FLOWERY BRANCH — On Sunday, the Falcons will contend with a game-breaking tight end, one who in his fourth season is already the highest-paid player at his position in NFL history.
It is an interesting juxtaposition for a team that paid a fortune in draft capital for tight end Kyle Pitts Sr. with the expectation that he could become the sort of star that Trey McBride has transformed into for the Arizona Cardinals.
Now in his fifth season, Pitts has shown flashes, none more blinding than the Falcons’ last game, when he became the first tight end since 1996 to produce at least 150 receiving yards and three touchdown receptions in a game. It continued an impressive run as Pitts’ role has increased with wide receiver Drake London out with a knee injury. In the past three games, Pitts has 24 catches and 338 receiving yards.
No tight end has matched that production over a three-game span either this season or last, according to Stathead.
“The ball’s getting to him, and he’s doing his thing,” London said. “I think that anybody woud shine, but ‘KP,’ yeah, he’s doing his thing, and I’m so happy for him.”
But it pales compared with what McBride has accomplished in his career with the Cardinals, and the contrast is even sharper when considering what draft picks both teams used to acquire them. Falcons fans know all too well that Pitts was the No. 4 pick of the 2021 draft, the highest a tight end has ever been selected.
While also the first tight end chosen in his draft (2022), McBride went No. 55 overall to the Cardinals.
McBride caught 81 passes in his second season. Last year, his third season, he had 111 receptions, fourth in the NFL. It earned him a Pro Bowl berth and then, in the offseason, a four-year, $76 million extension with $43 million guaranteed. It made him the NFL’s highest-paid tight end.
He has responded to the mammoth contract with even better performance. His 102 catches lead the NFL. With three games to go, he could break the league’s single-season record for most catches by a tight end (116, Zach Ertz, 2018) and also become the first tight end to lead the league in receptions since Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez did it with the Chiefs in 2004.
Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich is well familiar with McBride, who caught four passes for 71 yards last season when Arizona played the New York Jets, Ulbrich’s team at the time. Speaking Wednesday, Ulbrich confessed he had “slept on” McBride in preparations.
“And he blew me away,” Ulbrich said. “Just the energy in which he plays with. He is really the engine of that offense and really the engine of the team in some ways. They do a great job, especially early in games, getting him touches to get him revved up.”
The Falcons’ pick for Pitts would have been worth it if he had produced like McBride. He did go to the Pro Bowl as a rookie in 2021. But since 2022, eight different tight ends have more catches over that span than Pitts’ 269, according to Stathead.
It hasn’t helped that Pitts has played with five different starting quarterbacks since 2022 after connecting so well with Matt Ryan in his rookie season.
Pitts’ late rush as he plays out the final year of his rookie contract — a club option worth $10.9 million — presents one more conundrum to a franchise that doesn’t need another.
Should they let his contract expire and allow him to test his market value in free agency, risking him signing elsewhere and fulfilling his promise with another team?
Should they trust in the potential and this recent surge in production and use the franchise tag to keep him one more year?
Could they show even more faith in Pitts, who, having just turned 25, still has many years ahead of him, and extend him?
How much is this uptick worth valuing, given that it’s taking place with the team out of contention and also follows three-plus seasons of uninspiring play?
It was only in November that coach Raheem Morris, after Pitts’ seemingly half-hearted attempt to bring down a 50/50 ball in the end zone in the team’s loss to the Colts, said that “those are plays you’ve got to make for your quarterback every once in a while if you’re Kyle, because he’s capable of making it.”
For tight ends, the franchise tag is projected to be worth $15.9 million for one year, according to Over The Cap. Only four tight ends have contracts with a higher average annual value.
That would be a bargain if Pitts always produced like he has in the past three games. The problem, of course, is that he hasn’t.
“I just stay in the present,” Pitts said when asked about his future by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after his standout effort against the Buccaneers game Dec. 11. “I just worry about today. I got all day tomorrow, and then I’ll be worrying about that. I don’t think too far past anything besides where my feet are living in the moment.”
They are decisions for the offseason and, depending on what owner Arthur Blank decides, possibly for a new brain trust.
The questions the Falcons face — they’re rarely easy or appealing.
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