Tight End U has made way to a position at Notre Dame full of dust and memories. If this weren’t an off-season spent contemplating a 4-8 campaign and a collection of staff turnover the tight end position would be one of the premier complaints going into 2017.
It still can be anyway. Feel free to voice your displeasure.
2016 Snap Count
Durham Smythe, r-SR- 633 (9 catches, 112 yards, 4 TD)
Nic Weishar, r-JR- 262 (3 catches, 47 yards)
Tyler Luatua, SR- 38
Jacob Matuska, r-SR- 10
BOLD denotes out of eligibility/transfer
Eligibility is for 2017
Maybe these tight ends just aren’t that good? That might be the situation we’re working with right now. The receptions at tight end have fallen from 42 in 2013, to 31 in 2014, to 20 in 2015, and 12 this past year.
Twelve receptions in 12 games.
The biggest rallying cry lately is that Brian Kelly doesn’t care much for the tight end position and therefore they were minimized in DeShone Kizer’s progressions and overall team game plans. I’ll admit when you see the plummeting receptions this seems like the correct assumption. But why did Tyler Eifert catch 113 passes over his final two years then?
What if it’s a case of the current upperclassmen simply not being good enough to devote a bunch more targets to when throwing the ball? Next thing you’ll tell me is that the tight ends are always open, well, doesn’t it always feel like that’s the case when 6’5” players are running among defenders 3 to 6 inches shorter than them?
The thing is Notre Dame has been blessed to have a bunch of physically gifted tight ends. Even Ben Koyack’s production in college seemed like a disappointment and yet he’s surprised in the NFL this year 7 starts and 19 catches for the Jaguars.
I’m not sure we can say the same about the guys above. When you see the tight end rankings it feels like the mass assembly line of great tight ends should be ongoing. Smythe (#8), Weishar (#7), and Luatua (#9) were all Top 10 at their position before coming to Notre Dame. That feels elite. Still, this is a position that is tough to bring in major difference makers. Despite those Top 10 positional rankings no one was higher than #247 (Weishar) in their classes overall rankings.
You’d expect low 4-star guys who weren’t Top 200 overall recruits to have solid but not spectacular careers. And, it seems Notre Dame’s upperclassmen could be doing better but aren’t too far off that pace.
New Faces
Alize Jones, r-SO
Brock Wright, FR
Cole Kmet, FR
If Notre Dame is going to really re-load and get the tight end position back into a top 5 national unit it’ll likely come from these players. From their classes they are the #1, #2, and #3 tight ends and Kmet is the least highly regarded at #94 overall. That’s a trio of Top 100 players at one position which portends many happy things for the future.
Of course, the Irish suffered the fate of Jones’ academic suspension this past fall and will welcome him back with open arms. In his true freshman season, Jones caught 13 passes on just 239 snaps. In comparison, Durham Smythe’s 2016 season featured one catch for every 70 snaps while Alize was at a rate of one reception every 18 snaps.
Using that productivity for a full-time tight end staying on the field for most of the offensive snaps Jones projects to catch more than 40 passes.
I don’t know to much about this kids highschool career but with what I’ve seen at the #UAallAmerica practices he will play on Sunday 1 day. pic.twitter.com/GQxl3UCfJT
— Deion Sanders (@DeionSanders) December 30, 2016
The addition and future production for Wright and Kmet should yield similar results–and don’t sleep on Wright making an impact as a January enrollee. When they are logging starters minutes the days of 1 catch per game are going to be long gone.
Grade: C+
I was tempted to lift this grade to a B- but the overall inconsistency of blocking prevented me from doing so. I can forgive this unit for not being a focal point of the offense as pass catchers. What I can’t tolerate is poor production as receivers and hit or miss blocking combined together.
Next year is going to be awfully interesting to see how the minutes are dealt out. From my perspective, the biggest problem for Smythe and Weishar is that they haven’t proven to be effective at yards after catch. They also don’t have the speed to get open for very long down field.
