The Tight End Factory Cranks Up Again

Like many of you, I have some concerns about the Ravens tight end position. Sure, I’d like to think that Mark Andrews can turn things around, that he can be the player he was just a couple of years ago. And no one at Ravens HQ outworks Andrews. He’s completely dedicated to his craft and if anyone can have a bounce back season and become the next Comeback Player of the Year, it’s Andrews.

But then there’s Father Time and with him, the threat of injury. No one wants to speak it into existence but to ignore the daunting possibilities smacks of roster malpractice along the lines of what we all suffered through in 2025 with Messrs. Vorhees and Faalele.

That said, I do take some comfort in the fact that the Ravens know the position. They know tight end. The man who guided the franchise for decades and is currently GM Eric DeCosta’s consigliere, Ozzie Newsome, knows a thing or two about tight end. There are franchises that draft tight ends. And then there is the outfit on Russell Street, which drafts them in pairs, like a man buying socks.

Five times now. Five.

Eric DeCosta turned in two cards along the Monongahela this April — Matt Hibner out of SMU at No. 133 in the fourth and Josh Cuevas out of Alabama at No. 173 in the fifth. In doing so, this tight end tandem joined a lineage that stretches back sixteen years and four drafts. It marks the fifth time in franchise history Baltimore has double-dipped at the position in the same class:

• 2010 — Ed Dickson (3rd), Dennis Pitta (4th)
• 2015 — Maxx Williams (2nd), Nick Boyle (5th)
• 2018 — Hayden Hurst (1st), Mark Andrews (3rd)
• 2022 — Charlie Kolar (4th), Isaiah Likely (4th)
• 2026 — Hibner (4th), Cuevas (5th)

Ozzie’s fingerprints are all over that list, and Ozzie — a Hall of Fame tight end out of Tuscaloosa, who reportedly got on the horn with Cuevas after DeCosta made the call and opened with two words:

Roll. Tide.

Cuevas is the first Alabama tight end Baltimore has drafted since Terry Jones in the fifth round back in 2002.

Cute story.

Now let’s talk about what actually happens to these guys in Year 1, something glaringly important given the departures of Likely and Kolar.

The Ledger

Here is every tight end Baltimore has drafted in a double-dip class, and what each accomplished as a rookie during the regular season. Numbers via Pro Football Reference and concurrent reporting from the Ravens, The Baltimore Sun and CBS Sports.

Player	Year	Rd (Pick)	Rec	Yds	TD	Context
Ed Dickson	2010	3 (70)	11	153	1	Buried behind Todd Heap
Dennis Pitta	2010	4 (114)	1	1	0	11 games, five targets
Maxx Williams	2015	2 (55)	32	268	1	Team rookie TE catch record at the time
Nick Boyle	2015	5 (171)	18	153	0	11 games; suspended the final four
Hayden Hurst	2018	1 (25)	13	163	1	Preseason foot fracture, debuted Week 5
Mark Andrews	2018	3 (86)	34	552	3	16.2 yards a pop on ~32% of snaps
Charlie Kolar	2022	4 (128)	4	49	0	Sports hernia, opened on IR, two games
Isaiah Likely	2022	4 (139)	36	373	3	Eight-catch, 103-yard finale vs. Cincy

Throw in Todd Heap’s 2001 rookie line — 16 catches, 206 yards, one score behind Shannon Sharpe — and the picture sharpens considerably.

Eight double-dip rookies. Average: 18.6 catches, 214 yards, 1.1 touchdowns. Median receiving yardage: 158.

Exactly one of the eight cleared 400 yards. That was Andrews, and Andrews is now the franchise’s all-time leader in receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns. He is not the baseline. He is the exception that inspired purchases of the No. 89 jersey throughout The Land of Pleasant Living.

Now the part that ought to make Hibner nervous and Cuevas smile.

In all four previous double-dips, the tight end taken second became the more productive Raven. Pitta over Dickson. Boyle over Williams. Andrews over Hurst — and it wasn’t close, and Hurst was a first-round pick. Likely over Kolar. Four for four. The Ravens’ official website nodded at the pattern in its Cuevas write-up, which is either institutional self-awareness or institutional trolling of the guy they traded up to get.

Because DeCosta did trade up for Hibner — 21 spots, surrendering the No. 154 pick and a 2027 sixth to jump back into the fourth round, per ESPN’s Jamison Hensley. Nine tight ends were already gone when Round 4 opened. DeCosta, perhaps feeling the pressure of a depleted tight end room, clearly didn’t think he could afford to wait any longer.

The Room Is Not What It Was

Let’s be real. We’re not in 2022 anymore, when a rookie tight end in Baltimore was fourth in line for a sandwich.

