Still Sleeping on the Jags’ Tight Ends? Don’t… (Maybe?)

Still Sleeping on the Jags’ Tight Ends? Don’t… (Maybe?)

[Music] Take [Music] Travis Holmes with the Believe Network, bitcatountry.com, and the Duvall Paul Dive podcast here with your Jacksonville Jaguars. I’m not even sure what to call it. Let’s just call it a quick hit. Um, and we didn’t really have a podcast scheduled for today, but honestly, it just felt like it was time to have a conversation surrounding the tight end room, the depth, uh, kind of what we expect of the guys. And I wanted to make sure I gave a quick shout out to Kavak on X. Um it is because of this communication, this conversation back and forth that he actually hit us up multiple times with a Duvall dive um you know account on X basically stating hey definitely spent a millisecond on it on both of the previous shows with Ben Troop uh you know shout out to him former Tennessee Titan tight end about the role of the depth in the tight end room and what capacity they’re going to kind of going to play. Um he’s kind of basically asking sounds like we the Duvall dive crew wanted a bigger named or a bigger type of tight end with Evan Ingram now gone. So what what would the tight end room look like and how do these guys that have been brought in Johnny Mut Hunter Long and Company help? Uh, and again, I wanted to make sure I gave him a quick shout out because I honestly thought we had already talked about this in a little bit more detail. And after going back and listening to the previous podcast, I realized we may have been a little bit more dismissive than um than what we intended to be. So, I wanted to take a quick second just to give it some real conversation, give it a little bit of depth, and talk about what this tight end room truly is, maybe what James Glstone and what Liam Cohen see in these guys. and kind of where I predict this thing to land. I know Kyle is not here, so I don’t want to give my his opinion of the subject. I’ll let him talk about that on next week’s Duvall Die, but in the meantime, let’s start with Johnny Munt. Like, we know Britain Strange is for the most part going to be your starting tight end on this roster. We also have a general inclination uh that they that this staff this coaching staff does not generally treat tight ends as like number one number two kind of options as far as the passing game is concerned um unless injuries happen like with the 2024 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. So for the most part you are talking some about someone who would likely be um or room that would likely be third to maybe even fourth in the pecking order as far as the order of who’s going to be getting the ball. Uh but nevertheless, you got Johnny Munt who played both uh you know for Shawn McVey uh in LA, both played for Minnesota uh play played for Minnesota later uh for I believe three years uh in that system. He’s a versatile guy who kind of knows the offense. So he’s going to hit the ground running in that way. Uh a lot like quarterback Nick Mullins. Uh he’s more of one of your floor raiser types who’s going to kind of stabilize that floor. play a lot of the move tight end position and also give you some adequate blocking as far as that piece is concerned. Um, now I have heard a few in the media kind of call him a solid checkdown guy. Um, I know in 2024 he had a four yard per average depth of target and in 2023 it was 4.8 yards per average depth of target. And that would almost give folks the general understanding that he is the kind of one of those just run to the sticks and turnaround types of guys. but he actually seemed to be a little bit more than that if you watch his tape. Um, so I was, well, you know what? You know what? Uh, let’s let’s talk about that. Cuz like in the 2023 season, he stepped up in those last two games of the season. He had nine catches for 96 yards and a touchdown on 13 targets in those two games after TJ Huckkins and tore his ATL. And I’m like, oh, that’s that that actually wasn’t bad. had like he had a one game against the Detroit Lions, five receptions for uh on six targets, averaging 11.6 yards and and against the Green Bay Packers, he had a seven targets, four catches for 39 yards. Again, averaging 9.8 per uh catch and he had a touchdown in that game. Like that was not bad for someone who’s your uh for the most part in that offense, he’s your tight end three. Uh again, with Justin Jefferson also in that offense. Now, you kind of maybe thought that he was going to kind of show up a little bit more in the 2024 season, but again, that’s T.J. Hawinson as your number one rece number one tight end. Uh Josh Oliver is your number two tight end. So, he was the number two guy at that point putting up those quality uh kind of outings late in the season. That’s not a bad situation at all. Um, but with TJ Hawinson returning in week seven of the 