TeamPitts

[Au165]

(04-28-2021, 02:52 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Because being a little banged up is a part and parcel of playing TE. Here's a list of how many games played by 1st rd rookie TEs the last 20 seasons...

Hockenson: 12
Fant: 16
Hurst: 12
Howard: 14
Engram: 15
Njoku: 16 
Ebron: 15
Eifert: 15
Gresham: 15
Pettigrew: 11
Keller: 16
Olsen: 14
Davis: 10
Lewis: 15
Miller: 16
Winslow: 2
Watson: 1
Clark: 10
Graham: 12
Stevens: 12
Heap: 12

That's 21 1st round TEs in the last 20 years.

Other than Njoku and Keller who were low workload guy (Njoku never played even 60% of the offensive snaps in a single game his rookie season), the only 1st round TEs in the last 20 years to play all 16 games of their rookie seasons are Noah Fant and Heath Miller.

So yeah, TEs just get hurt. It's the position. Pretty much never expect them to play all 16 games (now 17 games) and just be pleasantly surprised if they do.

Was that your argument though, that he couldn't "sniff" 100 targets because he may get hurt? I don't see you ever really talk about that. You may be modifying your position now, but the topic of injury wasn't there for multiple pages as you berated people for a TE's potential production. Why do you look at TE injuries as rookies, specifically 1st rounders, are they magically going to get hurt more because they are rookies or 1st rounders? I do think it's interesting the way you did the data because if you go back the last 10 years only 3 of 9 didn't play at least 15 games, almost like in today's NFL they are less likely to get hurt because you can't blow them up going across the middle. With that said, 50% of the 115 TE's in the league last year played at least 14 games with 40 of them playing all 16.

Fun fact, no player (WR or TE) in the league last year got to 100 targets playing less than 14 games and only 4 did it missing those 2 games, so why would I allow you to let the expectation be 12? I am saying that if the guy is healthy he can get 100 targets, I am arguing about his skill. Your argument is now morphing from a skill one to "he has to be healthy and that's part of it" argument which wasn't the position you had taken for the last couple of hours. 
 
If we are adding the potential of injury into this then we probably need to go back a couple of pages and reframe this thing because a lot of the push about why a WR is better wasn't mentioning the high rate of 1st rd WR injuries, I only saw you reference a rookie who missed no games last year.