Isaiah Likely followed John Harbaugh to the Giants on a three-year, $40 million deal. Charlie Kolar took three years and $24.3 million from Jim Harbaugh‘s Chargers. Pro Bowl fullback Patrick Ricard is gone too. Mark Andrews, extended in December for three years and $39.3 million, is 30, is signed through 2028, and is coming off a career-low 422 yards on 48 catches with five scores.

What walked out the door: Likely’s 27-307-1 and Kolar’s 10-142-2 from 2025. That’s 37 catches and 449 receiving yards sitting on the table.

What walked in: veteran Durham Smythe, a nine-year pro and one of the league’s better blocking tight ends, who caught all of four passes in Chicago last season. He is here to be Ricard, not to be Likely. He is not eating anybody’s targets.

The math is not complicated. ESPN’s camp preview has Baltimore carrying four tight ends — Andrews, Smythe, Hibner, Cuevas — and Ravens staff writer Clifton Brown wrote in the July mailbag that the club would like to see the two rookies combine for at least 40 catches.

Forty. Remember that number. The 2022 rookie pair produced exactly 40. The 2015 pair produced 50. The 2018 pair produced 47 — but 715 yards, because Andrews was running seams.

Two Different Players, Two Different Jobs

So, who are Matt Hibner and Josh Cuevas?

Matt Hibner — 6-4, 251, age 24. Four years at Michigan produced two catches for 15 yards; he was stuck behind a room that produced Colston Loveland, AJ Barner, Erick All Jr. and Luke Schoonmaker. He transferred to SMU and became someone: 24-368-4 in 2024, then 31 catches for 436 yards and four touchdowns in 2025 on his way to All-ACC honorable mention and a Campbell Trophy semifinalist nod.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: For a little perspective on Hibner’s totals, that 436 includes an 80-yard reception in the Holiday Bowl that set the bowl’s record for longest catch. PFF’s regular-season-only ledger reads 29-351-4 on 40 targets with a 61.9 receiving grade, 129th of 199 qualified FBS tight ends.

That said, Hibner he tested. A 4.57 forty and a 37-inch vertical at 251 pounds put him among the better athletes at the position in Indianapolis. DeCosta cited the athleticism, the catch radius, the football intelligence and the production, and said the tape reminded the room of Likely. Hibner said it himself before anyone asked — he sees his fit as an Isaiah Likely type. Head coach Jesse Minter, who was Michigan’s defensive coordinator during two of Hibner’s years in Ann Arbor, remembers a nastier blocker in nine-on-sevens than SMU ever asked him to be.

Read the room, Flock: that’s a coach and a GM publicly installing a fourth-round rookie as the pass-catching No. 2 before a single pad has popped.

And with the 133rd pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, NFL International Fan of the Year Jamie Pembroke smokes the Pittsburgh #Steelers with her announcement of TE Matthew Hibner as the newest member of the #Ravens. @UKRavens pic.twitter.com/nWVDjP6UWF

— Lombardi Party of One (@RSRLombardi) April 25, 2026

Josh Cuevas — 6-3, 245, age 22. The winding road: no-star recruit out of Campbell Hall who didn’t play tackle football until high school, Freshman All-America at FCS Cal Poly, a year at Washington where he caught four balls for 164 yards on a national-title-game run, then two years at Alabama following Kalen DeBoer. He started 11 games as a senior for 37 catches, 411 yards and four touchdowns — fourth on the team in receptions — despite breaking his foot in November, missing three games, and returning inside a month to play in the Playoff. Mackey watch list. Hispanic College Football Player of the Year watch list.

He ran 4.65. He played 54% of his snaps inline in Ryan Grubb’s RPO offense and lined up at fullback and lead blocker. PFF graded him 71.1 overall and 72.3 receiving — 37th and 45th among 199 qualified tight ends, both comfortably ahead of Hibner. His average depth of target was 5.4 yards with 240 yards after the catch. That is a short-area, run-after-the-catch, do-the-dirty-work profile.

New tight ends coach Zack Grossi has apparently told both men they’ll be moved around. Cuevas’ own scouting report on himself: a utility workhorse who’ll line up wherever they point.

Translation: Cuevas is the Ricard-Juszczyk-hybrid lottery ticket. Hibner is the seam-stretcher.

The Ravens drafted tight ends Matt Hibner and Josh Cuevas in consecutive rounds.

With Isaiah Likely and Charlie Kolar out the door, there’s opportunity for playing time for the young guys this year. pic.twitter.com/GdXtd7p7kL

— AJ Gersh (@AJGershTV) June 2, 2026

The League-Wide Reality Check

Before anybody starts drafting these two in fantasy leagues, some perspective on what rookie tight ends actually do.

