It’s no secret the Green Bay Packers lack a true-difference maker at tight end. Special-teamers Josiah Deguara and Tyler Davis are the only tight ends on the roster who have played in a game. Both offer poor athletic profiles for their position. Their Relative Athletic Scores (RAS) are 6.66 and 7.89, respectively.
RAS compiles six size and athletic testing metrics (height, weight, 40-yard dash, 20-yard split, 10-yard split, bench press, vertical jump, broad jump, short shuttle, and three-cone) into one convenient number. Five is average, and eight and above is the top 20th percentile. Calvin Johnson is a 10.
The Packers recently had an elite athlete at tight end, Robert Tonyan (RAS 8.8), and it’s no surprise that his best season coincided with the best version of the offense under Matt LaFleur.
Tonyan caught seven of his 11 touchdowns in the red zone in 2020, and the team led the league in red-zone touchdown percentage with a ridiculous 76.8%. They scored the most points in the NFL and had the fifth-most yards that season. That team should have gone to the Super Bowl. It had far and away the best version of the Packers offense under LaFleur and something they’ve failed to replicate since.
A healthy Tonyan is far from the only example of an elite athlete at the position helping their team. Beyond the Packers, there is a strong correlation between elite tight ends and playoff offenses.
An Elite RAS Often Means an Elite Tight End
Of the 10 starting tight ends in the last five AFC and NFC Championship games, only Kyle Rudolph and Zach Ertz had scores below eight, and 60% had scores above nine. That’s a list that includes: Tyler Higbee (9.89), George Kittle (9.49), Dallas Goedert (RAS 9.48), Travis Kelce (9.27), Dawson Knox (9.23), Rob Gronkowski (9.31), Tonyan, C.J. Uzomah (RAS 8.6), Ertz (6.36), and Rudolph (7.74).
As Matt Hendershott wrote, Green Bay needs an elite tight end to return to the playoffs. But what constitutes an elite tight end? More than any other position, there is the highest correlation between a RAS of eight or above and tight-end success.
To illustrate this point further, I took all the players in the last five AFC and NFC Championship games and added any missing players who finished in the top 10 in 2022, 2021, and 2020 for regular-season receptions. Seventeen of the 22 tight ends in this sample had a RAS of eight or above. Diving deeper into these scores, I saw a trend amongst this group and composite “explosion” score. The RAS explosion score compiles the broad jump and vertical jump.
Eighteen of these 22 players had “great” or “elite” explosion scores, meaning they were excellent at jumping far and high for their size and weight. That list included George Kittle, David Njoku, T.J. Hockenson, Evan Engram, Gerald Everett, Mike Gesicki, Robert Tonyan, and Tyler Conklin with “elite” scores. Travis Kelce, Kyle Pitts, Darren Waller, Dallas Goedert, Rob Gronkowski, Tyler Higbee, Dawson Knox, Logan Thomas, Noah Fant, and Austin Hooper had “great” scores.
There are tight ends in the league who don’t test well in speed or bench press. But composite explosion grade is the one consistent metric for an overwhelming majority of the best tight ends in the last three years.
If you want a more traditional, back-of-the-football-card stat, 25 of the last 38 tight ends to make a Pro Bowl since 1987 had a RAS of eight or greater. And that list doesn’t have scores for Antonio Gates, Jeremy Shockey, or Bubba Franks.
What Have the Packers Been Doing?
It seems obvious that the Packers should be drafting freak athletes at the tight end position. They haven’t, and it’s no surprise to me that their picks haven’t panned out. The list of failures includes some high draft picks in Deguara, Jace Sternberger (5.18), and Richard Rodgers (4.52 RAS). They also chose D.J. Williams (5.71) in the fifth round, Ryan Taylor (8.04) in the seventh, and Kennard Backman (5.95) in the seventh over the last 15 years.
Taylor notwithstanding, it seems clear that the team is valuing something other than RAS, or specifically, elite explosion at this position. As I wrote previously, the team seems to have favored college production and subjective traits like “hustle” and “grit.”
If the front office doesn’t want to draft according to RAS, they could look to draft by school. Ted Thompson had an affinity for California schools, and Brian Gutekunst has seemed to favor Georgia and the SEC. They need to look beyond their comfort zones.
The University of Miami has graduated 13 tight ends to the NFL since 2000, which includes Jimmy Graham, David Njoku, and Aaron Hernandez among others. Beyond Miami, ESPN identified the top colleges for producing tight ends as Iowa (Dallas Clark, George Kittle, T.J. Hockenson, and Noah Fant), Stanford (Austin Hooper, Zach Ertz, and Dalton Schultz), Florida, Missouri, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Arizona State, Virginia, and BYU.
When drafting a tight end, there are specific athletic thresholds to look for, and specific schools to target. This draft figures to have a great crop of tight ends. There’s no excuse for Green Bay if they don’t land an explosive tight end in the draft.
