Rating the tight ends

At the modestly appointed off-campus apartment that University of Miami tight end Bubba Franks once shared with future NFL offensive rookie of the year Edgerrin James, teammates generally showed up in the early evening.

The group would sit around and wait for someone to marshal up the energy and creativity to cook dinner for everyone.

Rod Mack, a linebacker, was best known for pork chops or salmon.

James would fire up the grill and fix T-bone steaks.

Pat Del Vecchio, a renowned deep-sea fisherman, sometimes treated the bunch to marlin.

Safety Al Blades favored pasta.

And at least twice a week, usually when the culinary spirit moved no one else and those big stomachs were beginning to growl, Franks would slap on an apron and rustle up his specialty: a big ol' heaping bowl of Hamburger Helper.

"Every time it was his turn to cook," said former Hurricanes tight end Mondriel Fulcher, "we all knew what was coming. I mean, that Hamburger Helper was all Bubba knew how to cook. If he lived alone, he would have had to eat the stuff every day."

Having perused the tight end talent pool for the upcoming NFL Draft, scouts can appreciate the appropriate nature of Franks' blue-plate special.

Fact is, the group of tight end prospects has quite a bit in common with his meal of choice: very little meat and plenty of filler. Then again, this draft isn't much different from most lotteries in that regard.

"There are a lot of positions that are very difficult to fill," San Diego general manager Bobby Beathard said. "But if you look back at almost any draft, you'll see that tight end might be the hardest. There simply aren't a whole lot of them out there. And so you typically don't see many taken in the draft. A lot of times you end up signing them as (undrafted) free agents."

The numbers certainly support Beathard's thesis about the tight end position. Consider these:

• Since 1994, the year the league adopted the seven-round draft, tight ends have accounted for just 81 of the 1,444 position players selected. That's a microscopic 5.6 percent of the draft pool over the past six years. Only the quarterback position, with 63 players, had fewer prospects taken.
• Of the 183 first-round picks since '94, just five were tight ends, the fewest of any position. The next smallest contingent, the quarterbacks, had more than twice that number with 12. Since the 1970 merger, there have been only three occasions (in 1970, '73 and '78) in which more than two tight ends were chosen in the first round. By comparison, 10 of those 30 drafts had zero tight ends in the first round. In fact, there hasn't been a first-round tight end taken since Dallas made Dave LaFleur the 22th overall choice in 1997.
• Nearly half the tight ends who started at least eight of their team's contests in 1999 began their careers with another franchise. More than half were selected after the second round. Over the past 12 years, Tony Gonzalez of Kansas City (1997, picked before LaFleur) is the only tight end drafted in the first round to earn a Pro Bowl spot during his first three seasons in the league.

Part of the problem, acknowledged Baltimore vice president of personnel and Hall of Fame tight end Ozzie Newsome, is that the position demands an athlete with hybrid skills, a prospect who is equal parts receiver and offensive lineman.

It wasn't all that long ago that scouts would scour the offensive tackle prospects to see if any of them had decent enough receiving abilities to perhaps convert to tight end. That hasn't been the case in recent years, but talent evaluators are forced to beat the bushes for potential tight end candidates, and that explains why some of the best players at the position come from obscure colleges and with diverse backgrounds.

Newsome's frequent lament is that too many of the athletes who fit that mold are NBA power forwards. He might not be the best example, but close your eyes for a second and conjure the image of a young Karl Malone breaking loose in the secondary and hunting up strong safeties to trample on his way to the end zone.

It's no surprise that Gonzalez, who represents the new breed of more athletic and flexible tight end, is a former part-time power forward from the University of California.

Because college offenses are deploying in the same three- and four-wide receiver formations that the NFL uses, tight ends don't have a chance to develop. The game at all levels, in fact, has set in motion a sort of de-evolution of the position.

Over the past two seasons, according to the statistics supplied SportsLine.com by one AFC team, only about one-third of the league's teams kept their tight ends on the field for more than 50 percent of the third-down plays.

The Chiefs' Tony Gonzalez is the NFL's premier tight end.(AP)

Said Kansas City offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye: "Unless you have got a player like we do (Gonzalez), a guy who can split off the line or go into the slot and run up the field, then tight end is just a 'two-down position' on your team. If it's third-and-10, he's coming off the field and will be replaced by another wide receiver. It's just a very demanding position and the supply has not been there in recent drafts."

This year's draft doesn't figure to supply many instant impact players to the tight end position.

Beyond the enormously talented but enigmatic Franks, and blue-collar guy Anthony Becht from West Virginia, there are few prospects worthy of first-day consideration. At least half of the top 10 tight end candidates, in fact, probably aren't even pure tight ends but might instead project as H-backs or "move" backs in many NFL offenses.

Tight end is the classic Frankenstein position; its parts are taken from a lot of different places, but there simply aren't enough monstrous blockers in the 2000 talent pool to fill the league's needs. Many of the prospects are "tweeners," scout-ese for players who are in-between the computer generated model for a position.

One of the best examples is James Whalen of Kentucky, likely the best pure receiver in the group, and a clutch performer who consistently moved the chains for the Wildcats. But the resourceful Whalen weighs only 228 pounds, runs in the high 4.7s and has virtually no skills at all as an in-line blocker. He can't be asked, for instance, to manhandle the linebacker playing across from him on the strongside sweep.

Some of the other prospects, like Miami's Fulcher, or Jay Tant of Northwestern and Michigan's Aaron Shea, might eventually end up playing fullback in the NFL.

That's why, even with poor offseason workouts that concerned scouts, Franks remains a valuable commodity in this draft, a player likely to be selected in the middle portion of the first round. Not nearly as athletic as Gonzalez, he is closer to the classic tight end model, a good enough receiver who can be a potentially devastating blocker at the point of attack.

"He is probably one of the best blocking tight ends to come out of college in a while," Denver coach Mike Shanahan said. "He can dominate at times. And he catches the ball and then knows what to do with it afterward."

His physical skills aside, Franks has scouts fretting he could be a boom-or-bust type of player because his dropoff since the end of the regular season has been so inexplicable. He showed up at the combine in late February weighing 267 pounds but didn't participate in any on-field drills. A week later, at his private workout on the Miami campus, he was down to 252 pounds, appeared weak and ran slow 40-yard times.

Scouts surmised Franks spent the week in between the combine and his workout on diuretics, losing weight in hopes of running a quicker 40, and counseled him against such a binge-purge approach.

Apparently, there wasn't even time to whip up any Hamburger Helper. But even 10 days ago, in a second workout, he was timed only in the mid-4.9s.

"He could be a stud or he could be a dud," said one NFC coach with solid interest in Franks. "It's so hard to find guys like him who fit what you want at the position. But he needs to get his head on again before the draft and realize what is at stake here."

First-round draft positions

Since the league adopted the seven-round draft in 1994, there have been fewer tight ends chosen in the first round than prospects at any other position. Here is how the first-round selections break down since '94:

1. Defensive linemen: 41
2. Offensive linemen: 34
3. Defensive backs: 29
4. Wide receivers: 23
5. Linebackers: 20
6. Running backs: 19
7. Quarterbacks: 12
8. Tight ends: 5

Coming Saturday: The offensive line prospects.