It was once written that “to whom much is given, much will be required.” Whether it’s through draft picks or contracts, the Baltimore Ravens have given quite a bit to the tight ends currently on their roster. Now, much is certainly expected.
Baltimore has invested quite a bit in their tight ends. Hayden Hurst and Mark Andrews were first and third-round picks in the 2018 NFL draft respectively. Nick Boyle was just handed a three-year, $18 million contract extension this offseason. The Ravens love their tight ends and have committed to creating one of the best units in the league through draft equity or outright cap space. But all that investment has to pay some dividends.
With training camp on the horizon (rookies report on July 17, veterans report on July 24), it’s important to look at what this unit should be expected to do this season. To do that, we have to first look at what happened last year, new offensive coordinator Greg Roman and the offense around the tight ends.
Ravens’ 2018 season:
The Ravens saw a switch in the middle of the season from quarterback Joe Flacco to then-rookie Lamar Jackson at Week 11. With the change in quarterback came a change in the scheme to a run-heavy offense that utilized Jackson’s talents on the ground. From Week 11 onwards, the Ravens’ run: pass ratio was nearly 2:1 while producing 1,607 rushing yards to just 1,093 passing yards.
Hurst missed the first four games of the season with a foot injury that required surgery to insert a screw. Even though Hurst returned to the lineup in Week 5, he clearly never fully healed from the injury. Hurst finished the season strong but ultimately didn’t have the stat sheet many predicted because of the injury.
Boyle is the veteran of the group and remained the team’s primary blocking tight end. He was also lined up in the backfield in certain situations to act as a fullback. But once again, Boyle showed he’s an underrated receiving option as well when utilized there.
The big star was Andrews, who steadily improved as the season wore on. Andrews isn’t much of a blocker but with a good combination of size and speed, he creates mismatches as a receiver. Baltimore used him most often as a big-bodied slot receiver to really great effect. In fact, Andrews’ rookie season compares pretty favorably to many of the league’s great receiving tight ends.
| Player | Targets | Receptions | Yards | Average | Touchdowns |
| Hayden Hurst | 23 | 13 | 163 | 12.5 | 1 |
| Mark Andrews | 50 | 34 | 552 | 16.2 | 3 |
| Nick Boyle | 37 | 23 | 213 | 9.4 | 0 |
At the end of the season, offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg was fired and replaced with Greg Roman. The change in coordinator will undoubtedly change everything for the unit moving forward, which is what we’ll discuss on the next page.
Offensive coordinator Greg Roman:
Offensive consultant Greg Roman is now the offensive coordinator and he brings with him a long-established commitment to the ground game. In his six seasons as an NFL offensive coordinator, his teams have never finished higher than 29th in pass attempts, while never ranking lower than ninth in rushing attempts. And Roman’s love of tight ends fits in well with Baltimore’s past usage of the position.
The Ravens have been among the league leaders in terms of looking to their tight ends in the passing game ever since they won the Super Bowl following the 2012 season. In the last six seasons, Ravens tight ends have gobbled up 533 receptions. Only three teams saw their tight ends catch more passes in this span.
When Roman was with the 49ers between 2011-2014, they sent the 20th most targets the way of their tight ends and garnered the 24th most receptions. Roman was fortunate to have Vernon Davis at his disposal during that time span. Davis was a good enough player that he was worth his place as either a pass-catcher or a run blocker, averaging nearly 17% of the 49ers targets in the three seasons between 2011-14. But it wasn’t just Davis doing the heavy lifting on those teams. The 49ers tight ends commanded an average of 24.31% of the offense’s targets in each season.
Davis saw plenty of playing time but he was frequently joined on the field by another tight end. This is something that we should factor into our expectations for the Ravens’ tight ends in the coming year. Davis played 91.3% of the snaps in 2012 while Delanie Walker (another do-it-all tight end) also played on 56.8% of them. Blocking specialist Garrett Celek was in on 10.3% as well. A year later, Davis was down to 81.7%, and while Celek had increased to 12.4%, the 49ers deployed another dual-threat tight in Vance McDonald on 48.4% of their snaps.
Even with a stud at his disposal, we can see that Roman has prepared to deploy more than one tight end on a good chunk of his offensive plays. This should suit the players already on the roster, considering that the Ravens were one of the league leaders in terms of how often they used multiple tight ends on offense last season. According to Sharp Football Stats, the Ravens had two or more tight ends on the field on 42% of their offensive snaps last season.
Given Roman’s history with using tight ends, Baltimore’s love of the position and the talent there, it should mean ample playing time for Boyle, Hurst and Andrews this season.
