Luke Musgrave beginning to figure it out

Rookie tight ends face steeper learning curves than other first-year pros. After a slow first eight weeks, Luke Musgrave appears to have turned the corner.

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Over the past decade, numerous antiquated football maxims have fallen by the wayside as new eyes and fresh perspectives have entered the fray. No longer does every coach try to "establish the run" before dialing up play-action, fewer teams fear fourth-and-short situations outside of field-goal range, and so forth.

However, some longstanding beliefs have survived into football's modern age. Among them, teams still shouldn't expect much out of rookie tight ends.

Few positions have struggled more to produce in their professional debuts. Since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger, only 51 rookie tight ends recorded 400 or more receiving yards, fewer than one per season on average. Over the same period of time, 227 wideouts reached that mark during their first year and seven more rookie receivers enter Week 10 of 2023 on pace to join them. Tight ends do more than catch the ball, but that remains the most impactful part of their job, one at which they begin their careers behind their receiving peers.

For one reason or another, the Green Bay Packers believed they could buck that trend. They entered 2023 with the youngest receiving corps since the expansion Cleveland Browns. Not only that, but Green Bay opened the season with second-round rookie Luke Musgrave as their starting tight end, a big ask regardless of context.

Musgrave seemed up to the task initially. His performances from the offseason program through the preseason steadily built up expectations with everyone from the starting QB to the headman praising the rookie tight end for both his uncommon athletic traits and ability to adjust to an NFL offense quickly.

"First impression of Luke, he's going to be a great player," quarterback Jordan Love said in June. "He's a lot faster than I think anybody thought on tape and things like that, just watching him. He's picked up the offense really fast. He's getting a lot of reps right now which is great for him. He's making the most of it. He's learning every day and not making the same mistake twice which is awesome. And he's catching the ball really well right now and he's making plays."

"He's a really, really intelligent player," head coach Matt LaFleur said in the offseason. "I think every time he goes out there, if he makes a mistake, he hasn't made many of the same mistakes twice because he's super into it. Very intentional, deliberate about his work, invested, and he continues to show progress every day. Certainly, he does have an elite trait, that he can flat fly. He's a big, long target. We're really excited about him."

And purely by the metrics, Musgrave kicked off his rookie season in top gear. According to Pro Football Focus, he ran 24 routes and averaged 2.08 yards on those plays in Week 1. That figure exceeded that of any Packers rookie tight end with at least as many routes run in a single game during the LaFleur era (2019 to present). In fact, only two qualified Green Bay rookies exceeded Musgrave during that stretch, both last year: deep threats Christian Watson (4.40 yards/route in Week 12, 3.71 in Week 18) and Romeo Doubs (2.15 in Week 3).

However, Musgrave's impressive yards/route output came with a massive caveat. Almost exactly 75% of his production came on a broken play on which Jordan Love nearly fumbled away the ball, causing the defenders to break from their assignments and putting the rookie tight end roughly as close to the fans as the nearest member of the Chicago Bears.

The ensuing seven weeks reinforced the notion that the tight end wouldn't replicate his season opener. Musgrave hovered right around 1 yard/route through October, never exceeding 1.42 in any individual game and bottoming out at 0.11 in Week 4. Those numbers don't seem out of step with his output against the Bears outside of that one, fortuitous explosive gain: 0.57.

But when it comes to young prospects and especially rookie tight ends, development often doesn't take a linear path. In many cases, progress doesn't even happen gradually. Instead, the player in question can go weeks without flashing before blowing up all at once.