There were 16 tight ends drafted throughout the three days of the 2025 NFL Draft and the Eagles, despite making 10 selections, didn’t end up with one.
Did that do anything to change the situation between the Eagles and Dallas Goedert?
GM Howie Roseman was asked that question on Saturday night.
“Dallas is part of the team as we speak,” Roseman said. “Obviously, as we go forward, we’re going to continue to address things on this team and right now nothing further.”
If you haven’t been paying attention, the situation between Goedert and the Eagles is seemingly very unsettled as the veteran tight end enters the final year of his contract. And when Roseman and head coach Nick Sirianni spoke at the NFL owners meetings last month, they were both non-committal about Goedert’s future with the team.
Goedert, 30, has been a really productive player for the Eagles but he has also struggled to stay healthy. On top of that, his deal is out of guaranteed money and he is set to earn around $15 million in 2025. The Eagles would presumably want Goedert to agree to a pay cut to facilitate a return. Earlier this offseason, the Eagles were listening to offers for their former second-round pick.
Roseman on Saturday night was asked if there’s a path for Goedert to return to the Eagles in 2025.
“Dallas is a heck of a player – a heck of a player, a heck of a person,” Roseman said. “Certainly don’t want to do anything publicly where we’re discussing anyone’s business, but I have so much respect for him. Been to two Super Bowls together and obviously would love him on this team. You always love having Dallas on this team, but we’re not there right now on any of that. But, love Dallas Goedert.”
Even if the Eagles entered this draft knowing Goedert would definitely be back for the 2025 season, it still would have made sense to draft a tight end. Because not only is Goedert entering the final year of his deal but he’s over 30 now and has struggled to play a full season. He’s now significantly older than Zach Ertz was when the Eagles used a second-round pick on Goedert.
The other tight ends on the Eagles roster are Grant Calcaterra, E.J. Jenkins, Harrison Bryant, Kylen Granson, Cameron Latu and Nick Muse. If Goedert isn’t on the team in 2025, that group might not be good enough.
Six different tight ends — Colston Loveland, Tyler Warren, Mason Taylor, Terrance Ferguson, Elijah Arroyo and Harold Fannin Jr. — went in the first three rounds this year and then 10 came off the board on Day 3.
Were the Eagles surprised they didn’t draft a tight end?
“Just trying to be as true as we could to the board,” Roseman said. “Every time that we had the opportunity to pick, we were looking at the board and really trying to reflect what that worked to put those grades in really should be reflected in the outcome, so we didn’t want to kind of drop down at some points. There were some points where it was close, but it was never at the time we were selecting the best player.”
Broncos drafted Caleb Lohner after he played just 57 snaps of college football
The most inexperienced player selected in the 2025 NFL draft was Utah tight end Caleb Lohner, who was drafted in the seventh round by the Broncos.
How inexperienced is Lohner? "Fifty-seven plays," Broncos General Manager George Paton said after drafting him.
That's it. In the same draft as No. 2 overall pick Travis Hunter, who once played 149 snaps in a single game, Lohner was selected despite playing just 57 snaps in his college career.
But Broncos head coach Sean Payton said the Broncos liked what they saw of Lohner, who played mostly basketball in college before joining the Utah football team for one season last year.
"We're late in this draft and you're rooting for some guys, and you see upside," Payton said. "He's 6-7, 245. You can see the basketball skill set — that's easy — at a high level. You're looking at a small amount of playing time, and yet enough to where you're watching him. I think the other thing that helped was watching him at the Big 12 Pro Day. There's just a few plays that you see movement skills — and man, there's a lot to work with."
Payton has experience coaching a college basketball player with limited football experience and helping him turn into an All-Pro tight end. That's what Payton did in New Orleans with Jimmy Graham, who played four years of basketball and one year of football in college at Miami before becoming one of the best tight ends in the NFL with the Saints.
Expecting Lohner to become another Jimmy Graham might be too much to ask, but the Broncos think he might just become an NFL playmaker, even if he takes longer to develop than most.
The draft roughed up Shedeur Sanders. The NFL will demand even more
Shedeur Sanders’ name was finally called on the third day of the 2025 draft.Photograph: Jeff Roberson/AP
With the 144th overall pick in the fifth round of the 2025 draft, the Cleveland Browns ended Shedeur Sanders’ precipitous slide down the board, and gave him an NFL home.
This was not at all what anybody outside the league expected. Based on Sanders’ tape alone, he looked like a second-round talent, which – based on quarterback prospects over time – could have shoved him into the first round, given the importance of the position.
Instead, Sanders had to wait and wait and wait, and everybody watching on ESPN or the NFL Network had to wade through an intolerable level of Sanders discussion, while dozens of deserving prospects had their own stories overshadowed. ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr, one of the industry’s most-respected draft analysts, was particularly strident in his arguments that the NFL had no idea what it was doing by letting Sanders go undrafted for so long.
