The featured tight ends of the two teams heading to the Super Bowl have distinctly different skill sets, yet they execute their roles at a high level within their respective offenses. Travis Kelce is arguably the greatest tight end of all time, namely for his abilities as a receiver, while George Kittle can be both a top-end receiving threat and a dominant blocker. As Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft mature as players in the early stages of their careers, they should look to Kelce and Kittle as prototypes of how to contribute in the Green Bay Packers’ offense.
Kelce plowed his way through the AFC Championship game, tallying a perfect 11 receptions on 11 targets for 116 yards and a touchdown en route to setting the record for the most receptions in playoff history. The 11 receptions were the fifth-most in playoff history on a leaderboard where Kelce already held the top two spots. He had a 14-reception game against the Jacksonville Jaguars last season and a 13-catch game against the Buffalo Bills in 2021.
Kelce’s greatest strength is his ability to understand the soft spots in an opposing defense, and his rapport with Patrick Mahomes allows him to exploit those weaknesses. Of his over 11,000 career yards, over 5,000 of them have come after the catch, a testament to his ability to get open and upfield shortly thereafter.
If Musgrave is mentioned anywhere near the same breath as Travis Kelce at the end of the rookie’s career, it will have been wildly successful for the first-year player out of Oregon State. Yet if there’s one player who Musgrave can mirror, it should be Kelce. Blessed with a similar 6’6”, 250 lbs. build, Musgrave will be Green Bay’s catch-first tight end. A kidney injury that limited him to 11 games cut short his opportunities to shine in his rookie season. Still, he showed plenty of flashes when he could stay on his feet.
Musgrave’s top priority must be continuing to develop chemistry with Jordan Love. Love has taken a very democratic approach to the offense, dispersing the ball wherever it needs to go and to whomever is open within the structure of a play. The Packers were already the fourth-best team in the league at converting third downs, coming in just shy of 48%. Romeo Doubs (49), Jayden Reed (33), and Dontayvion Wicks (30) were the team leaders in catching first-down passes. However, Musgrave showed a higher level of efficiency with his targets, hauling in 75% of the balls that were thrown his way. Musgrave’s 19 first downs pale in comparison to Kelce, who led all tight ends with 64 first-down catches. But Musgrave’s catch percentage was in line with the top receiving tight ends in the league.
A full offseason together should help Musgrave and Love get on the same page, and it should also help them make a difference when that page gets torn up in the middle of a play. Mahomes and Kelce’s sixth sense for one another is second to none, perhaps in league history. Therefore, any progress that Love and Musgrave can make in that direction would be a positive for Green Bay.
“Not only did I get a feel for how he runs routes, but he got a feel for how I was seeing stuff,” Mahomes said of Kelce. “We can kind of go off the radar screen and kind of develop some stuff that’s not necessarily called.”
Perhaps the most important thing Musgrave or Kraft learned during the rookie campaigns is that Green Bay’s offense can support their skill sets. Musgrave and Kraft have some hybrid tight end characteristics. But Musgrave’s forte is as a pass catcher, where Kraft makes his biggest impact near the line of scrimmage, reminiscent of George Kittle. Sure, Kittle has had three 1,000-yard receiving seasons and has a career average yards per reception of 13.6 per catch. But Kraft can aspire to match the passion he puts into being an all-around contributor.
As much as skill and technique are important traits as a blocker, perhaps more crucial to the success of a tight end is the willingness to stick your nose in there and actually hit someone. While Kraft may not be the kind of player Marcedes Lewis was, he’s definitely an upgrade over the pure receiver types of tight ends like Robert Tonyan, who the Packers have featured in their offense recently.
Kraft flashed as a receiver, especially when Musgrave was injured. But when the Packers are in 12-personnel with Musgrave and Kraft together on the field, you can be sure that Kraft will be looking to make his bones by wrecking people near the line of scrimmage. Bearing down on a defense with the tenacity needed to be an inline tight end isn’t easy, and it makes the times that you chip a block and then head out as a receiver all the more dangerous.
Musgrave and Kraft are not in the same stratosphere as Travis Kelce or George Kittle, certainly not right now. But they don’t have to be Hall of Famers to pay dividends for the Packers. To get there, they just need to learn a few tricks from the sure-to-be legendary tight ends playing in Las Vegas a week from Sunday.
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