Atlanta Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts might be one of the NFL’s biggest enigmas.
Bursting onto the scene in 2021 as one of the most electric rookies in that draft class, Pitts’ last two seasons have underwhelmed the football world to the point of exhaustion.
In 2022, quarterback Marcus Mariota was sailing passes beyond Pitts’ reach, and the tight end hurt his MCL and landed on injured reserve that November. In 2023, Pitts struggled to fully shake off his injury rust, shared reps with tight end Jonnu Smith and didn’t get consistent quarterback play from either Desmond Ridder or Taylor Heinicke.
While former Falcons coach Arthur Smith oversaw a 1,000-yard Pro Bowl season out of Pitts in 2021 with Matt Ryan under center, he was also the one calling the plays for Pitts in those other two seasons and got lots of heat for it.
By the end of last season, the narrative had set in place. Through three seasons, Pitts was the victim of poor quarterback play and bad coaching and needed a good coaching staff and quarterback to properly unleash him on opposing defenses.
In 2024, the blame is shifting. Pitts is coming off a game against the New Orleans Saints where he recorded zero yards on three catches, and he’s only got 105 yards and a touchdown through four games. That’s good for 19th in the NFL in yardage at the position. He’s got 15 targets to go with it, which is also good for a tie at 19th league-wide among tight ends.
There is a word that rhymes with “gust” that has started to come up in the football conversation with Pitts specifically. Rather than blaming circumstance, Pitts is shouldering the blame himself for his lack of production. Some fans, particularly those with fantasy football stakes, are getting sick and tired of Pitts not scoring touchdowns and catching lots of passes, and it’s fueling the dreaded “bust” discourse.
Let’s just get this out of the way right now. Any assertion that Pitts is a bust is complete and utter hogwash. A variety of factors have led into him not living up to his rookie season, including a pretty brutal injury, fair questions about his past usage and not having consistent quarterback play.
Perhaps Pitts might not be the all-time superstar draft analysts envisioned coming out of Florida. At least through three and a quarter seasons, he’s had some incredible highs and some perplexing lows. While it’s more than fair to drop Pitts from your fantasy team and wonder what his long-term floor and ceiling are in the NFL, it’s not fair to call him a bust. That’s just silly.
An abysmal receiving separation stat like this from ESPN can cause lots of concern for those with a vetted interest in Pitts’ success, as can diminished returns on the stat sheet while new Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins finds receivers like Darnell Mooney and Ray-Ray McCloud with ease in the passing game. It does make you wonder why Pitts isn’t a bigger role in this offense, and if it’s really just him or something else entirely.
You have to consider who is throwing the passes, who is calling the plays, how Pitts is being used and the context of how that all comes together to understand his lack of production and if this is going to get any better.
Los Angeles Rams leader Sean McVay has never had a tight end post 1,000 yards in a season as a head coach. If you go back to 2017, McVay’s offense has typically prioritized getting the ball to wide receivers first and tight ends second. Players like Tyler Higbee and Gerald Everett have produced in yardage, but never more than Higbee’s 734 yards in 2019. Wide receivers feast in McVay’s system, while tight ends get plenty of targets but don’t exactly take over the passing game.
In 2022, Higbee led the team in passing targets (108 targets for 620 yards and three touchdowns), but Rams superstar wideout Cooper Kupp only played in nine games that year. That’s basically an outlier in Higbee’s career, as he typically figures in behind the Rams’ top wide receivers.
New Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson chipped his NFL teeth within the McVay offense, and returned head coach Raheem Morris spent three seasons as McVay’s defensive coordinator. Morris coached wide receivers for a time with the Falcons and saw that offense funnel targets to players like Julio Jones, Calvin Ridley and Mohamed Sanu.
Through four games in 2024, wide receivers lead the Falcons in yardage and receptions. Former first-round pick Drake London, Mooney and McCloud have the lion’s share of targets and yardage, while super-talented running back Bijan Robinson has one more target than Pitts does. The tight end is fifth on the team in receptions and yards but tied for second in touchdowns.
At least through four games, the Falcons seem to be using Pitts as a traditional tight end in the Higbee mold. The Falcoholic’s Kevin Knight presented a compelling case as to how this may be the case and why it’s perhaps not how Pitts should be utilized.
Knight is right about Pitts being super unique and not an elite blocker. It’d make a lot of sense for Robinson, a young coach who is forming his own version of a McVay offense, to lean on wide receivers right now while trying to gel with Cousins and the team’s offensive personnel.
That makes players like London, Mooney and McCloud much more easy to scheme around and Pitts much more likely to play a traditional tight end role as opposed to how he was used at Florida and early in his Falcons’ career.
Cousins has been around long enough to feed any variety of wide receivers, tight ends and running backs, but he’s not to the point yet in Atlanta where he can freelance and go too far outside the scheme. Honestly, Cousins is one of the great scheme quarterbacks and leans heavily on his play caller to guide him with where he needs to get the ball.
A play like this, pointed out by The Falcoholic’s Tre’Shon Diaz, shows a wide-open Pitts running a compelling route and Cousins completely skipping him over for another read, likely the one designed into the play.
In another scenario, here’s what happens when the Falcons utilize Pitts’ skillset properly. He blows the top off the Kansas City defense for a 50-yard gain into the red zone, the most explosive Falcons play of the season so far.
Pitts hauled in a similar pass to start 2023, even though Ridder’s throw was a little underneath him. Pitts made the adjustment necessary to snag the pass in traffic, this being his first game coming back from injury.
Now watch the three targets from Pitts’ game on Sunday against the Saints. Rather than using his vertical speed to exploit the long passing game, Pitts is used in more intermediate routes against one of the best secondaries in New Orleans.
The Saints make plays on two of the targets that, depending how you see the rep, either show Pitts not going hard enough after the ball or show throws he never had a chance to catch. The third shows him seemingly getting tripped up on the route.
Now look at how the Falcons used Pitts in 2021, getting him out on the perimeter with a quarterback who can put the ball on the money.
Pitts has shown as recently as a couple of weeks ago against the Chiefs that he has the vertical speed to create explosive plays. He’s not factoring in as heavily to the Falcons’ offense as one might have expected, but that’s not necessarily all his fault.
At least from one angle, you can see a Falcons offense that’s still trying to find itself with a first-time play caller and a new quarterback who is heavily reliant on the scheme as to where he throws the ball. Wide receivers are probably the most comfortable targets for both Robinson to scheme up for and for Cousins to throw to right now, which may mean that Pitts might not get as many looks right now as he will later on in the season.
Robinson should get more comfortable opening his offense up a bit, and Cousins will get more comfortable with throwing the ball Pitts’ way. It’s not to say Pitts hasn’t lost a wee bit of his edge from his 2022 injury or that he’s just going to start playing like the best tight end in the league.
However, it’s far, far, far too early to make grand assumptions about Pitts’ future in a Falcons uniform. Time will tell if and when the gifted tight end can blend in with this new quarterback and coaching staff and if he can finally brush the doubters off his shoulders and play at a high level again.
That throw-and-catch against Kansas City shows it’s very possible he will.
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