Packers 2025 Season Report Card: Grading Tucker Kraft and Tight Ends

Tucker Kraft had cemented his status as an elite tight end before he suffered a torn ACL. Here’s a look at Kraft and the rest of the tight ends in Part 5 of our season-ending report cards.

Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft (85) celebrates his touchdown against the Pittsburgh Steelers. | Barry Reeger-Imagn Images

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The 2023 season, when Luke Musgrave was the productive rookie starter and Tucker Kraft the afterthought, seems like a million years ago.

This season, Kraft was on his way to solidifying his status as a premier tight end in the NFL when he suffered a torn ACL. That opened the door for Musgrave to recapture a big role on the offense. Instead, there were games when he played fewer snaps than John FitzPatrick and Josh Whyle.

Part 5 of our Green Bay Packers report cards focus on the tight ends. As always, our grades are done on a salary-cap curve because the financial component is such a big part of building a championship roster.

Note: All salary-cap figures are from OverTheCap.com. Advanced stats are from Pro Football Focus.

Luke Musgrave

2025 cap charge of $2.31 million ranked 49th at the position.

Given the opportunity of a football lifetime, Luke Musgrave couldn’t take advantage. After missing the end of 2023 and most of 2024 with injuries, Musgrave played in all 17 games with 10 starts in 2025. He caught 24-of-31 targets for 252 yards and zero touchdowns. He ranked 46th among tight ends in catches and yards and 63rd in yards after the catch.

Speaking of YAC: Musgrave had 74 yards after the catch this season. Tucker Kraft had 128 against Pittsburgh. Of 49 tight ends who were targeted at least 30 times, Musgrave ranked 43rd with 3.1 YAC per catch. PFF charged him with two drops (7.7 percent).

There were glimmers. In back-to-back games at Denver and Chicago, Musgrave caught seven passes for 90 yards, including a pair of 26-yarders. However, he wasn’t even targeted in the blowout loss to Baltimore and caught 1-of-2 targets for 9 yards in the playoff loss to Chicago.

Musgrave caught 1-of-5 contested-catch opportunities and didn’t break a single tackle. In fact, in three seasons, he’s forced two missed tackles; offensive tackle Darian Kinnard broke two tackles on his catch against Chicago in the playoffs.

The run game was 0.19 yards per carry worse when Musgrave was on the field. His poor blocking is why he played less than half the snaps in four of the nine games following Kraft’s ACL injury.

Maybe a change in offensive vision will untap Musgrave’s potential as a tall, field-stretching talent.

Grade: D-minus.

Tucker Kraft

2025 cap charge of $1.51 million ranked 61st at the position.

In Week 8, the Packers played at the Steelers in primetime. A national television audience got to see what had been evident for a while: Tucker Kraft was an elite tight end.

Kraft caught 7-of-8 targets for 143 yards and two touchdowns. He gained 128 yards after the catch and broke four tackles. A week later, Kraft suffered a torn ACL against Carolina. With that, Green Bay’s No. 1 weapon in the passing game was out for the season. The Packers never quite recovered.

Before the Carolina game, Kraft ranked 10th among tight ends with 32 receptions, second with 489 yards, first with 15.3 yards per catch, second with six touchdowns and 10th with an 82.1 percent catch rate. He was No. 1 among all non-running backs in yards after the catch per catch.

Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft (85) makes a catch for a touchdown against Detroit Lions safety Brian Branch. | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Kraft was on pace to finish with 1,187 yards, which would have shattered the franchise record by a tight end (814, Paul Coffman). He also was on pace for 15 touchdowns, which would have ranked third in NFL history at the position. He did it while being a key part of the passing attack but not the focal point.

Kraft finished second among tight ends in yards per route and eighth in YAC even while playing less than 42 percent of the snaps. PFF charged him with three drops (8.6 percent). Even while missing more than half the season, Kraft had 126 more yards than the rest of the tight ends combined.

The run game was 0.18 yards per carry better when Kraft was on the field.

Kraft is targeting a Week 1 return.

“Most people when they talk about an injury like mine, they talk about it as a setback they thought was necessary for their career, their mindset. I disagree,” he said after the season. “I would say I felt like I was on the cusp of putting together one of the greatest seasons by a Packer tight end, and that was something I was looking forward to was just leaving my legacy on this game.”

Availability is a player’s greatest ability. It’s not Kraft’s fault he suffered a torn ACL, obviously. Had he been healthy, he would have received an A-plus.

Grade: A-minus.

John FitzPatrick

2025 cap charge of $1.48 million ranked 62nd at the position.

John FitzPatrick was a valuable role player even before Tucker Kraft’s injury. He wound up playing 30-plus snaps in four of the final six regular-season games before being kept in mothballs in Week 18.

A sixth-round pick by Atlanta in 2022, FitzPatrick didn’t play as a rookie, caught one pass for the Falcons in 2023 and one pass for the Packers in 2024. In 15 games (four starts) in 2025, he caught 12-of-15 passes for 72 yards and one touchdown. PFF charged him with two drops (14.3 percent).

The run game was 0.32 yards per carry worse when FitzPatrick was on the field, though some of that was using FitzPatrick in run-the-ball situations.

FitzPatrick will never be a star but his size and mindset as a blocker will give him a long career. One key will be cleaning up his game; he was guilty of six penalties, tied for fourth-most at the position.

Grade: C-minus.

Josh Whyle

2025 cap charge of $515,000 ranked 122nd at the position.

Josh Whyle, who was signed to the practice squad at the end of training camp, was promoted to the 53-man roster after Tucker Kraft’s injury. He barely played in his debut, then logged 20-plus snaps in six of his final seven games, with the exception being when he suffered a concussion on the opening series at Denver.

In eight games, Whyle caught 5-of-6 targets for 36 yards and one touchdown. A fifth-round pick in 2023 – the same draft class that produced Kraft and Luke Musgrave – Whyle caught 28 passes for 248 yards for the Titans last year.

The run game was 0.10 yards per carry better when Whyle was on the field.

“He’s played before in Tennessee so it’s not like you’re getting a guy who’s never played in an NFL game before,” offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich said. “He’s done it. He’s a big guy, he’s got good range, he’s fast and I like his mentality. He wants to be a physical player.”

He should have a role next season.

Grade: C.

Grading the 2025 Packers

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