Only 12 tight ends in NFL history have topped 700 receiving yards as rookies. Twelve. In the entire history of professional football. Mike Ditka‘s 1,076 stood for 63 years until Brock Bowers broke it in 2024 en route to becoming the first rookie tight end with 100 catches. Kyle Pitts (1,026 in 2021) is the only other member of the 1,000 club. Sam LaPorta‘s 86 catches in 2023 was the standard before Bowers.

And 2025 was, by StatMuse’s accounting, the single most productive rookie tight end season in league history — roughly 4,500 receiving yards from first-year tight ends collectively. Here’s who did it:

• Tyler Warren, Colts, No. 14 overall — 76-817-4 on 112 targets, 17 starts, a franchise rookie record
• Harold Fannin Jr., Browns, No. 67 — 72-731-6 on 107 targets, team highs across the board
• Colston Loveland, Bears, No. 10 — 713 yards and six scores, led his team

Notice the draft slots. In the greatest rookie tight end class ever assembled, the producers were a top-10 pick, a mid-first-rounder and a third-rounder with a 1,555-yard college season behind him. Hibner went 133rd. Cuevas went 173rd.

Which brings us back to the most useful comp in the building: Isaiah Likely’s 36-373-3 at pick No. 139 in 2022 is a genuinely excellent Day 3 rookie tight end season. Not a floor. A ceiling worth chasing.

The Wild Card Nobody’s Talking About Enough

Well, until the most recent episode of Ravens Wired.

Declan Doyle.

The Ravens’ new offensive coordinator — all of 30 years old, calling plays for the first time — spent 2023-24 as the tight ends coach in Denver under Sean Payton. Then he spent 2025 as Chicago’s offensive coordinator under Ben Johnson, where the Bears leapt from last in the NFL in yards to sixth, won the NFC North at 11-6, and where a rookie tight end named Colston Loveland led the team in receiving with 713 yards and six touchdowns while playing heavy two-tight-end packages alongside Cole Kmet.

A tight ends coach by trade, running a scheme that lives in 12 personnel, inheriting a room with one aging star and two rookies and a blocker he brought with him from Chicago.

Add one more data point: in 2025, Baltimore was one of only four teams whose tight ends drew more than 30% of the club’s pass attempts. The volume is here. It always has been.

The Projection

Everything above says the same thing from four directions: the opportunity is real, the history is sobering, and the draft capital is modest. So, here’s where I land on projections for the Ravens rookie tight ends.

	Games	Rec	Yds	TD	Comp
Matt Hibner	16-17	24-30	280-350	2-3	Isaiah Likely (2022), light
Josh Cuevas	17	15-21	150-210	1-2	Nick Boyle (2015), plus a red-zone target

Point estimates: Hibner 27-315-3. Cuevas 18-185-2.

Combined: roughly 45 catches and 500 yards — clearing the organization’s stated 40-catch bar, landing above the 2022 duo’s 422 combined yards, and short of the Hurst-Andrews 715.

The bull case for Hibner is straightforward: the trade-up, the DeCosta Likely comparison, the 4.57 speed, the vacated 449 yards and a coordinator whose last rookie tight end led his team in receiving. If Andrews’ decline continues and Hibner wins the two-minute and third-down snaps, 400 yards is doable.

The bear case is equally straightforward, and it’s the one history keeps voting for: he’s a 24-year-old who caught 57 passes in six college seasons, his PFF receiving grade sat in the bottom half of FBS tight ends, and Baltimore rookie tight ends have cleared 400 yards exactly once since 2001.

For Cuevas, the receiving projection almost misses the point. His value in 2026 is as the Ricard replacement in a run game built around Derrick Henry — the H-back, the lead blocker, the core special-teamer. If he wins that job outright over Smythe by December, he’ll have out-earned his fifth-round slot regardless of what the box score says. He’s also the younger man by two years, the better-graded blocker and receiver by PFF’s measure, and — per the pattern — the second name called.

Four for four, Flock.

Just saying…

The Bottom Line

DeCosta didn’t spend a fourth and a fifth and a future sixth on tight ends because he thinks Mark Andrews is finished. He spent them because Likely and Kolar and Ricard all walked in the same March, because Lamar Jackson has thrown to tight ends more than almost any quarterback in football, and because this organization has proven — Heap, Pitta, Andrews, Likely — that it can find and grow them from anywhere on the board.

What it has never done is get much out of them as rookies. That’s not a scouting failure. It’s the position. Tight end is one of the hardest transitions in football, and Baltimore’s own ledger says the payoff usually arrives in Year 2.

So, temper the August hype. Watch the blocking. Watch who’s on the field in the red zone in Week 3. And keep an eye on No. 85 — because in this town, the second tight end drafted has a funny way of ending up the one you remember.

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Sources include: Pro Football Reference and Sports Reference (college), Pro Football Focus, NFL.com, BaltimoreRavens.com, ESPN, SMU Athletics, Alabama Athletics, The Baltimore Sun and Sports Illustrated.

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