2024 season and Josh Oliver man inning that tight end two spot. Uh, Munt his most involved game kind of became, you know, that week two game against the San Francisco 49ers. He only had like 23 23 routes ran um and walked away from the game with uh three targets, two catches for like 12 yards. So, he basically took another step back into being that number two tight end to then becoming number three tight end once TJ Hawinson returned. And in 2024, he ended up earning a 63.8 Pro Football Focus pass blocking grade and a 55.5 run blocking grade, which is their above average and their average tiers uh for Pro Football Focus. Now, I wanted to also show off the PFF scores. I know PFF Pro Focus is not the Bible. I know it’s not the gospel that folks believe, uh, but I at least wanted to give us a little comparative analysis as far as looking at what the Jacksonville Jaguars tight end, the primary tight ends we’re looking at at least, uh, kind of look like for Pro Football Focuses scores with Britain Strange having a 66 overall. Uh, Johnny Munt in the 2024 season had a 57.2 and Hunter Long had a 66.6. However, if you’re just looking at run blocking, it looks like Hunter Long blows everyone out of the water um at 61.8 with the next closest guy being Briton Strange at 56.5. And if most Jacksonville Jaguar fans will tell you, hey, we actually like the way that Briton Strange blocked in in the running games. If you do, you’re probably going to love the way that Hunter Long blocks that that may be your Luke Ferrell replacement right there. Um you know, a guy who’s can truly like be dominant at the point of attack. Um and then he was also very good. Um I believe 12th in the league in pass blocking. Hunter Long that is. Um he had a 73.4 uh pass blocking grade with Johnny Munt having a 63.8. So again Munt ended up being pretty good. Like again you’re talking about that above average to average as far as pass blocking and run blocking uh per pro football focus and pro a lot of the other advanced analytics also. Um, and nevertheless, that gives the Jacksonville Jaguars a few options as far as a few bo options um for both Hunter Long, both Johnny Munt uh cuz let’s let’s talk about Hunter Long while we’re already on it. He’s been primarily a special teams player for much of his career. Like he was a blocking tight end who played a lot of special teams snaps. Uh I believe he was the second most on the Rams um in 2024 of all, you know, skilled position players. Uh he had 263 special team snaps in 2024. So he was listed as high as tight end two throughout much of the 20 uh 2024 season and he never achieved 10 routes ran per game um behind co uh Kobe Parkinson. So, like we’ve already talked about the fact that uh you know Hunter uh sorry uh Johnny Munt had multiple games where he ran over 20 uh routes per game whereas comparatively Hunter Long without an offense with um with Justin Jefferson but also with an offense with Puka Nua and Cooper Cuff. So yeah, take it take it or leave it. Um wasn’t running as many routes. They ran a lot more 11 personnel. So, I don’t really know how to kind of quantify those differences between the way the two offenses were ran, but nevertheless, uh we already talked about the fact that Long had that 12th in the league pass blocking grade of 73.4 and that 61 point uh 68.1 run blocking grade, which is fifth in the league. And again, the PFF had that rated in their good and above average categories. So you’re talking about again the Jaguars taking too by low risk on guys who just haven’t been giving significant snaps who’ve shown in at least small spurts that they’ve able to be one dominant in run blocking and two solid in the passing game but again with in limited snaps. And that’s kind of what you want to hope for when you know these guys already know the offense that you’re trying to run coming in. Um, I mean, hell, they even with Quinton Morris, that’s another guy. He was a primarily a special teams player. So, these guys are still going to be able to give you more as far as being your tight end three, and if an injury happens, can still step in and be your tight end, too. You know, options. Uh, Morris was a three-year veteran from Buffalo. Uh, and he’s another guy who was also kind of in a rough situation. Uh, you know, similar to Johnny Munt and trying, if you want to evaluate how good he might be because he spent his first, you know, two years behind Dalton in K. Well, yeah. Two years behind Dalton Concincaid and Dawson Knox in 2023 and 2024 and his rookie season behind again uh you know Dawson Knox. So, you’re not getting very many snaps on offensively at that point. You just playing most of that being a core four special teamer. Um in 2024 he had a PFF pass blocking grade of 50.1 and that was with the majority of his offensive snaps being used in blocking roles. So, like in college, he was a solid receiving