The Comp For Free Agent TE Durham Smythe Might Be A Blast From Ravens Past

The best comp for new Ravens tight end Durham Smythe wasn’t on the Ravens roster last year.

Three key members of that group left as free agents – tight ends Isaiah Likely and Charlie Kolar and fullback Patrick Ricard - but the role that Smythe will be cast in will be not truly like what these veterans were asked to do. And while the Ravens won’t be running the option-based offense they did early in Lamar Jackson’s career, the duties being asked of Smythe in Declan Doyle’s new playbook are going to likely approximate former Raven blocking tight end Nick Boyle more than anything else.

Smythe wasn’t really asked to run many routes, for any depth whatsoever, let alone catch a bunch of balls with the Bears last season, where Doyle was a top assistant to play-calling head coach Ben Johnson. He wasn’t even really much of a decoy. And that was pretty much the case for him in 2024, his final year with the Dolphins.

His value is going to be measured in the run game more than anything else, and in helping the many youngsters in Doyle’s new tight end room – rookies Matthew Hibner and Josh Cuevas in particular – grasp the terminology and nuance of the scheme. And as the lesser veteran move right end to Mark Andrews (who really can’t get downfield himself anymore, but whatever, they're paying him $13M) anyway, some might want to equate him to the role Kolar had in Baltimore last year, but that’s just not how this is likely to play out.

“Obviously, I was with Durham in Chicago, and so he's a great addition,” Doyle said at OTAs last week. “He does things exactly the way that you coach him. He's a guy that when you're pausing the tape, he's an example for young guys in the room.”

Not Here For His Hands

Smythe caught four balls for 25 yards last season. That’s it. I mean it’s a little more than Ricard was asked to do in the pass game, but it’s not much. This is a guy whose air yards per target in seasons has produced miniscule numbers like 4.0, 3.95 … Kolar has averaged 7.54 for his career, a tepid number, but a different stratosphere to Smythe

Smythe is 6-4, 250; Boyle played at 6-4, 270.

Boyle has seasons here where his route depth came in at 3.95 yards and 4.57 yards and 4.65 yards. Smythe has put up seasons of 4.22 and 4.04 and 4.39 and 3.85.

Boyle’s career high for targets in a season was 43. Smythe’s career high for targets in a season was 43 (in 2023).

Kolar had more athleticism at 6-6, 250 with the ability to put up way more YAC than guys like Smythe and Boyle ever produced. He could pull away some and rumble after the catch in a way Smythe can’t.

If the Ravens pull this off and develop their rookies quickly, then I’d think of Hibner as someone who could do some of what Likely could do, in smaller doses, and Cuevas being more of the Kolar type, with a better blocking toolkit than Hibner with the ability to be diverse in being deployed in a multiple of ways within the TE/FB framework.

And Smythe will be doing a lot of dirty work along the way, as they lean into getting different mixes of two and three of their four top tight ends on the field at the same time. (And I still think a reunion with a former Ravens TE could be on order - not Boyle -if these rookies aren't close to really contribute to the offense right away.

“It's a big thing obviously with tight ends, especially in the league right now,” Doyle said of deploying multiple TEs with diverse skillsets. “You watch it with what's going on in L.A. (Rams three-tight end sets) and some of these other places. Teams are playing a little bit heavier … That really is about dictating what the defense can do (from a personnel standpoint).”

Subscribe On YouTube For The Best Ravens Coverage:

Add us as a preferred source on Google