I was skeptical about New York's Darnell Mooney signing, so I wanted to give equal time to a move I like a lot more. Former Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely.
The Giants just hired Likely's former head coach with the Ravens, so fair to say John Harbaugh had some say in the move. And it is no way a minor move: New York gave him a three-year, $40 million contract. It's not fully guaranteed or anything, but that is a huge for the position -- it's one of the five richest contracts for a tight end in the league these days.
You don't give a player a contract like that not to use him. Or to use him as little as the Ravens have his first four years in the league. Why they didn't use him more, it's hard to say. They had Mark Andrews, so that's part of it. Even Charlie Kolar was around, plus the Ravens spread it around to a bunch of different receivers. Whatever; they just didn't use Likely as often as his talents seem to warrant.
Because when they did actually throw it to him, he delivered. Looking at the game log, there were 14 games when Baltimore made Likely a regular part of the passing game, throwing to him 5 times. That's nearly a season's worth of games.
Likely in those 14 contests put up a season's worth of nice numbers: 66 receptions, 834 yards and 8 TDs. He caught at least 5 passes in half of them, and scored in eight of them.
| LIKELY WITH 5-PLUS TARGETS | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Opp | Tar | No | Rec | TD |
| 2022 | Mia. | 5 | 4 | 43 | 0 |
| 2022 | at T.B. | 7 | 6 | 77 | 1 |
| 2022 | at N.O. | 5 | 1 | 24 | 1 |
| 2022 | Pit. | 5 | 3 | 12 | 1 |
| 2022 | at Cin. | 13 | 8 | 103 | 0 |
| 2023 | at LAC | 6 | 4 | 40 | 0 |
| 2023 | LAR | 7 | 5 | 83 | 1 |
| 2023 | at Jac. | 6 | 5 | 70 | 1 |
| 2024 | at K.C. | 12 | 9 | 111 | 1 |
| 2024 | at Pit. | 5 | 4 | 75 | 0 |
| 2024 | Phi. | 8 | 5 | 38 | 1 |
| 2024 | Cle. | 5 | 3 | 38 | 0 |
| 2025 | Cin. | 6 | 5 | 95 | 0 |
| 2025 | Pit. | 6 | 4 | 25 | 1 |
| Total | 96 | 66 | 834 | 8 | |
Obviously, the games where he didn't put up good numbers, and -- arguably -- didn't earn 5 targets count too. Maybe Baltimore preferred limiting his chances, maybe there were nagging injuries, maybe his practice habits didn't thrill them at times (although presumably Harbaugh would know about those failings).
In any case, I like Likely. There's some risk in selecting him, but I'm pretty sure there will be some teams I do just that. New York isn't paying him $13 million a season to play behind Theo Johnson.
--Andy Richardson
