Panthers Offseason Position Review - Tight End

With three days to go until training camp, we come to the last of the offseason position reviews. Not much has changed at tight end since I previewed them last year. We have the same players-Jeff King (#47), Dante Rosario (#88), Gary Barnidge (#82)- expected to be on the team and, until I see an official announcement, the depth chart should remain the same. There is also Jamie Petrowoski (#86) on the roster but the I figure the only way he makes the final cut is if someone else get hurt and even then its not a given as the Panthers could choose to keep only two TE or look for another option off the waiver wire. Because of this I wanted to look our tight end stats instead of the normal player profile and predictions. For that read last years post (linked above).

Basically, King blocks well but isn't the best option to get open. He can catch but is slow when heading down field and yards after catch are low. Rosario has promise and had the most receiving yards last year. Finally, many fans are big on Barnidge and many think if he can improve his pass blocking he would become the starter as he has the ability to stretch the middle of the field with his pass catching.

All three TE have been with the Panthers all of their professional careers. The following are their overall stats. I should also mention that King, in 2006, only had 1 rec for a 1 yard touchdown, so most of his stats were accumulated along with Rosario.

I do find it interesting that despite the opinion of many that Rosario is the better receiver than King, King has a solid advantage in total yards (in keeping in light the 2006 year for King), but on the other hand as expected Rosario has the larger yards per reception stat, of course Barnidge blows them both out away with the 20.2 yds/rec in that regard.

More stats after the break.

This table shows the teams TE stats since 2000 and where the team ranked league wide versus the other TE.

In 2000, 2001, and 2002, Wesley Walls was a part of the team. But in Fox's second year of coaching the TE became on afterthought and the TE rank tumbled to 24th. In our superbowl year it didn't seem to matter as our ranking was even lower at 30. We had a slight resurgence last year and they will need to step up again in 2010 as  the secondary receiving option for Matt Moore to have success.

Yet Moore didn't rely on them as much I would have thought. In his five starts last season (31.2% of season) he only had 28.6% of the receptions (18 rec) and 21.9% total yards (165 yrds). This compares to 590 yards thrown by Jake Delhomme on 45 receptions in 11 games (68.8% of season). At this point I just find that interesting and can't say if there is really anything to take from that as Moore could have thrown to his WR instead of needing to use the tight ends as much. I'll have to spend some time breaking it down a bit more.

In the following nine tables is a comparison of the Panthers TE stats each season and to the top and bottom three teams each year going back to 2000.

There a lot of information there but I'm not sure if there's much to take away from it. I did notice that there are good and bad teams intermixed each year amount the top three, but there are hardy any good teams (for each particular year) a part of the bottom three. There are obviously several reasons for the second scenario, but it also tells me that the good teams figure out how to use all their weapons. (What other information do you see there?)

So what is everyone expecting out of the TE position this year? I would like to see the unit combine to reach last years stats. With the running backs taking the pressure off of our passing game, it would be ideal for the TE to reach that production keeping the opposition guessing and hopefully leaving our receivers open for Moore to find.