Arizona Cardinals TE Trey McBride left off projected All-Rookie Team

As “list season” goes on, one of the newest Arizona Cardinals got snubbed from the All-Rookie projections team.

It’s that time of year again when there’s not much to talk about. So when lists are made, they’re highly scrutinized as Arizona Cardinals fans (and NFL fans for that matter) are ravenously hungry for football talk.

So when NFL.com’s Chad Reuter picked out what he thought would be the All-Rookie team on offense, it was a shock to not see Trey McBride’s name on there. Instead, the spot went to Denver Broncos tight end Greg Dulcich.

First off, that’s wrong. McBride was known as the best tight end to some scouts coming out of the 2022 NFL Draft. His ability to block and catch is what made him the first tight end off the board. Secondly, trying to compare Denver’s passing targets over Arizona’s is a bad comparison.

Courtland Sutton, Tim Patrick, and Jerry Jeudy have collectively not done a lot in their careers, and Russell Wilson is going to help change that. But to think that Dulcich’s production will be more than McBride’s is silly.

Trey McBride has a legitimate shot to be Offensive Rookie of the Year for the Arizona Cardinals

McBride has the better supporting cast which will only make his targets easier. Additionally, the NFC West is a bit easier than the AFC West which has seen the most insane divisional improvement in one year of all time.

Wilson has thrown 72 touchdown passes to tight ends throughout his 10-year NFL career, but only two tight ends have ever caught double-digit touchdowns (Jimmy Graham, and professional-Cardinal “annoyer” Luke Willson).

Breaking down the math:

• 292 TD passes/10 years= 29.2 average/year
• 72/292= 0.246 (move the decimal and round up) means roughly 25 percent of each year’s TD passes are to TEs
• .25*29.2= 7.3 Touchdowns from all TEs combined on average

So this leaves Dulcich to catch roughly three to four touchdowns? I don’t see how that’s All-Rookie team material.

I fully acknowledge that the Cardinals don’t have an illustrious history of throwing to tight ends- Zach Ertz had one of the best years for a Cardinals tight end since Jackie Smith played.

The Cardinals’ numbers are abysmal with tight ends, so mark this up as a qualitative hunch that McBride, not Dulcich, will be on that list when the 2022 season is over.

The Cardinals’ offense is set to be more aerial than the Broncos as of right now, but Nathaniel Hackett (Denver’s new head coach) is most likely going to change that.  We’ll see which tight end has the better year.