Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

OK, I get it, everybody would like a TE with gaudy Jimmy Graham (with NO) stats, but is that either necessary or required for a healthy offense?
Over all it seems to be consensus that we need an upgrade at TE, apparently this years group hasn't shined enough to make most of the posters here happy.
I'm going by eyeball, so please you film study guys, and or super stats guys if you can set me straight please do.
First off, and this is hard to quantify, but from my naked eye I saw a ton of RB's huge runs and WR's RAC directly impacted by all of our TE's downfield blocking.
People keep harping on our third down percentage which by whatever BS stat method you apply to means our TE's suck , but how many times has our TE's been targeted and not caught the ball. Again, not stat guy but I haven't seen a lot of TE drops. Quite the opposite I've seen a ton of good catches by our TE's. I get Coleman had butter fingers (after catch) the last five or six catches, but over all our TE's (especially Hill, and our Hawaiian TE) have done damn well, and so I hope we don't spend much on a TE.
As I said on a previous post : if you don't throw a pass to one of our TE's, don't complain about our TE's receiving.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

I don’t think they are bad, I thing blocking as a whole has been great. It’s just the lack of the receiving threat. Maybe that was by plan. Payton did vow to run the ball more. Maybe he wanted to utilize other threats and comfortable with our guys blocking ability

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Why wouldn't SP want TEs that could block AND catch?

I guarantee you that if Graham blocked like Shockey or any of the other great TEs that he never would have traded him!

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Yes. Not horrible. Not great. We really need a play maker at that position.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Very difficult to find a good TE. They are all about the same, only like 3-4 in the whole NFL that create real problems. Hill is alright. Probably better than most of them and will likely be better next year. It takes a while for most of them to develop anyway. Ertz and Kelce are great but that did not happen over night.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

We need a TE. I see it very hard to rationalize it otherwise. Hill has been ok as a quick fix, but we need to upgrade the position. It is one of the prime reasons our third down conversion rate is so bad.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

I would love to see us draft a TE with our 2nd pick and resign Graham and keep alphabet and Hill maybe?

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Bring Jimmy Dickens back? If he can be had at a "fair" price, I'd be all in. Wonder what Brees thinks?

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

I'm always (almost) pulling for the underdog. With that in mind, I like Hill. He's not a bad player. But he's not a play maker either, unfortunately. Love him on the roster, but would really like to see us upgrade TE. I'd even warm up to bringing Jimmy back at the right price, but I know that's not very likely anyway.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Those 7-9 teams weren't complete teams, so we threw to the TE all the time to compensate for bad play in other places. I agree we want to keep running the ball... we also want to be able to throw the ball as well(especially on third and longs and in goal-line situations). We sucked on third down this year, and it wasn't some random event that occurred. Adding a TE would help quite a bit to alleviate some of the concerns. We add a TE and we'll go from being in the mid 30% range to in the 40%s. We do that and we'll be a force to be reckoned with.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Here is the problem with a Jimmy type TE.

We became to dependent on the TE position. Everytime we needed to pass it when to Jimmy who got open or could catch over peoples head. Our WR I don't think were thown to as often and our office wasn't explosive because of it. We were limited on the big plays.

I think the way we are built right now getting another dynamic WR and a TE. We just can't become to dependant on dumping off to the TE so much. I much rather see an imporvement on the OL and with depth.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Even worse memory... Do you remember our defense? :rolleyes:

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Cameron Brate?

* He was on our practice squad back in 2015.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

We missed Fleener as receiver and as decoy. I would love to find a complete TE that can block and catch.Think Witten. They are very rare. I would love to have two TE like the PATS had with the murderer and Gronk. however Brate who be a good upgrade . Trey Burton eagle TE is another young and improving free agent.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

I’m sure he does, I’m just thinking he thought we were good enough there and wanted to spend resources on other areas he thought were of greater concern.
Remember Fleener looked really good in preseason. Unfortunately didn’t carry into regular season

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

I doubt it. Back then we had no defense and our game plan was simply to outscore opponents. We had no running game so it made us pretty one dimensional. Just because we get a good pass catching TE doesn’t mean we automatically go back to that.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Brees needs some additional receiving weapons. If we had a top notch TE and another large receiver we would have been able to convert more third downs and would be even more competitive.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Or just a fast receiver. Really could have used Cooks. I’m more than fine with the trade but they should have supplemented somehow. Ted Ginn just didn’t pan out as well as they thought.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

The reason we threw to Jimmy so much back then was because he was the best option on just about every play. That showed two things: how dominant the combination of Drew and Jimmy and how much we were lacking in other areas. The beauty of Jimmy was even when covered well if you threw the ball to the right spot, you could still get a completion.

People act as if Jimmy was traded because Sean thought that he hurt the team, when really Jimmy was traded to try to improve several other areas of the team. If Sean could have gotten all of those other things and kept Jimmy, we'd still have Jimmy. We'd be a hell of a lot better as well. We'd be the best team in the league and it wouldn't even be close.

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Fleener at 8 million needs to go

Re: Are our tight ends as bad as most seem to think?
 

Cameron Brate TE Tampa 6050 249 4.77
he has come a long way. but traditional TE are bountiful in this draft. i would be ok with the signing

there are not any dynamic split TE in the draft or in FA really.