Beyond the morning show-level “dialogue” is the specter of Sanders’ value to the NFL, and how he overcomes this embarrassment. The 23-year-old is certainly not the first quarterback to be drafted far below what his talent would indicate, but the reported issues that he brings to the league, if true, would explain a lot.
“At the [scouting] combine, it is now well documented some of his formal interviews did not go well,” NFL Network insider Tom Pellissero said of Sanders’ meetings with teams in the lead-up to the draft. “One assistant coach told me in all his years, it was the worst formal interview he’d ever been through. People said that Shadeur was trying to dictate how he wanted things to go, and made them feel small.”
Other insiders reported that when NFL coaches asked the quarterback to show his work on schematic packages he’d been given and subsequently asked to explain in the room, Sanders was unable to do it, and the sense was that this was not about a lack of processing ability. Sanders simply didn’t do the work.
Now, if Sanders is to transcend what has been done to his reputation in the court of public opinion – and it should be said that figures such as Jerry Jones and Sean Payton were willing to go on the record to defend Sanders’s character – he has plenty of work to do. The Browns had already selected Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel in the third round, and Gabriel – who set the FBS record for total touchdowns in his estimable collegiate tenure – will not be an easy guy to beat.
Last season, Gabriel was among college football’s most efficient quarterbacks when throwing deep, when pressured, and when going through the receiver progressions every NFL quarterback must master. Were Gabriel not a smaller (5ft 11in, 205lb) quarterback, a lefty, and 24 years old, Sanders as a backup and Gabriel as the starter probably wouldn’t be a discussion. Sanders will also have to compete with veterans Kenny Pickett and Joe Flacco for the starting job in Cleveland.
Beyond the off-field stuff, Sanders’ adjustments to the NFL will be interesting. Sanders did what he did in 2024 behind perhaps the NCAA’s worst offensive line, which is the main reason he was sacked 40 times and pressured 204 times on his 563 dropbacks. And he was pretty good himself under pressure – per Pro Football Focus, Sanders completed 76 of 138 passes when disrupted for 1,117 yards, 12 touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 95.6.
The two quarterbacks selected in the first round, Miami’s Cam Ward (first overall by the Tennessee Titans) and Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart (25th overall to the New York Giants) had passer ratings under pressure of 88.7 and 83.9, respectively.
Colorado’s offense also did not give Sanders the benefit of enough of the concepts far more familiar to NFL quarterbacks, like play-action, designed pocket movement, pre-snap motion, and advanced route concepts designed to give the quarterback easier openings.
In one way, that gives Sanders an edge – schematically, he was swinging a weighted bat at Colorado, and now, that burden is relieved to a certain extent. But adjusting to the offense put forth by Browns head coach and offensive shot-caller Kevin Stefanski, which is filled with those positive constructs, will take more than a minute. And the history of college quarterbacks converting from simple spread-out offenses to the dimensional complexity of the NFL is not a favorable one.
There’s also the fact that Sanders’ coaches will have to be completely bought into the idea of his presence on the roster. This could be fractious. Haslam strong-armed former Browns general manager Ray Farmer back in 2014 to pick all-time draft bust quarterback Johnny Manziel with the 22nd overall pick in the first round of that draft, and led the charge for the Deshaun Watson trade and subsequent contract in 2022, which ultimately combined to form perhaps the worst deal in sports history. If things are no different now, that’s not good for anybody involved.
“We felt like he was a good solid prospect at the most important position,” Browns general manager Andrew Berry said of Sanders soon after the pick was made. “We felt like it got to a point where he was probably mispriced relative to the draft; really the acquisition cost was pretty light. And it’s a guy that we think can outproduce his draft slot.
“I wouldn’t say it’s any more than that. Shadeur has kind of grown up in the spotlight. But our expectation is for him to come in here and work and compete.Nothing’s been promised; nothing will be given. So I may hesitate to characterize it as a blockbuster – that’s not necessarily how we thought of the transaction. But we are excited to work with him.”
Ergo, the Browns are already hedging their bets and hoping that the spotlight that will come with the pick of Sanders doesn’t outweigh the actual football stuff.
Sanders became a college star by turning around – along with his father, Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, and brilliant teammate Travis Hunter – a formerly destitute program in Colorado, and his slide in the draft was the perfect drama for every talking head in the world. But now, with minicamp workouts starting sooner than later (the Browns’ first minicamp begins on 27 May), Sanders’ story now must be all about the tough, grueling work, and adhering to a system as opposed to calling the shots.
From the first playbook installation to the crucible of the preseason, Sanders has mere months to make his point before the regular season starts in early September. He has already shown the toughness and grit to make that happen, but as to the ability to work in an environment where neither he nor his father are the alphas in the equation, the jury is still out.
It’s crude to encourage Sanders to be “humbled” by this experience; that’s not what it’s all about. But if this experience provided a reality check for Sanders, letting him know in uncertain terms that the path to NFL success can be littered with obstacles (both external and self-inflicted), that may not be the worst thing in the world.
