Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images
Kyle Pitts needs to reinvent himself to have any hopes in the NFL.
When Kyle Pitts was selected by the Falcons at No. 4 overall in the 2021 NFL Draft, it wasn’t a horrible pick. In fact, it was met with a lot of excitement and promise. The big, game-breaking receiving threat at tight end was a mismatch nightmare at Florida who was able to breeze by college linebackers, out-muscle defensive backs at the catch point, and become a player defensive coordinators had to account for on every play, lest they get absolutely obliterated by him.
The expectation in the NFL would be more of the same. Pitts was cut from the same cloth as a long list of legendary receiving tight ends like Antonio Gates, Greg Olsen, Travis Kelce, and Jimmy Graham. All guys who were mediocre blockers, but it didn’t matter because of the chaos they created in the passing game.
Three years later and there’s no way of sugar coating it: Kyle Pitts is a bust. The excuses for his lack of production have run out, it’s become impossible to justify his lack of production, and now Pitts finds himself as an odd man out in an NFL which has changed drastically in the time since he was drafted.
What exactly went wrong? How much of this is on the Falcons and how much is because of Pitts? Is there any hope he can turn it all around?
The wrong place at the wrong time
A large part of the hype when it came to Pitts being drafted by the Falcons was the assumed pedigree he was walking into. Newly-hired head coach Arthur Smith was fresh off a stint as both offensive coordinator and tight ends coach with the Titans, where his offense heavily featured tight end receiving as a staple.
This led to Delanie Walker putting up huge numbers for the Titans with Smith as TE coach, then as an offensive coordinator he punctuated a strong running game with Jonnu Smith at tight end. The natural assumption was that Smith would marry his ability to get production out of tight ends with Pitts’ unreal physical traits to create an offensive monster.
Problem: Pitts couldn’t do a single thing that Arthur Smith actually wanted a tight end to do.
See, the issue is that while everyone looked at big receiving numbers and tight end success in isolation (myself included), we failed to realize that Pitts didn’t actually play anything like an Arthur Smith tight end. Across both the Delanie Walker and Jonnu Smith eras in Tennessee their average depth of target (ADOT) on passing plays sat between 5.0 and 6.0 yards. This meant that Smith liked players who could serve as in-line blockers in the run game, and on passing downs he wanted guys who could get past the line of scrimmage, carve inside, and make contested catches against linebackers.
In short: Smith preferred strong, classic tight ends who were third or fourth options to move the chains, not vertical threats like Kyle Pitts.
This was a horrific scheme match for Pitts. Not only is he a truly terrible blocker, which we knew before he was drafted, but his entire game was predicated on the idea of drifting downfield further and getting behind linebackers. While ADOT isn’t tracked at the college level, for the most part Pitts was making catches 14-to-17 yards downfield, contested only by safeties where he could easily out-match them with size.
Smith’s solution to this conundrum was to split the difference and take both Pitts, and himself out of their comfort zone. Pitts’ average ADOT under Arthur Smith was 12.0 yards, over double what Smith used in Tennessee. This never really meshed with the offense, and while Pitts was running deeper, he was rarely targeted because he was primarily running into linebacker traffic — and didn’t have the hands or toughness to dominate NFL linebackers the way he did in college.
Arthur Smith was gone after three years of mediocre production and Falcons disappointment. Surely this would be the opportunity for Pitts to be used “correctly” with a new offensive coordinator. There was just one problem with this assumption …
The new Falcons are even worse for Kyle Pitts
When Raheem Morris came from the Rams and brought offensive coordinator Zac Robinson there was the assumption that the new OC would install Sean McVay’s system — which they largely have. You know what doesn’t work in McVay’s West Coast Offense? Long developing, deep tight end routes.
The Rams used TE Tyler Higbee to great effect during the Rams’ Super Bowl run, but his ADOT was 5.3 during the 2021 championship season. The Rams had very similar offensive sensibilities to Arthur Smith’s Titans when it came to TE usage, needing strong in-line blockers to bolster the run game, then using them to make contested catches under the linebackers.
We’ve seen Pitts be asked to do this in 2024 and it’s failing dramatically. Pitts’ ADOT this season is 8.5, the lowest of his career — and he’s shown an inability to make any impact in the receiving game as a result. Pitts is not comfortable making contested catches against players he doesn’t feel physically dominant against, and this is resulting in a lot of drops.
The brings us to the real meat and potatoes of the problem …
Kyle Pitts is just terrible
At some point there are only so many scheme and fit excuses you can make for a player’s lack of production. Is Kyle Pitts in an offensive system that can’t really use him? Absolutely. Has Kyle Pitts showing zero signs of trying to change his game to make it work? Also, yes.
Pitts’ long gait and slow ramp time to top speed can’t really be helped. That’s just who he is as an athlete. However, his lazy, woeful route running isn’t helping anything. Pitts has been a sub-par route runner since he arrived in the NFL, and it’s frankly stunning there’s been no improvement in this area since he entered the league.
His cuts are slow and plodding, too often stutter-stepping at the top of his route when he changes direction, making it far too easy for defenders to know where he’s going. When Pitts is running at full speed he rounds his cuts, without any of the suddenness required to fool a defender.
This all presents itself as truly disgusting separation stats. According to NFL Next Gen Stats his weekly separation in 2024 is:
Week 1 vs. Steelers: 3.22 yards
Week 2 vs. Eagles: 3.09 yards
Week 3 vs. Chiefs: 1.42 yards
Week 4 vs. Saints: 1.07 yards
That represents an average route separation of 2.2 yards in 2024. The NFL average is 2.93 yards, and it’s especially bad when you consider that tight ends routinely have more separation than wide receivers because of position. For example, Sam LaPorta of the Lions who is an in-line, elite blocking TE without any of Pitts’ athletic receiving traits is generating 4.26 yards of separation this season. LaPorta is getting A FULL TWO YARDS MORE than Pitts despite having an ADOT of 3.6 this season, five yards less than Pitts.
This means that LaPorta’s short route running is overwhelmingly more effective than Pitts, who is getting targeted over double the distance downfield but can’t generate any separation because of his lazy route running.
Is there any hope for Kyle Pitts?
Not in Atlanta there isn’t. In order for Pitts to work the Falcons would need to totally revamp their offense exclusively to feature him, and the juice simply isn’t worth the squeeze.
It would be easy to say “Pitts could thrive with the Dolphins,” or “Pitts would make for a good replacement for Travis Kelce on the Chiefs,” but in both these cases it’s unclear if he has the work ethic to make it work. As it stands right now Pitts’ lazy route running and slow cuts simply don’t have a place in the NFL anywhere.
Bad route running leads to bad separation, and this is a player who doesn’t have Gronk-like hands to make ludicrous contested catches. Pitts plays small despite being 6’6 and 248 pounds, and that’s totally nullified any advantage he had upon entering the NFL.
Every player has a chance to revitalize their career, just ask Sam Darnold — but as it stands it’s impossible to imagine an NFL where Pitts fits. The league is moving more and more towards being a run-first league, requiring tight ends willing to do the dirty work in the trenches and fight for the ball in contested parts of the field.
Sadly, Kyle Pitts just doesn’t have that dog in him.
