(In this series, Touchdown Wire’s Mark Schofield takes a look at one important metric per NFL team to uncover a crucial problem to solve for the 2020 season. In this installment, it’s time to look at how the New England Patriots’ tight ends struggled to produce in 2019, and what the vision for 2020 might be).
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to wins
For the times they are a-changin’.
-Bob Dylan “The Times They Are a-Changin'”
Bob Dylan’s 1964 anthem of change was written with the bigger picture in mind, but you could excuse New England Patriots fans for thinking that the lyrics from the sixties could apply to their favorite team in 2020.
For the first time since 2001, the Patriots face a season with a quarterback under center not named Tom Brady. But there are more changes on the horizon for the Patriots. Kyle Van Noy and Duron Harmon, two cornerstone pieces of their defense from the Super Bowl LIII campaign, have left town, as with Jamie Collins, a linebacker who was a core component of last season’s “Boogeymen” defense that began the year drawing comparisons to teams like the Chicago Bears of the 1980s and the Baltimore Ravens of the 2000s.
In addition, Rob Gronkowski, who retired prior to the start of the 2019 campaign, is back in football. But the outgoing tight end also has a new home, joining Brady down in Tampa.
As the team looks to their new future under assumed starting quarterback Jarrett Stidham, one area they need to improve upon from their 2019 season if the Patriots are going to have any offensive success in 2020 can start with this number: Two.
Production from the Patriots’ tight end room cratered over the past two season, and it was striking how unproductive the New England tight ends were a season ago. That group accounted for just two receiving touchdowns in 2019, one from Matt LaCosse and the other from Benjamin Watson. In fact, there were 32 tight ends who had more individual receiving touchdowns than the entire New England Patriots’ tight end room a year ago, including such illustrious names as Demetrius Harris, Josh Hill, and Blake Jarwin.
The tight end position, during the second half of the Brady/Bill Belichick run, has been such a force for the Patriots’ offense. Of course, part of this was due to the production from Gronkowski. But starting back to the 2010 season, the tight end group was incredibly beneficial to the Patriots’ offense. In 2010, for example, tight ends such as Gronkowski, Aaron Hernandez and Alge Crumpler combined for 93 receptions for 1,161 yards and 18 touchdowns. In 2011, Hernandez and Gronkowski combined for a remarkable 169 receptions (on 237 targets) for 2,237 yards and 24 touchdowns. From 2010 through 2017, Patriots’ tight ends combined for at least 1,000 yards receiving in every season but for the 2013 campaign, when Gronkowski played in only seven games.
But then 2018 and 2019 happened. In 2018 Gronkowski was hampered by injuries (appearing in just 13 games) and the combination of Dwayne Allen and Jacob Hollister failed to pick up the slack. Patriots’ tight ends in 2018 combined for just 54 receptions (on 81 targets) for 761 yards and three touchdowns.
That lack of production led many to implore the Patriots (and Belichick) to address the tight end position in the 2019 draft, even before Gronkowski announced his retirement. In what was considered a very deep draft class at the position, many called for the Patriots to double-dip with the 2019 draft class.
Instead, the Patriots went in a different direction, signing veterans such as Austin Sefarian-Jenkins, Eric Tomlinson and Watson to try and piece together a tight end group. The result? Patriots’ tight ends last season accounted for 37 receptions (on 53 targets) for 419 yards and the two touchdowns. We highlighted how those touchdowns trailed many individual players, but the same could be said for the rest of the numbers. For example, 21 tight ends had more receptions than the Patriots’ entire unit, 20 tight ends had more yards, and 21 tight ends had more targets than the Patriots’ group of players.
If you wanted a visual depiction of this trend in New England, here are receiving yards by the tight end since 2010:
The trendline is worrisome for Patriots’ fans.
Despite this lack of production, the Patriots kept using tight ends in 2019, rather than shifting to personnel packages that featured running backs and wide receivers exclusively. The Patriots used 11 offensive personnel on 43% of their snaps, followed next by 12 offensive personnel – which actually features two tight ends – on 24% of their plays. In contrast they used 10 personnel (four wide receivers, one running back and no tight ends) on just three plays, and 20 offensive personnel (two running backs, three wide receivers and no tight ends) on just ten plays.
Drilling this point home, when you take together the personnel groups that utilize a tight end (11, 12, 21, 22 and 32 being the ones the Patriots used in 2019) that accounts for 396 plays, or 97% of their offense.
So how did the Patriots look to address their tight end room this offseason? By finally double-dipping in the draft, albeit a year behind schedule. They added both Devin Asiasi and Dalton Keene on the second day of the draft, adding them to a group that includes both LaCosse and Ryan Izzo, as well as international player Jakob Johnson.
The likely vision? A return to the Patriots’ tight end plan from the Hernandez/Gronkowski years. Much like the Patriots could be turning the clock back to the start of the Brady Era in how they implement Stidham, the pairing of Asiasi and Keene could mirror what we saw at the start of the 2010s from the Patriots offense. With Hernandez as more of a “move” tight end and Gronkowski as more of the traditional type of TE, the Patriots could use their two-TE packages in creative ways. They could use a 12 personnel package, see what the defense was doing in terms of personnel, and then exploit the resulting advantage. For example, if they rolled out this package and the defense stayed with base personnel, they could spread you out – even going with empty formations – and throw out of this package. If the defense got wise to that and used more of a sub personnel group, they could condense the formation and run the ball at you, sometimes aligning Hernandez in the backfield.
That is the likely vision here, with the pair of Asiasi and Keene. A return to those personnel mismatches that, in turn, generates opportunities – and production – from the Patriots’ tight end room.
Something that was sorely missing a season ago.