The Cowboys coveted Kyle Pitts in April’s draft, just like most every other team in the league. They did their homework on the Florida tight end, but quickly came to realize that Pitts would be unlikely to fall out of the top several spots. The Dallas brain trust was right; Pitts was selected fourth overall by Atlanta, the highest-drafted tight end in history.
So far, he’s living up to expectations. Pitts leads the Falcons in both receiving yards and yards per reception. His 546 yards place him among the top 25 pass-catchers across the entire NFL after nine weeks, and he’s currently moving the sticks for Atlanta on two out of every three receptions.
Now it will be up to the Cowboys’ retooled defense to slow down the talented rookie when he comes to town on Sunday. Head coach Mike McCarthy intimated on Wednesday that, as the team looks to bounce back from their Week 9 nightmare, the big 21-year-old might actually be the piece of the Falcons’ offensive puzzle that he’s most concerned about. So the staff dug out their research materials from spring, paying particular attention to film clips in which some of the cornerbacks the club was eyeing then squared off against Pitts.
“We actually went back and looked back at some of his tape- when the corners that we were watching and [Pitts were] back in Florida- for some of the potential matchup opportunities,” McCarthy told the media on Wednesday. “Obviously, he’s a feature player in their offense. He’s a challenge for matchups. Particularly, they don’t use him a whole lot in-line. It’s more open formations and situational football, how they’re trying to get him the ball. We have a lot of respect for the young man’s talent. He’ll definitely be a focal point for us defensively.”
#Cowboys HC Mike McCarthy says they popped in Falcons TE Kyle Pitts college tape in preparation this week. Lot of respect for his talent and a focal point for them defensively.
— Jane Slater (@SlaterNFL) November 10, 2021
Defensive coordinator Dan Quinn was able to watch Pitts’s final season of college ball in real-time after he was let go by the Falcons in early October 2020.
“I got a chance to watch some SEC last fall,” Quinn told reporters this week, before noting what stood out to him about Pitts: “The length and the speed. When you can throw away- say you had leverage on me to this side and I can throw so far away- that gives a guy like Matt [Ryan, Falcons quarterback] a good opportunity to know where the leverage is and put the ball far enough away that it can’t get defended.”
Quinn admitted that Pitts’s 6-foot-6 size poses a real problem and makes him especially tough to defend for defensive backs and linebackers who are almost universally quite a bit shorter.
“Here’s a guy who’s got this great length and size,” he continued. “When you can throw away from somebody’s leverage, you can throw it a little further away and don’t have to be as tight of a throw, whereas somebody who’s small and compact, it’s almost 50/50. Having a guy with leverage and real length, that’s a big factor.”
It’s easy to look at the Falcons roster and think that with wide receiver Calvin Ridley out, the Cowboys can simply devote more coverage resources to Pitts. But there’s still the dangerous running back Cordarrelle Patterson to watch coming out of the backfield. And not having Ridley on the field hasn’t necessarily made life harder on Pitts; he snagged nine balls for 119 yards and a score in the first game that Ridley missed this season.
The Cowboys have proven to be somewhat susceptible to attacks from the tight end position. Using fantasy stats, Dallas ranks in the bottom ten when it comes to keeping tight ends’ numbers down. Sure enough, rare has been the week when an opposing tight end (or TE platoon) didn’t end up doing a fair bit of damage- in catches, yardage, or points- against Quinn’s unit.
| Week | Tight End | Tgt | Rec | Yds | TD | Avg |
| Week 1 | Rob Gronkowski, TB | 8 | 8 | 90 | 2 | 11.3 |
| Week 2 | Jared Cook, LAC | 5 | 3 | 28 | 0 | 9.3 |
| Week 3 | Ertz/Goedert, PHI | 11 | 6 | 119 | 1 | 19.8 |
| Week 5 | Engram/Rudolph, NYG | 5 | 5 | 69 | 0 | 13.8 |
| Week 6 | Hunter Henry, NE | 2 | 2 | 25 | 1 | 12.5 |
| Week 7 | Tyler Conklin, MIN | 7 | 5 | 57 | 0 | 11.4 |
Dalton Schultz, Dallas’s own tight end, has suggested that teammate Jayron Kearse might be uniquely well-equipped with handling his Falcons counterpart during Sunday’s game, based on what he sees in the Cowboys’ practice sessions. The thinking is that Kearse’s speed and rare 6-foot-4-inch height would help slow down the versatile Atlanta phenom, who frequently, as McCarthy pointed out, also lines up as a traditional wide receiver.
Quinn says that multitasking aspect of the league’s new crop of playmakers will make defending Pitts one of his group’s top jobs come Sunday.
“You’d better have enough length, because there’s going to be enough 50/50 balls,” Quinn said. “That type of player in the NFL is a big piece of how to defend players in the NFL now, because whether it’s Pitts or other tight ends we’re facing around the league, it’s not traditional hand-in-the-dirt tight end all the time anymore. These are guys that play up in all different spots, and you have to have enough variety and different-style players to defend, because one week you may have to defend a player like him and then another week, it’s that receiver or running back. Each week, there’s some funkiness, and how do you match up? That’s one of the best parts of coaching the NFL. You’re talking about all these unique things that happen and how do you defend them and how do you play them?”
How the Cowboys choose to play Pitts in Week 10 may go a long way in determining how successfully the team kicks off the second half of their season.
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