Hayden Hurst’s projected 2019 stats:
As I mentioned above, Hurst was limited last year due to a foot injury. He’d finish his rookie season with just 29.6% of the offensive snaps and pretty lackluster stats accordingly. That makes predicting his second year a big question mark because we haven’t really seen what he can do yet.
This offseason, Hurst says he’s healthy. He’s had the screw removed, added 20 pounds of muscle and has quite the chip on his shoulder to prove folks wrong. That’s a positive for a guy that rightfully earned being a first-round draft pick by being a well-round tight end.
Hurst is really the most well-rounded tight end on the roster. He’s a solid blocker, finding himself blocking 152 snaps while allowing just one pressure, according to PFF. But he’s also well known as a sure-handed receiver that can create mismatches down the seam thanks to his size and speed combination. He might not be quite the receiver as Andrews or as good of a blocker as Boyle but he’s a solid combination of the two.
By being able to block and catch the football well, Hurst has a real shot at seeing a huge uptick in his playing time in 2019. Keeping him on the field isn’t the same liability it might be for either Andrews or Boyle in certain situations and it doesn’t tip off defenses to what Baltimore plans on doing. However, Hurst still needs to prove he can stay healthy and produce when he is on the field to earn those snaps.
It’s difficult not seeing Hurst improve over last year. He’s healthy now and should have developed a little more chemistry with Jackson over last season and this offseason. If we look at the final three regular-season games last year, I think we have a better taste at what Hurst will do in the Ravens’ run-heavy offense. Extrapolating that out and adjusting for what I hope is an all-around improved offense, Hurst does alright for himself in his second season.
| Player | Targets | Receptions | Yards | Average | Touchdowns |
| Hayden Hurst | 52 | 35 | 473 | 13.5 | 4 |
Nick Boyle’s projected 2019 stats:
Nick Boyle led the Ravens tight ends in terms of playing time last season, playing on 54.75% of the snaps. Boyle is among the league’s best-run blockers at his position and it would not surprise anyone if he were to pace the group in terms of snaps again this season.
The Ravens extended Boyle this past offseason, locking him up to a three-year, $18 million contract. He is not a complete zero in the passing game and indeed set new career highs in receiving yards (213) and yards per reception (9.3) in 2018. However, he averages a mere 1.6 catches per game in his career.
Boyle will earn his stripes helping the likes of Mark Ingram and Justice Hill rack up the yards on the ground in the coming year, rather than padding his own stats. It’s not a hard projection to imagine him trailing both Hurst and Andrews in offensive production and probably by quite a long way.
| Player | Targets | Receptions | Yards | Average | Touchdowns |
| Nick Boyle | 20 | 15 | 150 | 10 | 1 |
Mark Andrews’ projected 2019 stats:
The player who is most likely to be the Vernon Davis of this group is going to be Mark Andrews. The second-year player enjoyed a successful rookie season, which is by no means an easy feat at his position. Andrews set team rookie records with 34 receptions, 552 receiving yards and three touchdowns in 2018.
Jeff Zrebiec of The Athletic notes that Andrews looks bigger, stronger and faster than he did last season. Those are all traits that’ll help him continue to improve as a run blocker and grow as a receiver. Which will be impressive considering his rookie season compares favorably to the league’s top tight ends.
He showed great chemistry with Jackson, with the quarterback posting an adjusted yards-per-attempt mark of 16.4 when targeting Andrews. In comparison, Joe Flacco averaged 9.4 whenever he looked for Andrews. This number is likely to go down over time, especially if Andrews commands a healthy share of the team’s targets moving forward. But anything around or over 10 adjusted yards-per-attempt for a quarterback when targeting a tight end is excellent. By comparison, Tom Brady averaged 11.1 AYA whenever he sent a pass the way of Rob Gronkowski. Travis Kelce got Patrick Mahomes an average of 9.34 AYA in 2018.
He was a big-play machine on the Ravens’ offense, ranking second among all tight ends with 16.2 yards-per-reception and 11 yards-per-target. Andrews was one of 19 tight ends to see at least 50 targets last season, and of this group, he was fifth in average yards-after-the-catch per target with 3.8. Travis Kelce, the consensus best tight end in the NFL right now, averaged 4. YAC isn’t a particularly consistent stat from year to year, but Andrews showed enough as a rookie to suggest that he could be a huge part of the Ravens passing game in year two.
He should easily exceed his production from a season ago. But the teams’ run-first approach may prevent him from challenging Dennis Pitta’s franchise record for single-season tight end receptions (86 in 2016), or Todd Heap’s single-season yardage record (855 in 2005).
| Player | Targets | Receptions | Yards | Average | Touchdowns |
| Mark Andrews | 70 | 50 | 700 | 14 | 5 |
