The 2025 NFL Draft featured two of the highest-rated tight end prospects of the last 10 years in Colston Loveland and Tyler Warren, but as a whole the class was regularly cited as one of the deepest and most talented of the year
. Fourth in that order was Terrance Ferguson, the tight end that the Rams drafted 46th overall after Loveland and Warren went in the first 14 picks and then Mason Taylor was 42nd.It is no secret to Rams fans that Ferguson has been buried on L.A.’s depth chart and a healthy
scratch in Week 3 against the Philadelphia Eagles, a game that saw Colby Parkinson, Tyler Higbee, and Davis Allen combine for one catch, three yards, and three targets.
But can you really blame Sean McVay? I mean, Parkinson’s 21 snaps, no targets, probably-replaceable blocking was the only reason the Rams even had a chance to beat the Eagles!
Seeking out any excuse possible for why Ferguson is still less important to the Rams than Parkinson and Davis Allen, a third-year player with a career average of 4.8 yards per game, McVay claimed on his team-sponsored Monday podcast that Allen and Parkinson are better than every piece of evidence indicates and that the rookie’s training camp injury caused him to miss a little bit too much practice:
“I think we’ve got tremendous depth at the tight end position,” he said. “Got a guy in Tyler Higbee who’s been doing it at a high clip for a long time. Colby Parkinson, I think, has taken tremendous steps, as has Davis Allen. And you really look at it, (he) did miss some critical time throughout training camp with the groin injury.”
It’s a very difficult point to argue against: Any NFL player’s most crucial learning time is during his rookie year. Not just the season, but the offseason and the preseason. Ferguson missing training camp would cause him to fall behind veterans in many instances and many players on many teams.
However, Ferguson has been practicing for over a month since his return to training camp. He looked better as a receiver in his only preseason appearance than Allen and Parkinson have ever looked in a Rams uniform. Ferguson is a 22-year-old rookie who played 53 college games at Oregon and though his blocking had been described as “developmental” and “a work in progress” before the draft, nobody ever cited him as a long-term project as if he was Jacob Harris.
If anything, the Rams tight end draft pick who might be most like Ferguson is…Brycen Hopkins. Said to be one of the most “NFL-ready” tight ends in the 2020 draft class, a prospect whose father spent 13 seasons in the NFL, Hopkins was a healthy scratch for most of his first two seasons in the league and only caught one pass for nine yards going into his third year.
Hopkins was not a seventh round pick who gave the Rams a couple of good years. He was a fourth round pick who gave the Rams nothing aside from a weirdly efficient Super Bowl appearance.
This is not to say that anyone should be worried about Terrance Ferguson
It’s hard to believe at this point, I know. This is not a sky-is-falling post about Ferguson’s healthy scratch and saying that he’s going to turn out like Hopkins or Harris. Rookies are rookies and too many players have had really bad years compared to everything that happened after their first season.
This is merely an observation of the reality we are living in: The Rams first pick isn’t playing right now even though he’s at the same position as one of the worst players on the team and McVay is running 12 personnel on 30% of his offensive snaps.
It is probably because L.A. is running out of 12 personnel so often that Parkinson is playing over Ferguson, but at a certain point we have to ask if 5 or 6 blocking plays from a tight end are more valuable than opening up the passing offense for Matthew Stafford with a guy who might be the third-best receiving option on the team.
And if Ferguson is worse than Allen as a receiver, that’s a little weird. It’s even weird if he’s worse than Higbee, who currently has four catches for 37 yards. How do we know that we’re ever going to see the old Higbee again and the old Higbee wasn’t a great receiver to begin with…
Comparing rookie tight end snaps
It is around now that many of you are thinking that tight ends take a long time to develop and maybe it’s normal for rookies to be scratched, even second round picks. Let’s take a look then.
