I alluded to this idea in
a tweet recently, but the tight end position is littered with players who took longer to perform up to expectations.
My colleague Timo Riske did excellent work on age curves, which showed that tight ends accumulate the lowest percentage of their career WAR (40%) before the age of 25 (Njoku is currently 25 years old) and the highest percentage of their career WAR after the age of 30 (19%).
Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap did an informative study on the premium-ness of positions by essentially going through the 20 highest-paid players at the position and determining what percentage of those players were available via free agency. Tight end was one of the least premium positions, in large part because even top players readily changed teams after their rookie deal.
Anecdotally, while the
San Francisco 49ers were able to capitalize on the late bloom of
Vernon Davis’ career, the list of players at the position who were drafted by one team but made their biggest contribution to another team is quite vast: Visanthe Shiancoe, Benjamin Watson, Delanie Walker, Jared Cook, Martellus Bennett, Charles Clay, Greg Olsen, Eric Ebron and Vance McDonald are all recent examples.
The proverb from the Fitzgerald study speaks less to the mistake of paying guys like Njoku too much and more to drafting them too high in the first place.
The current Browns regime — while not the regime that made the mistake of selecting Njoku too high — is likely going out of its way not to be yet another franchise that drafts another’s franchise tight end.
. It’s not really about stats though for the Cowboys. Washington would help our offensive line and running game. Meyer and Kincaid are better then any wideout that you would get at 26. Both are Redzone weapons.