back uh receiving tight end. So, that gives you a little bit of a guess that if you think the Jaguars are going to keep four tight ends, those more likely than not are going to be your top four guys. Uh but what I thought was real interesting, if you’re looking at this from multiple seasons, uh when looking at those additions, I thought it was real interesting because entering the 2024 season, Hunter Long and Quinton Morris were both rated as top 10 run blocking tight ends per pro football focuses run block scoring. So now you’re talking about might be seeing a trend here. You when you’re talking about they bought three guys in at tight end, they let one guy go at tight end and Evan Ingram who historically struggled at run blocking. I’m just going to keep it 100. Like if you look at Pro Football Focus’s 2024 grades, you you might see, hey, Evan Ingram actually was rated pretty well uh run blocking. He wasn’t horrendous looking, but we also know Pro Football Focus numbers aren’t the Bible. So, it’s kind of that give and take. Uh, when you look at the fact that he only had like 101 run blocking snaps when a lot of these guys have like three times that many snaps in run blocking because Evan Ingram was not being put into those positions probably because he wasn’t the best run blocker. Uh, you know, so a smaller sample size, higher score. Um, it’s probably one of those situations when you’re just kind of manipulating the data to kind of say what you or show what you needed to show. So, I’m I don’t hold too much on that. I kind of just let the numbers run me back to the tape. Um, but if we’re trying to gauge how this staff may see things with these guys based on their past usage and based on their, you know, past trends, for me personally, it would seem obviously Brandon Briton Strange, your tight end one. I’m then probably leaning to Johnny Munt just based on that, you know, smaller sample size, what you’re kind of seeing, the history of the guys, the ways that they’ve been used in their previous spots. for instance, you know, shout out to Rotor Wires, their route distribution page that kind of just shows, you know, Johnny Muntz been a been put into a position with in the Minnesota Vikings where he’s able to run routes at about that same frequency, about that same rate as Britain Strange as you saw with Brit Strange in the late half of the 2024 season that, you know, Johnny Munt ran routes on um, you know, 171 routes and he had 27 targets. He was running routes basically on 42% of his snaps. Briton Strange was running routes on 46% of his snaps. Quinton Morris was, you know, at 32%. So again, mostly blocking 68% of the time. And Hunter Long was basically blocking 74% of his snaps that where he was on the field. So, if that’s giving you any indication of kind of how they might be used in this similar looking offense, I again have to think that it’s going to be Briton Strange first, Johnny Munt as your backup tight end um in your your 12 u your 12 personnel sets, Hunter Long as the third guy with Quinton Morris being your fourth tight end. That’s again my guess before seeing these guys in pads. I want to be very clear in saying that. But it’s going to be interesting to see kind of how this thing shakes out. And I’m curious how you guys feel because again, we did originally tell you in our uh in our team tiers episode that we thought tight end was going to be a luxury because they didn’t view this as you know a high priority uh in this offense in this you know former Rams former Tampa Bay Buccaneer the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Minnesota Vikings etc. Shawn McVey uh offense that they wouldn’t prioritize the offense uh the tight end position and I kind of stand on that but I’m kind of curious about what this thing is going to land and how you guys think it’s going to land based on all the information I’ve kind of given you. So let us know in the comments. Um let us know on the socials uh the the doall dive Tik Tok. Uh if you’re listening to the sound of my voice please like and subscribe if you like this content. Please like and subscribe. Please comment. Keep this thing engaged. And most importantly, Kabak, I appreciate you, bro. Cuz if you didn’t ask these questions and continue following up to ask more detailed questions, this podcast would not have been made today. So guys, keep it engaged, keep asking questions, and if it’s something that’s dope and something that’s awesome, we will do a podcast and have a conversation about it, man. So until next time, Duvall, let’s get this thing going. Here they come. Here they come. [Music]

What if the Jags’ tight end group isn’t as shallow as fans think? 🤔 Could Gladstone & Coen have more up their sleeve than fans assume? In this Friday deep dive, Travis digs into the tight end room’s real potential.

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