okonkwo are very nice pass catchers for the TE position, but not when compared to the archetype of Jaxon Smith-Njigba or Drake London, and that’s the type they’d take the place of in a 2 TE offense. If I were a GM, I’d almost always rather use a premium pick with the intent to find an Amon-Ra St. Brown than a Travis Kelce. The latter is just too rare of a player and too narrow a needle to thread. You’ll draft dozens of OJ Howards before you find the next Travis.
People and teams sometimes forget, come draft time, that Kelce is not just good, he’s one of a few players in the history of the game like him. A prospect would have to be truly generational, like Brock Bowers, for me to take a 1st or 2nd round chance on them. Again, there are so many more good power slots than Travis Kelces, and the maximum return on investment isn’t that far apart. There’s also a selection bias with Kelce in particular. He’d likely have been a fine in-line blocker with his size and strength had he not developed into such a gifted receiver. It became better for the KC offense to flex him out and hone his route-running because he passed the WR test with flying colors. The long and short: If you aren’t going to bring more as a blocker than a wide receiver, you have to be good enough to essentially play it full-time. Otherwise, it’s hard to consistently stay on the field.
Fantastic. This needs to go viral.
Curious: why was OJ Howard a failure? Dude looked good in college.