Want to win the Super Bowl? Win the NFL Draft. Then do it again. And again.
Every executive, every coach and every fan of the league knows championship-level rosters are built through the draft. They also know winning the draft year after year is tough. It’s complicated. It’s nuanced. Picking great players is obviously the top priority, but there are other considerations.
One of them is drafting to take advantage of the rookie wage scale under the current collective bargaining agreement.
NFL rookie wage scale for top-10 picks
Pick No. Estimated salary ($M)
1
$38.5M
2
$36.8M
3
$35.8M
4
$34.5M
5
$32.4M
6
$28.5M
7
$25.5M
8
$22.3M
9
$22.2M
10
$21.3M
Let’s examine the top of the draft. Right now, the first overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft is slated to make just over $38 million in four years — with the potential for a fifth-year team option — or about $9.6 million per year. If that pick hits, it ends up being a huge bargain, especially if it’s a player who plays a premium position like quarterback, wide receiver, offensive tackle or edge rusher.
But tight ends? There’s not a lot of surplus value to be had there, which means making the case for Georgia’s Brock Bowers to be a top-10 pick is tough. There’s little debate he’s an elite prospect. He’s ranked No. 4 on The Athletic’s consensus big board and No. 5 among draft guru Dane Brugler’s top 100 players. There’s a real case to be made he’s the best tight end prospect the NFL has seen in years.
So why not take him in the top 10?
Because even if he hits, teams aren’t squeezing as much value out of their top-10 pick as they would be if they hit on a player at a premium position.
First, let’s consider quarterbacks. The NFL’s top five QBs made about $51.8 million in average annual salary in 2023, according to Spotrac.com. In contrast, last year’s second overall pick, Houston’s C.J. Stroud, will make about $9.1 million annually, or about a million more than backup QB Jacoby Brissett made last year. Stroud was the 23rd-highest-paid QB in the NFL last year.
Drake London, the wide receiver for the Atlanta Falcons, was taken with the eighth pick in the 2022 draft; his average annual salary is $5.4 million. A top-five salary at wide receiver in 2023 was about $26.7 million annually. You see where this is going?
Spending high draft picks on premiere positions provides teams with surplus value and increased cap flexibility that can be used to retain their own top players and/or dipping into free agency.
Here’s the full breakdown by position (though not every position has a recent top-10 pick):
Note: We used the highest-drafted player at each position over the past two years.
Now, not every player will outperform his rookie contract to the level of Stroud or even London. But you can see in the table, there’s not nearly as much surplus value to be had by drafting a tight end in the top 10.
And that’s simply because the league does not consider tight end a premiere position. Look at the salaries across the league. The current average salary among the top five tight ends is $15.4 million. If Bowers is selected in the top 10 — it would then be safe to project his average salary to be around $6 million — he would instantly become one of the higher-paid tight ends in the NFL. That means the team that drafts him isn’t creating nearly as much surplus value as it could have had it taken a wide receiver, edge rusher, offensive tackle or pretty much any other position. Even running back.
To make the case for Bowers as a top-10 pick, you have to believe he can be an elite pass catcher. There aren’t many at the position who are thought of that way, but a couple who fit the bill are Kansas City’s Travis Kelce and Baltimore’s Mark Andrews, who have proven to make impacts similar to some top-end wide receivers.
According to my own NFL Projection Model, Kelce and Andrews make a similar impact on the expected winning percentage or point spread in an NFL game as Las Vegas’ Davante Adams and Philadelphia’s A.J. Brown. But the average annual salary for Kelce and Andrews is around $14.2 million, while Adams and Brown sit at about $26.5 million.
Seeing that discrepancy, there’s a case to be made that while drafting a top tight end might not save a team much on his rookie contract, it could net big savings on a second contract. Of course, that draft pick has to hit in a big way for that math to work out in favor of the team.
Can Bowers be the next Kelce or Andrews? His college production seems to indicate he can be.
Bowers was dominant as soon as he stepped on the field as a true freshman at Georgia. Over the past two seasons, Bowers ranks seventh in EPA/route among receivers and tight ends who have run at least 500 routes, according to TruMedia. The names ahead of him? Oregon’s Tez Johnson, Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr., LSU’s Malik Nabers, Oregon’s Troy Franklin, and USC’s Tahj Washington. The name directly behind him? Washington’s Rome Odunze.
And if we wanted to expand a little further, going back to 2019, Bowers ranks 11th among all pass-catching prospects — even ahead of Pitts, who was 17th. The names ahead of him include DeVonta Smith, Justin Jefferson, Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave. Meanwhile, the likes of London, Jordan Addison and Amon-Ra St. Brown rank well behind him.
Now, those ready to make an argument against taking Bowers in the top 10 would surely point out that none of the league’s best tight ends were taken in the top 10. In fact, Kelce, Andrews and George Kittle — arguably the top three tight ends in the NFL — were all taken in the third round or later. Rob Gronkowski, maybe the greatest tight end of all time, also was a third-round pick.
Perhaps those players should serve as a cautionary tale against drafting a tight end so high. Perhaps they confirm that evaluating the position isn’t as easy as saying, “This is a generational prospect,” and making the easy selection.
Tight end production may rely more heavily on circumstance than other positions. Do they have the kind of coach who’s looking to take advantage of their skill set? What about the quarterback?
Let’s take Pitts as an example. Ahead of the 2021 draft, Brugler rated Pitts as the No. 2 prospect in his final big board, but he has yet to live up to the hype. He also hasn’t benefited from quality quarterback play during his first three seasons, and the Falcons fired coach and offensive play caller Arthur Smith this offseason. So, was Pitts a disappointment, or were his circumstances too tough to overcome?
Now consider Sam LaPorta, a second-round pick by the Detroit Lions in 2023. He ranked No. 64 on Brugler’s final big board, yet he immediately impacted the game as one of the league’s better tight ends. Of course, by the time he got there, the Lions were already considered to have one of the best offensive ecosystems in the NFL with OC Ben Johnson calling the shots. LaPorta walked into an infinitely better situation than Pitts did.
So what are NFL teams going to believe about Bowers? Is he the type of player who will be able to thrive regardless of his circumstances?
“When it comes to Bowers, I had one scout tell me that it should be more about ‘impact’ value and not ‘positional’ value,” Brugler said. “And Bowers has the potential to impact the roster more than most tight ends.”
That is consistent with what I said about the top pass-catching tight ends having a similar impact on an NFL game as some top wide receivers. But that’s not all Brugler had to say on the topic and the next quote is the million-dollar, or in this case, the tens-of-millions-of-dollars question.
“But it would still take a ballsy GM to make the move. You’d have to really trust your play caller to make you look smart.”
GO DEEPER
NFL Draft 2024 order from Rounds 1-7: All 257 picks and 32 teams
And therein lies the problem with the tight end position. If you feel like your play caller needs to make your top-10 selection look smart, should you be drafting that player at that position? Sure, a play caller can make life easier for everyone, and that should be the goal, but I firmly believe a top-10 non-QB pick should be ready to make an impact right away.
Put another way: There’s a reason we’re not having this same discussion about Harrison, Nabers and Odunze.
For Bowers, the question ultimately is about how likely teams believe it is that he becomes an elite pass-catching tight end. If that’s the kind of player they think he’ll be, a top-10 pick can be a sound investment. If not, they’ll be far better off taking someone else.
(Photo of Brock Bowers: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
2024-03-19 11:42:42
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