Atlanta Falcons tight end Jacob Tamme is a fantastic teammate and leader. He's also a damn fine football player. When Tony Gonzalez retired, the team was left with a gaping hole in their roster. The team made other efforts to address that need but were unsuccessful. (I'm looking at you, Levine.) The addition of Tamme gave franchise quarterback Matt Ryan a reliable safety valve again.
Tamme isn't the sort of player you build a team around. He's competent and he does his job but he's not Rob Gronkowski. Heck, he's not even close. And that's fine, because the Falcons don't need a premier tight end to succeed. That said, they do need a tight end of the future, someone who can take over for Tamme in the not so distant future. Ultimately that's why Thomas Dimitroff drafted Austin Hooper in the third round of this spring's NFL draft.
Per Football Outsiders, Tamme had one noteworthy deficiency in his game last season. His +YAC ranked 40/50 among qualifying tight ends. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, here's how PFO describes it:
YAC+ is similar to plus-minus; it estimates how much YAC a receiver gained compared to what we would have expected from an average receiver catching passes of similar length in similar down-and-distance situations. This is imperfect -- we don't specifically mark what route a player runs, and obviously a go route will have more YAC than a comeback -- but it does a fairly good job of telling you if this receiver gets more or less YAC than other receivers with similar usage patterns.
To be frank, I'm not too concerned about this. It'd be incredibly nitpicky to fault Tamme for this. Again, he does his job well. But if Hooper can help in this department, then I'm all for it. Your thoughts?