There is no way to sugarcoat the following statement: The Chicago Bears tight ends were historically bad in 2019.

All three players who started the season with the team, finished on injured reserve (Trey Burton, Adam Shaheen, and Ben Braunecker), with two relatively unknown commodities left to pick up the pieces (J.P. Holtz and Jesper Horsted).

When a group of five tight ends combine for just 395 yards and two touchdowns for the season, you can expect some harsh grades. Here are the grades for the 2019 tight ends.

Trey Burton: F

After a strong start to the 2018 season, Burton trailed off and ultimately missed the Bears wildcard playoff game against the Eagles due to a sports hernia. The expectation heading into 2019 was that Burton would be 100 percent entering training camp, but ended up missing even more time due to other injuries and failed to string together any sort of momentum in the preseason.

Even when he was on the field when he was deemed “healthy,” Burton was invisible in nearly every game he played. When he was targeted, he struggled with drops and wasn’t willing to take the big hit in order to secure the catch on multiple occasions. Burton wound up catching 14 passes for 84 yards in eight games with no scores.

His health will be a major question mark heading into next season, but with two more years left on his deal and a significant amount of dead-cap attributed to his contract, Burton will likely begin the 2020 season on the Bears. It can’t get worse than 2019, right?