GH: What do you do with another talented tight end in Noah Fant?

DP: There’s a lot you can do with Noah. We’re super excited to have him. Noah is getting a crash course in our offense now. He’s a really smart guy who has played in a number of NFL offenses. So he understands conceptually what we try to do. It’s just a matter of, ‘OK, I’ve done this before, they called it X and these guys call it Z. OK, I can start to kind of group these things together.’ He’s been working overtime to get up to speed on that, and we look forward getting him in some team periods this week and seeing where it goes from there.

We brought him in for a reason. We expect him to be a significant contributor. It would be foolish of us, given his skill set, to not utilize them to benefit the team. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. That will take shape over the next couple of weeks, but we can’t wait to get him in there.

GH: Obviously, he’s a different style of tight end than Mike Gesicki and the other guys that came before him.

DP: To me, he’s a complete player. He’s big, he’s explosive. You can just watch him run and catch routes on air for the last two days. It’s pretty clear to anybody watching he’s big, fast, and explosive. And he transitions once he has the football in his hands into a big explosive runner who is hard to tackle and has a degree of physicality to his running style. From a pass game standpoint, he can do most things you could ever want a tight end to able to do.

You’re right. He is different than Mike. They all get put in one room, but there are three different positions that live in that room with how our offense exists. That can be hard to sometimes grasp. He’s his own person, he’s his own player. He’s a talented guy with a wide-ranging skill set. I happen to think that he can give us winning-level production in the run game.

It’s just on us to use him to his strengths. But he competes. He works to play with technique. He’s strong. Drew’s (Sample) is a heck of a blocker in that role and I take pride in the fact that we try to use all our guys to their strengths and we’ll do the same with Noah. I think he can give us winning-level production there.

GH: Somebody was asking me, what do defenses do now on third down when Mike, Noah, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins are in there?

DP: To our conversation earlier, even then there’s a couple of guys that aren’t on the field that I still have the confidence in that are winners. There’ll be a variety of personnel groupings that opponents are going to have to prepare for. There’ll be a lot. We’re going to use all these guys. We’re going to make sure they’re all involved. The best part of all that is I think we’ve got a building-full of guys that just want to help the team win a championship. That’s exactly how we’re going to use them.

GH: Mike and Noah will be on the field at the same time, right? Two of the more prolific pass-catching tight ends of the decade,

DP: There’ll be times when Mike and Noah are on the field together, there’ll be times when Noah and Drew are on the field, there’ll be times when Mike and Drew are on the field. There’ll be times when we’ll have three of them on the field, and that doesn’t even factor in

the fact that there are other guys in that room that, by the way, can play some pretty good football. Tanner Hudson has made 20 catches in the last two practices, so don’t forget about him. That just shows you the kind of competitor he is.

GH: First time in three years Joe, Ja’Marr and Tee are camping out. You can tell, can’t you?

DP: I think so. There’s no substitute for time spent together and reps taken together, and those guys have a lot of reps accumulated over the last six seasons. Six for Joe and Tee and five here for Ja’Marr and Joe. But then you go back to LSU, and it’s more than that. There is an element of maintaining that timing and rhythm. Those are the things we’re able to do right now out there.

GH: Maybe one time before, 2022, they’ve had this time together.

DP: We’re grateful for it. We’re going to take advantage of it.

GH: Any guy have your eyes popping out this camp?

DP: I hesitate to highlight one guy. There are a lot of guys that are playing well right now. I think there are some young players having a chance to show what they can do that can help this team. I think (rookie running back) Tahj Brooks has done a nice job. He’s got a lot of touches … The challenge for Tahj is to play so well that we have to find a way to get you out there, too. We know what we’ve got in Chase Brown and we know what we’ve got in Samaje (Perine). We love both those guys.

GH: Wide receiver Jermaine Burton has had 10 practices, and it seems like he’s starting to look like the guy you thought you drafted last year.

DP: We’ll know when Jermaine has really made the next step, and he’s working towards it, when that question stops getting asked. When the consistency has arrived to a point where that question about whether what he’s doing well becomes the expectation. That’s when we’ll really know he’s gotten himself to turn the page. He’s working at it. He really is. It’s like anything. It has to be an everyday thing. As long as he keeps it that way, then he’s got a chance.