I am sure this has played into Kizer’s penchant to not look the tight end’s way very much in 2016. When you’ve seen them anticipate contact and fall down for a 7-yard gain on a short pass wouldn’t you much rather throw a quick out to St. Brown or Stepherson and see if 7 yards can turn into 25 yards?
Unless Alize Jones turns into a receiver in all but name I can’t see Smythe/Weishar combining for almost 900 snaps in 2017. There will likely be too many snaps where Jones is the lone tight end on the field and the staff can play around with him as an attached/detached option depending on the situation. This grade should go up quite a bit next year.
I’m somewhat optimistic. Jones is coming back, and our new OC has a background as a tight ends coach. Maybe with the new strength and conditioning team coming in, someone like Weishar can get bigger. But yeah, the last few seasons have been disappointing after the great run we had going.
Add to that, maybe Smythe/Weishar see the writing on the wall and realize to get on the field, they better block like mad.
Yeah they better, because Brock Wright is an EE and he looked ready to contribute at the Under Armour All America game. Was impressive all week in practices and established himself in the actual game both as a blocker and a receiving threat. He’s also about 6’5″/245 pounds, so he’ll be physically ready to go by fall.
Would not be surprised to see him take snaps away from those two.
More weapons gives an opportunity for more creativity. I would love the idea of using Jones like Virginia Tech used TE-turned-sometimes WR Bucky Hodges and let him operate more in space. Seems to have the ability to be special no matter what, and the WR group is relatively thin/green behind ESB and Stepherson (who’s good and getting better) but they could probably use the talent upgrade that Jones could bring.
Plus with the bunch formations Kelly likes to run, stack Jones and ESB to the far-side with a smaller guy (Finke/Sanders) and the screen game could return again.
Either way, agree with the consensus that the position will hopefully be on the upswing, hopefully Wright can open eyes early and get on the field, that would be awesome.
I think that C+ might even be a tad bit generous in terms of evaluating this group. The blocking was meh and the pass catching was below average – the one good thing you can say about the TEs last year was that there were no boneheaded mistakes. With the lack of passes to the TEs last year, the offense could have gone with Luatua as the starter to at least improve blocking (but I suppose his leaving and return may have cost him the chance for snaps).
I am very excited about this influx (and return) of talent at the TE position – hopefully this can be a position of strength.
Does ND FB use new concepts like this? http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/sports/neurotracker-athletic-performance.html?emc=edit_th_20170105&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=52185398
Fleck to Minnesota appears to be a done deal. Other than Mullen and MacIntyre, it looks like all the obvious next-year potential hires have moved this offseason. That said, nobody other than maybe/probably Taggart have moved to a job where they wouldn’t immediately ditch to come to ND.
I suppose it’s not a bad thing to see how he handles a B1G job. I’m not sure I’d have stepped in to that mess though. I can see debate as to whether or not Claeys should have been fired or disciplined for his tone-deaf tweet (I lean more towards disciplined rather than fired) but the things piled on by the AD seem out of line and like he was clearly using everything as an excuse to fire Claeys and bring in his “own guy”–which he had done at previous stops at Boise State and Syracuse. Well, he didn’t fire anyone at Boise State, but he’s jumped AD jobs and brought in a new coach at each stop, only to move again. Not the stability or sort of support I’d be looking to leave my nice little MAC “big fish in small pond” job for.
https://twitter.com/JoeCStrib/status/817373367988785152
Welp, pretty sure we know why he took that Minnesota job now. And he might not be leaving that after a year after all.
Yeah, I suppose that would do it.
Yeah, this’ll ding WMU recruiting efforts. Already two of their higher rated guys decommitted, and it sounds like at least a couple more incoming. Not surprisingly, the decommits are pretty public about being open to following Fleck to Minnesota.
Minnesota’s landed a good one for recruiting, and it looks like this cycle will end on a high note for them.
WMU, meanwhile, might lose that #1 Class in the MAC status they’ve had for something like 4 years running. Toledo is pretty close behind them right now.