SaintGnome

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.

The Dude

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

WhoDat!656

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!

saintfan

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

Beastmode

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.

hitta

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.

jeanpierre

Short memories 'round here...

We throw to that playmaker at TE and we're 7-9, 7-9, 7-9...

We start running the ball, putting that money into the lines, we make a strong showing in the tournament...

We ran out of horses on the offensive line (Mr. Glass aka Armstead can't seem to play an entire season)...

We ran out of horses on the defensive line (Rookie Hendrickson never had chance to get healthy and then Okafor)...

We ran out of horses at linebacker (We finished with our No. 5 and 6 LBer with a FA signed off street 6 weeks ago)...

Finish fixing the offensive line and the front seven on defense, replace Vaccaro if necessary, then worry about TE...

It's not that my way is the right way, I just make the right way my way...

CheramieIII

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

K Major

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

saintfan

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.