It's a tricky business, deciding how to rank and draft Tampa Bay tight ends. They've got three really capable players at the position, a new veteran quarterback who might have his own preferences, and a coach with a sketchy recent history of using those players in his offense.
NFL columnist Peter King -- please note I did not say "analyst" -- spent a couple of days with the team. His guess, and he concedes it's just a guess, is that all three of the team's tight ends (Rob Gronkowski, O.J. Howard, Cameron Brate) will be involved, and that "Howard plays the most snaps of the tight ends, with Brate maybe a few more than Gronkowski." That's right, future unanimous first-ballot Hall of Famer Gronk will play the 3rd-most snaps of the team's tight ends, in King's estimation.
It makes some sense. Gronkowski is the oldest, he's coming off a year away from the game, and the Bucs will want to keep him fresh and healthy for the biggest games late in the season. If King is correct, Gronkowski is being selected too early in every league.
There's also the fact, as we've noted in the past, that Bruce Arians doesn't have much of a history of using tight ends in his offenses. He's been an offensive coordinator or head coach for three different teams since 2007, with a one-year hiatus. Of those dozen offenses, he's had a tight end ranked higher than 15th at the position (PPR) only twice, more than a decade ago. Heath Miller in Pittsburgh is the only top-20 tight end Arians has ever had.
| ARIANS TOP TIGHT ENDS, 2007-2019 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Team | Top TE | Tgt | No | Yds | TD | Rk |
| 2007 | Pittsburgh | Heath Miller | 61 | 47 | 566 | 7 | 8th |
| 2008 | Pittsburgh | Heath Miller | 66 | 48 | 514 | 3 | 15th |
| 2009 | Pittsburgh | Heath Miller | 98 | 76 | 789 | 6 | 8th |
| 2010 | Pittsburgh | Heath Miller | 67 | 42 | 512 | 2 | 24th |
| 2011 | Pittsburgh | Heath Miller | 74 | 51 | 631 | 2 | 19th |
| 2012 | Indianapolis | Dwayne Allen | 66 | 45 | 521 | 3 | 25th |
| 2013 | Arizona | Rob Housler | 57 | 39 | 454 | 1 | 28th |
| 2014 | Arizona | John Carlson | 55 | 33 | 350 | 1 | 29th |
| 2015 | Arizona | Darren Fells | 28 | 21 | 311 | 3 | 35th |
| 2016 | Arizona | Jermaine Gresham | 61 | 37 | 391 | 2 | 29th |
| 2017 | Arizona | Jermaine Gresham | 46 | 33 | 322 | 2 | 31th |
| 2019 | Tampa Bay | Cameron Brate | 55 | 36 | 311 | 4 | 24th |
The argument against this history is that Arians hasn't had any top-level tight ends since Miller. Everyone knows this argument, since it's the one many made on behalf of Howard a year ago, arguing that he would have a huge season. Howard never got off the ground, finishing with worse numbers than Brate.
And even Miller, interestingly enough, finished with his career-best numbers -- 816 yards and 8 TDs, as fantasy's No. 4-ranked tight end -- in 2012, the year after Arians left Pittsburgh.
I think the idea of Tampa Bay dividing up snaps between at least two and possibly three tight ends has merit. Keeping Gronk fresh makes sense. And there's a lot of history to suggest the position won't be as huge a part of the offense as it could be anyway. I don't expect I'll have a Bucs tight end on any of my teams.
--Andy Richardson