By the numbers: When should the Steelers target a tight end?

Steelers needs

But, despite the chaotic nature of choosing which human will be best at their role in the ultimate team sport, I was sure the numbers I’d produced meant something. I began to slice and dice. What positions were better in later rounds than earlier rounds? What positions were most likely to bust? What positions did the Steelers thrive at analyzing versus those that they struggled with mightily?

One of the most popular positions of need for the Steelers heading into this draft is the one I mentioned above in the Butt/Kittle example. They need a tight end. Vance McDonald could be a cap casualty. He’s injury-prone. Nobody knows what they have behind him.

Rather than look at what tight ends might be available, I thought I’d look into what kind of tight ends have been drafted in rounds 2 through 5 between 2010 and 2018.

The Steelers performance in that timespan has been pretty simple.  They drafted Jesse James in round 5 of 2016, and that was it. Any other TE picks were either earlier or later or outside the timeframe I’d selected. Despite what Detroit paid James, I assigned him the score of 2. The truth is that Jesse James was nothing more than an average part-time starter for the Steelers.

Over the same time period, the league average score for Tight Ends is 1.77.  It’s one of the top-performing positions for mid-round draft picks. I dug even deeper and learned that teams picking tight ends in the 3rd round consistently ended up with a better player than teams selecting the same position in round 2. There were also more busts at the position in round 2 than round 3, which helps to explain the discrepancy.