These are the snap counts for rookie tight ends (draft pick number):
- Tyler Warren, 158 snaps (14th)
- Harold Fannin, 143 snaps (67th)
- Mason Taylor, 141 snaps (42nd)
- Colston Loveland, 80 snaps (10th)
- Jackson Hawes, 77 snaps (173rd)
- Gunnar Helm, 72 snaps (120th)
- Elijah Arroyo, 70 snaps (50th)
- Mitchell Evans, 35 snaps (163rd)
- Ben Yurosek, 27 snaps (undrafted)
- Oronde Gadsen II, 22 snaps (165th)
- Cameron Latu, 11 snaps (101st)
- Moliki Matavao, 5 snaps (248th)
- Ferguson, 4 snaps (46th)
- Treyton Welch, 4 snaps (undrafted)
Ferguson has fewer snaps than five players who were day three picks and one who was undrafted.
Fannin is the most interesting because although the third round pick might not have been McVay’s exact cup of tea at tight end, he was often ranked higher than Ferguson. Fannin has been one of the rookie darlings of the NFL through three games with the Browns, catching 15 passes for 136 yards and if his blocking leaves something to be desired, well…clearly he’s not the only rookie tight end with that issue.
Fannin caught 117 passes for 1,555 yards and 10 touchdowns in 13 games as a senior at Bowling Green. College stats can vary for any number of reasons but Ferguson had 1,537 receiving yards in his entire four-year career at Oregon.
NFL Draft Buzz had Fannin third on their TE rankings and Ferguson was only seventh. He was behind Arroyo, Taylor, and Helm.
Arroyo, considered a projection pick when he was taken by Seattle at 2.50, has played in 40% of the Seahawks snaps already. He only played one full season of college football. Mason Taylor has played in 78% of the snaps for the Jets, assuming a TE1 role despite only being 21. Helm was a fourth round pick by the Titans and he’s played in 37% of the snaps as TE2.
Taylor missed over a week of training camp after suffering a high ankle sprain. Loveland had offseason surgery on his AC joint and didn’t really get to work until training camp. There are reasons for things and then there are excuses and nobody is saying that Ferguson’s injury is an excuse, but we do know of many players who missed some training camp as rookies and were too good to hold back.
Jackson Hawes is another interesting case because he went to a team with two good tight ends already: The Buffalo Bills with Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox. He plays with good tight ends and he’s in on 35% of the snaps. What could he do with the Rams and bad tight ends?
Similar draft value TEs of recent years
Are second round tight ends any guarantee to succeed? Obviously not. But let’s look at some who have gone off the board recently in a similar range to Ferguson:
2024 – 53rd overall Ben Sinnott. Things have gotten so bad that Dan Quinn just called a game with 0 catches “his best game” ever.
2023 – 34th overall Sam LaPorta. Great player and he was great immediately when his career started.
2023 – 35th overall Michael Mayer. Replaced by Brock Bowers almost immediately. Mayer’s going to need a change of scenery soon.
2023 – 42nd overall Luke Musgrave. Similar to Mayer, Musgrave found out early that he’s not Tucker Kraft.
2023 – 58th overall Luke Schoonmaker. Has 5 yards this season. Also replaced by a better tight end.
2023 – 61st overall Brenton Strange. Better than the three I just mentioned. Strange had 35 yards as a rookie, but then 411 yards in 2024 and he already has 137 this season. All of his numbers are up this year. Strange could be a beacon of hope for any tight ends out there.
2022 – 55th overall Trey McBride. Here’s another guy who Ferguson fans can look to as a reason not to be worried. McBride was inactive in his first NFL week and he only played 6 snaps in the next two weeks. He had 45 yards in his first 11 games. McBride is now one of the best TEs in the NFL.
2021 – 55th overall Pat Freiermuth. Freiermuth had an impact early in his career with the Steelers and he’s also a better blocking tight end.
Too early to panic, not to soon to be watching
Clearly we see with Trey McBride that not all great tight end careers are proven in their first three career games! Strange is another player who came along slowly. However, we also see that there are players like Sinnott, Mayer, Musgrave, and Schoonmaker. That’s more than half of the second round tight ends from 2023-2024.
Ferguson is behind many of his rookie counterparts, but it’s a long season and it’s only been three games.
However, if we get to the end of the season and Ferguson has not overtaken at least one tight end — but more optimistically at least two — then we can say that there might be a Hopkins’ a brewin’.
