The Falcoholic
Atlanta’s free agent tight end did great work, but he was overshadowed by the most controversial Falcon currently on the roster.
You have a take on Kyle Pitts. You may not be as loud as some about it, or as passionate about what that take is, but you likely have a strong opinion about the Atlanta Falcons tight end. Just about everybody does.
It is impossible to put together a positional review—to talk about this roster or this offseason, really—without the focus inevitably going to Pitts. He’s the highest-drafted tight end ever, a player who mostly lived up to his considerable promise his rookie season, and a tight end who has been chasing (and falling well short) of those highs ever since. In a vacuum, he’s a useful player the Falcons and a potential trade chip this offseason, but nothing Pitts does happens in a vacuum. That’s the price of the expectations placed on him, and his failure to meet them thus far.
But Pitts was not the only tight end working on this team in 2024, and as we move on to our roster review, we’ll talk about all three.
Age: 24 | Experience: 4 seasons
2024 Stats: 47 receptions, 602 yards, 4 touchdowns, 41.9% success rate, 63.5% catch rate, 12.8 yards per reception, 4 drops
These were full season career lows for Pitts in receptions and yards, though his four touchdowns were a new career high. Under the microscope all season long, Pitts had a handful of huge catches and big downfield plays that seemed to foreshadow bigger things ahead, but it ended up being yet another up-and-down season. For every nice grab in traffic or gallop down the sideline, Pitts had an accidentally tossed ball that led to an interception or a near miscue crossing the goal line holding the ball too carelessly.
Pitts is only 24 years old, is 13th in receiving yards among tight ends over the past five seasons (per StatsMuse) despite playing in just four seasons and missing half of one in that span, and has moments where the ability is evident even if the miscues are still there. There are plenty of teams who will look at Pitts and think they can maximize that talent for a still-quite-young player, should the Falcons want to move on, and the Falcons themselves can almost certainly get more out of him than they did this year.
The reality is that Pitts is a good-but-not-great player who has improved his blocking but still isn’t an asset there, can be a standout receiver in stretches but is not close to dominant, and is inconsistent enough given this team’s huge investment in him means he’s not guaranteed to return in 2025 if there’s a standout trade offer out there. If he does stick around, expecting him to finish among the top ten tight ends in terms of receiving yardage is far from an unreasonable expectation, but he’ll likely be the fourth option in this...
