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Now a month into the 2022 college football season, I decided it was time to rank the five best players for each position at this very moment. For clarification, these lists are based on where these young men are today as college players. In this exercise, I tried to isolate them from their team and purely judge them on who can help teams win games at the CFB level right now.
Let's continue with the college football tight ends:
#1. Brock Bowers, Georgia
This is the first college football position group where the name at the top unfortunately isn’t actually draft-eligible in 2023. However, I couldn’t put anybody up there other than Brock Bowers. This dude is just ridiculous. Bowers is a legit blocker, mostly from H-back and wing alignments, where his leg-drive to take defenders out of the picture is relentless. With that being said, it’s what he does as a receiver that has been mind-blowing.
He was a first-team All-American in 2021 after touching the ball 60 times for 938 yards and 14 touchdowns. A month into this college football season, he’s already up to 358 yards and five TDs on only 18 touches for Georgia. He can blow past linebackers, has really strong hands in traffic and the speed to run away from a lot of safeties even. That’s why we’ve seen Georgia hand him the ball on jet sweeps and end-arounds too.
#2. Michael Mayer, Notre Dame
It almost hurts to put Michael Mayer second because he could very well ultimately end up as a top-ten overall prospect next April. He looks and plays like your prototypical Y tight-end, but also carries those 250 pounds very easily, with no clunky movement. He quickly eats up ground with those long strides and use that big frame to lean into and push off defenders, creating separation out of his breaks.
He’s very consistent with the way he approaches the football and doesn’t waste any time tucking in and getting vertical, where he becomes a load to bring to the ground. He’s already well above 1,000 yards and has double-digit TDs across 16 games from Week 1 of the 2021 college football season. As a blocker, he’s naturally strong and displays a high effort to cave in the backside, but I love the way he can ride smaller defenders out of the picture.
#3. Dalton Kincaid, Utah
You could argue for either Utah tight-end earning that number three spot in college football. Considering their pro outlook and just who has made a little more out of his opportunities this season, Dalton Kincaid ended up here. After turning 36 catches into 510 yards and eight touchdowns last season (13 games), he’s already reached the end-zone four times and just less than half the yardage four contests in.
He can really eat up ground and force safeties to back up when he stems vertically. He can plant and break inside to present an attractive target over the middle, as well as using speed on crossing routes. Kincaid displays the strength to fight through contact when defenders are leveraged towards where he wants to go. It also shows with the ball in his hands, where he uses his momentum to shrug off tacklers.
#4. Brandon Kuithe, Utah
As crazy as it may seem, Utah have another outstanding tight end who quarterback Cam Rising may trust more. Brandon Kuithe doesn’t have the explosiveness or power of Kincaid, but his ability to manipulate defenders and set up his breaks with body-language is highly advanced for the college football level. He quickly realizes when the initial route is dead and has a natural feel for how to work himself open and create an angle for the quarterback to deliver the ball into.
You don’t nearly see the same kind of power or just utilization as a blocker inside the box, but this guy has been almost automatic in terms of moving the chains on third downs. He is also a very good stalk-blocker, giving his fellow receivers space to work in the screen game.
#5. Darnell Washington, Georgia
We complete our second duo of teammates with the other Georgia TE, Darnell Washington. He’s more of your prototypical hand-in-the-dirt guy at the hip of the offensive tackle and does a lot of the dirty work for the Georgia Bulldogs’ tremendous rushing attack. The way he can widen the C-gap on off-tackle aiming points and use torque to get defenders out of their lanes, giving all those backs for UGA room to burst through is rare these days. Especially for a position that is largely evolving into an oversized receiver.
However, don’t mistake him for a third tackle on the field, because while he’s only caught 24 passes in his college football career, he’s averaged 18.3 yards per grab. He had an unreal play in this year’s season-opener against Oregon, where he tanked his near-270 pounds through defenders before hurdling another guy on the sideline at the tail-end of it, showing his athleticism.
Honorable mentions: Sam LaPorta (Iowa), Griffin Hebert (Louisiana Tech), Joel Wilson (Central Michigan), Brevyn Spann-Ford (Minnesota) & Will Mallory (Miami)
You can check out all my other college football positional rankings here or as one piece on halilsrealfootballtalk.com
