Bulking Up a Forgotten Position

Like fullback, the tight end is becoming an extinct species with college football offenses trying to spread the field.

Still, there are old school coaches like Kurt Ferentz still out there who understand a 100×40-yard field can only be stretched so far and the tight end can still be weaponized for good.

That’s why it was heartening on the first night of the NFL draft to see one school (Iowa) get not just one, but both of its starting tight ends drafted in Round One.

clemson

Tyler Sear gets big gain against national champion Clemson last year.

Rod Carey, being an old school coach, probably took stock of the Temple roster and saw only a pair of tight ends with game experience in Kenny Yeboah and David Martin-Robinson and, when a one-time Temple recruit was looking for a new landing spot, Carey offered a parachute.

Tyler Sear’s transfer from Pitt to Temple should give Owl fans a sense of security in that he was rated the No. 1 tight end in Pennsylvania in his senior year of high school.

He was Pitt’s starting TE this past season but left the team in October. Since two other tight ends left the team, a logical takeaway is that Pitt has de-emphasized the position so much that there was some grumbling in the tight end room.

Not so at Temple, where Yeboah was used in one of the more clever plays last year against Maryland. Quarterback Anthony Russo faked an out to Ventell Byrant (who sold it with a 37-inch vertical leap) and that drew two DBs to Bryant, leaving Yeboah free to run down the sideline for an easy six.

Carey has a history of utilizing the tight ends in pretty much the same manner.

Since waivers are routinely granted by the NCAA now, Sear will probably be eligible for the Owls this fall. The Owls are still waiting on a waiver request from Baylor DB transfer Harrison Hand, but these things routinely are adjudicated in the late summer and not in the spring.

Hopefully, these means more double-tight end sets in a run-oriented goal-line offense this fall.

Tuesday: The Drafted Guys

Friday: Shot Chart

Sunday: The Arrivals

 

Advertisement

2 thoughts on “Bulking Up a Forgotten Position

  1. What really irks me Mike is that TU did a lot of good things on offense in the Maryland game that they did not do against Nova and Buffalo and did not repeat for the rest of the season. In addition to using a tight end effectively, they also implemented a blocking H back who served the role of a fullback. Their failure to do what worked at Maryland in the other games convinced me that Patenfraud and Collins did not know what they were doing. Had they run the Maryland scheme against Nova, Buffalo, and BC, there is no doubt in my mind that those games would have been wins. Have to believe that Carey is smart enough and experienced enough to stick to what works instead of what looks clever. I hate coaches who are gaining four or five yards a play by simply running the ball who then think it’s time to throw a pass. Wrong. it’s time to continue running the ball until the other team stops you.

    • An effective running game opens up everything else in the arsenal because it forces the safties and the linebackers to cheat up to the line and be more susceptible to the play-action fake. That’s Football 101. From watching NIU under Carey and Temple under Collins, the former guy seems to have passed that course while the latter guy cut class that day.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s