Blatant Homerism: New tight ends and second-order effects
General manager Jim Nagy and head coach Brent Venables sound ecstatic lately when the subject of the tight ends on the Oklahoma Sooners’ roster comes up. They’re billing transfers Hayden Hansen, Rocky Beers and Jack Van Dorselaer as NFL-caliber players, which is reason enough to be excited about the trio. Their enthusiasm makes even more sense when you consider whom the newcomers replacing.
As position groups at major college football programs go, OU assembled an astonishingly weak TE room in 2025. Jaren Kanak qualifies as the lone bright spot among the unit, primarily because he gave up on playing linebacker and offered the coaches his services as a TE.
For all intents and purposes, though, Kanak was a slot receiver. At 6-2 and 233 pounds, his blocking was a glaring deficiency when he stayed inside the core of offensive formations as an inline or wing TE.
The remainder of the motley crew of TEs on the roster primarily consisted of undistinguished transfers from far-flung locales such as Kennesaw State and Pittsburgh State. If the plan was to mine a few diamonds out of the rough from this group, the Sooners found nothing but rocks. The trio of Kaden Helms, Carson Kent and Will Huggins saw a combined total of 15 targets that resulted in 11 receptions for 82 yards and one touchdown during the season. On top of that, their proficiency as blockers made Kanak look like a wrecking crew by comparison.
Simply adding three average tight ends would constitute a huge upgrade for OU, and average seems like the floor for this group. But what makes competent play from the TEs the source of so much optimism?
Naturally, there are the fundamental parts of playing TE, like catching the ball. At Colorado State, Beers delivered last year when the Rams targeted him down the field, generating an average of 12.5 yards on his 31 receptions, seven of which resulted in touchdowns. Meanwhile, Hansen caught 30 passes for 254 yards and two touchdowns in Florida’s putrid offense.
On the blocking front, Hansen is a bruiser with the size (6-8, 270 pounds) to move bodies on the ground. That combination with his receiving skills makes him OU’s projected starter at the position this year. Van Dorselaer also mauled defenders as Tennessee’s second tight end, so look for him to be a factor in short-yardage situations before he moves up to the first team in 2027.
But to suggest the execution of the tight ends was the primary culprit behind OU’s inefficiency on the ground and popgun passing game last year is massively overstating the case. And even if that was the case, the newcomers aren’t exactly George Kittle.
The second-order effects of relying on such a poor TE group for the entire year arguably posed a bigger problem for the Sooners than each TE’s individual skills – or lack thereof. A deficit so severe as what the Sooners were working with at TE in ‘25 creates an enormous drag on an offense. Think about what it means to a defensive coordinator when an opponent’s best TE can offer little more than more than commendable effort as a blocker. What if the defense knows that the likelihood of the offense throwing the ball to another TE on that team is close to nil?
If playing defense fundamentally boils down to reacting to what an offense is presenting, the D gains a major advantage when a position on the opposing O is as limited as what OU had at tight end a year ago. (And trying to scheme around a hole like that through personnel groupings raises its own set of problems.)
Conversely, competent tight ends alter the calculus for a defense. For example, they pose matchup issues that must be addressed in coverage schemes. Defensive coordinators can’t take it as a given that their players will shrug off blocks thrown by the TEs. Playing multiple TEs at the same time doesn’t tip off the defense about the offense’s intentions. And on and on.
Look at it this way: At the very least, industry-standard performances from Hansen, Beers and Van Dorselaer would remove an anchor that weighed heavily on the offense a year ago. If they’re better than that, OU gained a major force multiplier for its O.