A ‘new-age’ tight end: Could Ja’Tavion Sanders help Carolina Panthers immediately?
On the opening drive of the third quarter for Texas, in the fourth game of the team’s 2023 season, Ja’Tavion Sanders made a play that felt reminiscent of Travis Kelce.
Or maybe George Kittle.
David Njoku?
It was second-and-6 on the first drive of the third quarter. Longhorns QB Quinn Ewers took a snap out of shotgun, play-faked and then tossed it in the direction of Sanders, who was streaking up the middle of the field. The 6-foot-4, 243-pound tight end had his left arm entangled with a Baylor linebacker, but that didn’t stop him: He raised his right hand and plucked the floating ball out of the air and kept running for a huge gain.
It’s in plays like these where the Carolina Panthers, who drafted Sanders with the first pick in the fourth round of the 2024 NFL Draft, see who he might one day be.
The fun part is that the player Sanders is striving to become — of the Kelce and Kittle ilk, of the Njoku and Hockenson production — is a relatively new phenomena in the NFL.
“I feel like the tight ends in this draft class, we’re the new-age tight ends,” Sanders said. “Kelce and Kittle and guys like TJ Hockenson, they’re the guys who started the new age of tight ends. But guys like me, Brock (Bowers), Cade (Stover) and Jared Wiley — we’re the new-age tight ends, bringing more of the receiving ability to the position.”
It’s no secret the Carolina Panthers — led by young offensive-minded head coach Dave Canales, 42, and younger offensive coordinator Brad Idzik, 32 — are looking to modernize an antiquated offense from a season ago. And the addition of Sanders, widely considered the second-best TE behind Brock Bowers in this year’s draft, appears to be a substantial means to that end.
Canales certainly thinks so.
“Versatility,” Canales said when asked what struck him about Sanders. “I sound like a broken record, but it’s really what we’re looking for. ... He’s a guy who can do a lot of different things. He’s made some dynamic plays with the ball in his hands, and he’s really strong in the catch. That’s probably one of the biggest things that we saw in him, is the contested catch part. He’s got massive hands and really does attack the ball.
“And you want in the league for tight ends to get that separation in man to man, but it’s pretty hard. Most of them are around the same speed except for a few guys. So since they’re going to be covered, the contested catch is big. And that’s where he really separated himself from the rest of the guys.”
Tight end a short- and long-term need for Panthers
Sanders, who grew up in Denton, Texas, finished 2023 with 45 receptions for 682 yards (an average of 15.2 yards per catch) and two touchdowns. Many of those catches were in coverage, with defenders draped over him. Some were high-flying balls that a defensive back would normally blow-up once the receiver comes back down to Earth, except that wouldn’t happen to the strong Sanders, who’d instead be the one pummeling the defender.
When asked if he thinks he can contribute immediately — kind of like his Longhorns teammate and now Panthers teammate RB Jonathon Brooks is expected to — Sanders said he hopes that’s the case. And it very well could be.
A playmaking tight end is a short- and long-term need for Carolina. Stats bear that out.
In the short term? The Panthers finished in the bottom-three in receiving yards by tight ends in 2023, according to Stats Muse. Tommy Tremble, the team’s starting tight end by the end of the season who was invaluable as a blocking tight end, caught three touchdowns and only 194 receiving yards. Hayden Hurst, who was brought to Carolina on a highly touted one-year deal, finished 184.
The long term need is evident, too. Tremble, 24, is on the final year of his contract. Ian Thomas, the Panthers’ fourth-round pick in 2018, and Stephen Sullivan, a seventh-round draft pick from Seattle, are both 27.
The source of Sanders’s strength comes from his ability to “create mismatches” on the field and be present “in the defense’s mind, that they know where I’m at, at all times.”
It’s also something the Panthers have lacked since the departure of Greg Olsen, who was a hybrid of today’s receiver-first TE with a bit of a blocker’s build — one generation removed from the “new-age” tight end group Sanders hopes to shine among.
“We just saw a great opportunity,” Canales said of taking Sanders in the NFL Draft.
But for Sanders, the opportunity appears to be all his.
