They got it right with Mike

[*ochocincos*]

(12-31-2024, 02:15 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Feel like this is a yearly situation on the board...
Last year there were Hudson truthers out there saying he was our TE1.
The year before that we "needed" to keep Hurst.
The year before that keeping Uzomah was a must.

A lot of mediocre TEs that Burrow makes look above average. We do need to actually get some young TEs so they can stick around for a handful of years in a row (and hopefully both block AND catch rather than exclusively one or the other) but Gesicki is more of the same that we've had. Quite replaceable by any semi-competent WR3 catching passes from Burrow as he's exclusively a pass catcher himself.

Pay Chase and if you get a legitimate pro bowl level blocking and catching TE, pay him too... but everyone else needs to be cycling through as inexpensive youth and we need to trust Burrow to be able to elevate them. He's done it for 4 straight TEs now and even Yoshi is closing in on 500 yards this season a year after he made even Trenton Irwin put up >300 yards in a season with some people on here thinking he was an actual WR talent rather than a PS guy catching passes from Burrow. That's our Austin Collies/Jacob Tammes/Coby Fleeners/Donnie Averys that Peyton Manning would play with, elevate, and then move on to let someone else pay them based on Peyton Manning QB numbers (because those teams didn't have Peyton Manning).

The thing is nowadays TEs are not selected to the Pro Bowl because of their blocking. It's just their receiving production.
While these TEs like McBride, Kelce, and Bowers are blocking 250+ reps, it's always the guys who get the most yards/TDs that get the votes.
But none of these guys are "stud" blockers.

There are some guys in the draft that I would love to have that can block while being great pass catchers.
But if the Bengals don't want to invest an early draft pick in one, I'm game for bringing back Gesicki and having him continue to serve the big receiver role.
It would be nice if they would use him more as a blocker, but they seem to like Sample and other guys for that.

Can't really factor Erick All too much into the equation unless/until the team gets a good feel on his recovery come Spring time heading into FA/draft.