I will be interested to see Brock Bowers in the preseason. You can count on one hand the number of tight ends who’ve come into the league in the last 20 years with more anticipation. But at the same time, the hit rate on this kind of tight end has been pretty lousy.
Worse, in fact, than you might think. In the last 20 years, five tight ends have been selected with top-15 picks. Only one of those guys has finished with top-20 numbers, and even he fell short of what most were hoping for (Kyle Pitts caught 68 passes for 1,026 yards, but with only one touchdown).
If we roll the clock all the way back to 1988, Keith Jackson (not the play-by-play announcer but the tight end from Oklahoma) came up huge for the Eagles, catching 81 passes and 6 TDs. That made him the No. 1 tight end that season (using PPR scoring). But since that time, rookie tight ends have tended to fall well short of expectations. Rickey Dudley in 1996 caught 4 TDs, and Vernon Davis in 2006 caught 3, but the last 12 others selected with top-15 picks have all caught 0-2 touchdowns.
Twenty years ago, the Browns used the 6th pick of the draft on Kellen Winslow. He was supposed to be a franchise player. His career never got going, with a broken leg after two games, then a knee-ruining motorcycle accident the next year. But even if we set Winslow to the side, only half of tight ends selected with top-15 picks have been able to finish with top-20 numbers in their first season. Only half of those six put up top-10 numbers as rookies.
In the chart below, tight ends finishing with top-20 numbers are tagged with black dots. Those with top-10 numbers (Jackson, Jeremy Shockey, Pitts) have an extra dot.
| TIGHT ENDS TAKEN IN THE TOP 15 OVERALL | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | Pk | G | Rec | Yds | TD | PPR | Rk |
| 1988 | •• Keith Jackson, Phil. | 13 | 16 | 81 | 869 | 6 | 203.9 | 1 |
| 1992 | Johnny Mitchell, NYJ | 15 | 11 | 16 | 210 | 1 | 43.0 | 23 |
| 1992 | Derek Brown, NYG | 14 | 16 | 4 | 31 | 0 | 7.1 | 58 |
| 1995 | Kyle Brady, NYJ | 9 | 15 | 26 | 252 | 2 | 63.2 | 23 |
| 1996 | • Rickey Dudley, Oak. | 9 | 16 | 34 | 386 | 4 | 96.6 | 12 |
| 1997 | • Tony Gonzalez, K.C. | 13 | 16 | 33 | 368 | 2 | 83.8 | 18 |
| 2000 | • Bubba Franks, G.B. | 14 | 16 | 34 | 363 | 1 | 76.3 | 19 |
| 2002 | •• Jeremy Shockey, NYG | 14 | 15 | 74 | 894 | 2 | 175.4 | 3 |
| 2004 | Kellen Winslow, Cle. | 6 | 2 | 5 | 50 | 0 | 10.0 | 79 |
| 2006 | Vernon Davis, S.F. | 6 | 10 | 20 | 265 | 3 | 65.0 | 28 |
| 2014 | Eric Ebron, Det. | 10 | 13 | 25 | 248 | 1 | 55.8 | 40 |
| 2019 | T.J. Hockenson, Det. | 8 | 12 | 32 | 367 | 2 | 80.7 | 31 |
| 2021 | •• Kyle Pitts, Atl. | 4 | 17 | 68 | 1,026 | 1 | 176.6 | 6 |
| 2024 | Brock Bowers, L.V. | 13 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
The Lions (Eric Ebron, T.J. Hockenson) and Jets (Johnny Mitchell, Kyle Brady) have both selected two of these tight ends, without getting an instant-impact rookie.
These are all different guys in different years on different teams, of course. It’s possible for rookie tight ends to come in and play effectively early. Sam LaPorta, as our most recent example. The previous season, Trey McBride played well in the final month of the season before exploding as a sophomore.
But for Bowers to live up to the hype, he needs to be verey good in his first year. The ADP numbers indicate only 10 tight ends will be selected before him. For me to pull the trigger that early, I would need to see some glimpse of potential greatness in the preseason.
I remember Jeremy Shockey being one of those guys. With him, it was apparent from his first preseason game that he might be putting up top-5 tight end numbers. He caught 4 passes for 80 yards and a touchdown in the Hall of Fame game in 2002. (Trivia buffs can note that was the Houston Texans’ first-ever game.) Shockey caught 4 passes for 66 yards and a touchdown in his next two preseason games – he had a reception over 25 yards in all three games.
Front-line players don’t tend to play as much nowadays, making it harder for Bowers to make a Shockey-type impact, but I think the Raiders will play their front-line players more than other teams. They need to pick a quarterback and get their offensive line figured out, among other things.
The lay of the land in Las Vegas makes 11th look high for Bowers. The Raiders have a pair of capable receivers, Davante Adams and Jakobi Meyers. They also have another good young tight end (Michael Mayer had a really impressive touchdown grab against the Jets as a rookie). And it’s a lesser, conservative team with a pair of modest quarterbacks (Gardner Minshew, Aidan O’Connell). The Raiders averaged only 216 passing yards last year, and with only 20 TD passes.
—Ian Allan