David Njoku of the Cleveland Browns is a Top 10 TE according to PFF

The folks at PFF think David Njoku of the Cleveland Browns is a Top 10 TE

Is David Njoku a Top 10 tight end in the NFL? Well, Pro Football Focus sure thinks so. They named the Cleveland Browns’ top tight end a Top 10 player at the position according to their Top 15 rankings heading into the 2023 season.

Njoku was listed in the Tier 3 section of the article, aka “Good but needs pieces around to be great”, and honestly, that’s fair for Njoku. PFF praises the tight end for his 1.55 yards per route run figure and for the fact he almost never fumbles the ball. Solid stats.

But they also listed him behind Dalton Schultz and Taysom Hill, so maybe Njoku isn’t the great difference-maker after all. Here’s the full PFF blurb;

"10. David Njoku, Cleveland BrownsNjoku was given a hefty salary last offseason, and he rewarded the Browns with the best season of his career with a 78.7 receiving grade. His 1.55 yards per route run over the past two seasons is eighth-best at the position, and he has just one fumble over that time frame."

The Cleveland Browns’ tight end, David Njoku is a top-10 player at his position; which is not a good thing

If you put David Njoku in the Top 10 of tight ends, then you have a problem. Njoku is a fine tight end, but he’s no Hall of Famer and it’ll take a lot of targets to get him to the Pro Bowl. He’s a fine player, but if guys like him and Hill, who is more of a catch-all payer than a conventional tight end, make it in the Top 10 of the position, that means the position is seriously lacking depth.

Sure, the NFL has Travis Kelce, George Kittle, and Mark Andrews, but a lot of the other guys on the list don’t match the impact of other players on similar lists. If you have the sixth-best receiver in the NFL,  you have a no-doubt star.

But the sixth player on the tight end’s side of things is Pat Freiermuth, a very solid tight end, but far from a star. The tight ends in the league are either underutilized or far from the talent they were pitched as.

It does feel like there is a lack of star tight ends these days, and it’s not clear as to why. But when Schultz is 8th on a list with just 577 yards in 15 games, it’s clear that the expectations and impact of tight ends have fallen off some from years prior.

• Published on 07/06/2023 at 00:30 AM
• Last updated at 07/06/2023 at 00:30 AM