Colts badly need a tight end, but don't expect them to get immediate impact from the draft

INDIANAPOLIS — The Colts need pass catchers of any kind in this NFL Draft.

That’s no secret. An Indianapolis team that produced just one player, wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr., with more than 385 receiving yards has lost Jack Doyle to retirement, Zach Pascal to the Eagles and hasn’t brought back T.Y. Hilton with two days left before the draft.

At least one draft pick at each position seems likely this weekend.

But it’s likely going to be much more difficult to get immediate production from a rookie tight end than a rookie wide receiver, especially if the Colts are trying to replace Doyle’s do-everything skill set at the position.

“I think that’s the hard one to find,” Indianapolis general manager Chris Ballard said in his predraft press conference. “We all want the superstar. (We) all want the (George) Kittle, the (Travis) Kelce, the unique playmaker that causes a real mismatch. Alright, you’ve got that, then you’ve got other guys that can catch the ball good, but the guy that can block the line of scrimmage, that’s a hard dude to find.”

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Colts head coach Frank Reich has been working with two of those tight ends — designated the “Y” tight end in the Indianapolis offense — for the past three seasons.

Current Colts TE situation

Doyle and Alie-Cox have combined to play more than 1,100 snaps in each of the past three years, playing a more critical role in the offense than their combined receiving numbers (an average of 601.3 yards per season) would suggest.

Both Doyle and Alie-Cox have been central to the Colts’ vaunted running game, and Reich has often deployed their versatility as deception on key passing downs, lining up his tight ends as blockers and then slipping them out into the open field uncovered.

“When you have two Y’s, your run game looks a little different,” Ballard said. “Especially if they can the catch the ball, too.”

Finding a rookie who can handle that kind of role right away is one of the most difficult tasks in the draft.

Finding a rookie tight end who can contribute right away in the passing game is hard enough. Only 14 rookie tight ends in the past 20 years have posted more than 500 receiving yards in a season; by comparison, 10 rookie wide receivers in just the past decade have broken the 1,000 -yard mark.

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And some of the NFL’s best tight ends did little as rookies. Kansas City’s Travis Kelce and Las Vegas’s Darren Waller produced next to nothing in their first seasons in the NFL.

“I mean, look, any rookie that comes in, there’s a definite learning curve. Yeah, you want to be able to get good production if you draft one,” Ballard said. “We have to have a role defined of what we want him to do, put him in that role and let him go.”

Doyle’s role is even harder to fill, given all the versatility that it required.

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The unsung veteran played a lot of Y tight end, took some snaps at the F position and often deployed all over the formation as Reich’s ace in the hole, playing a key role in Jonathan Taylor’s league-leading 1,811 rushing yards last season.

Identifying a player like that in the draft is more difficult than it’s ever been.

Because of the proliferation of spread offenses, most of the draft’s best tight ends have spent the majority of their college careers as receivers, rather than lining up with their hand on the ground and blocking.

The Colts used a fourth-round pick on Kylen Granson last year.

Granson played 20.5% of the snaps and caught 11 passes for 106 yards as a rookie, a slow start that likely can be attributed some to the offense’s reduced intermediate throwing game with Carson Wentz at the helm.

Now that Matt Ryan’s the starter — Ryan has always been good at working with the tight end — Granson appears headed for a much bigger role this season.

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But he’s not a Y tight end.

“We see good things in Granson as an athlete and as a route runner,” Ballard said. “Think that he’s got a chance to be a really good F tight end.”

That still leaves a Doyle-sized hole in the offense.

Even if the Colts increase Alie-Cox’s snaps to Doyle’s high-water mark under Reich — 800 snaps in 2019 — that still leaves the 357 snaps Alie-Cox played that season available, and the Colts need another Y in case Alie-Cox goes down with an injury, although the big tight end has been remarkably durable, missing just one game in the past three seasons.

“It’s going to be impossible to replace Jack, it really is. We’re going to adapt,” Reich said at the NFL’s owner’s meetings. “In our offense, it’s been proven that having somebody at tight end that can make plays, that we know to use that. We can piecemeal that together.”

A tight end ready to make an immediate impact would make the offensive staff’s job a lot easier.

But it’s going to take one heck of a draft pick to buck the trend at tight end.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts badly need a TE, but don't expect immediate impact from draft