“We Need Development And Growth From That Room”
July 24th, 2024
Tight end Payne Durham.
With training camp kicking off today at One Buc Palace, Joe sure hopes the Bucs’ crop of tight ends realizes they’ll have a new friend in a month or so if they can’t step up.
At tight end, the Bucs have average NFL starter Cade Otton. No shame in that for Otton. He was a fourth-round pick and has done extremely will within his skillset.
After Otton? The Bucs may not have much. It’s an unknown. But what is knows is that Otton played a ridiculous amount of snaps last season, 1,064 during the regular season, plus two playoff games.
There was a simple reason for that and offensive coordinator Liam Coen went there recently during his visit to The Sick Podcast — Pirate Parlay.
Joe likes how Coen isn’t all sunshine, rainbows and gelato when talking about his roster.
“We need to get more depth,” Coen said of his tight ends, acknowledging that Otton must play less. “There has to be a lot of growth. There was growth shown this spring. Again, hard to tell without pads, but we need development and growth out of that room for somebody to come in and be able to give us real snaps. … It’s definitely a position that needs to step up to go where we need to go as an offense.”
Coen didn’t say the Bucs would look elsewhere for a tight end later in training camp. But Joe believes that to be true if the Bucs don’t see that depth in a hurry.
Playing with one legitimate tight end is a recipe for a crappy running game and a more predictable offense.
Joe hopes Payne Durham makes the second-season leap typical of good players. He certainly flashed a couple of spectacular catches last season, but didn’t get much time overall.
July 24th, 2024 at 1:03 am
Someone with Durhams size should be a monster in the blocking game.
Here to everyone favorite 4 letter word (no, not that one): H O P E
July 24th, 2024 at 1:04 am
*Here’s to everyone’s favorite …
July 24th, 2024 at 4:59 am
Joe … ‘Playing with one legitimate tight end is a recipe for a crappy running game and a more predictable offense.’
Exactly Joe, and that’s been the case ever since Gronk retired. Otton will be burnt out by the time his rookie contract ends if he has to keep up his initial usage. He’s been on the field for over 2,000 offensive snaps in the last 2 years (roughly 95% availability) in all but 1 of our 37 regular season & playoff games.
That’s unheard of for a TE. And he’s only been targeted 149 times total in those 36 games … slightly more than 7% of his time on the field. IOW, Cade’s done a TON of blocking in those 2 years, and that kind of usage even took a huge toll on Gronk (who at 6’6″ & 265 lbs was a lot bigger than Cade’s 6’5″ & 247 lbs). Payne Durham needs to step up quickly or we need to find a quality starter TE to complement Cade.
July 24th, 2024 at 5:01 am
How much did they use Durham last year not much-the tight end position is not one of there needs its a guy to take the place of Gregory as he is a no show
July 24th, 2024 at 5:42 am
The offense is loaded with average!
July 24th, 2024 at 7:55 am
I like what Payne Durham can potentially be, he only had a handful of catches but I can remember about 2-3 of them being catches only a 6’6 +250lb TE could make. I’d like to see where he is in camp, I think he’s one of many young guys we have still looking to establish their role on this team and it’s actually good to have some new eyes on the offensive staff to figure this all this potential out.
July 24th, 2024 at 8:59 am
Durham is kind of slow isn’t he? I like his size but don’t know about the rest.
July 24th, 2024 at 9:06 am
I don’t know how to judge there blocking, but Cade Otton is probably the best route runner , he has what I call 60/40 hands. He’ll catch a lot of passes but then go out and drop two easy routine passes in a row. Payne has the best hands but he’s slow and not gonna really burn anyone, so you gotta scheme him in good matchups or throw him jump balls.
July 24th, 2024 at 10:10 am
TE is our weakest position. No reason for that other than lack of respect for this position by management. Gronk was amazing.
July 24th, 2024 at 10:18 am
Bowles brought in coach Justin Peelle to replace Van Damm, so let’s see what Peelle can do, especially in TE blocking. We don’t have early round draft picks in the room, so TE might be in the cards for an early round pick next year. Let’s see….
July 24th, 2024 at 12:05 pm
Generous to call Otton average. He makes the most of his little checkdowns and occasionally gets forgotten down the seam but he is woefully below average as a blocker. If Durham or Culp don’t prove themselves worthy of snaps we probably need to add someone to the room. Kieft has proven that he is a heavy package and special teams player only.
July 24th, 2024 at 3:04 pm
If you go back and watch Durham in college, he’s all over the place, mainly because he got so big. Early Durham, he looks like a WR, in that he’s not big at all – has great hands, and for a TE has pretty good speed. But then at some point he underwent a growth spurt (no, not talking about riods) and on film he’s so much bigger and slower and lumbering. So it depends on who the Bucs are getting on how valuable he is. I think the solution is that he needs to drop some weight to get back some speed, and I believe I read somewhere he did just that over the summer.