{"id":348624,"date":"2025-11-01T19:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T19:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/348624\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T19:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T19:17:11","slug":"tucker-krafts-pace-is-off-the-charts-for-packers-tight-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/348624\/","title":{"rendered":"Tucker Kraft\u2019s pace is off the charts for Packers tight ends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GREEN BAY \u2013 The season isn&#8217;t quite half over, but <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.packers.com\/team\/players-roster\/tucker-kraft\/\" title=\"Tucker Kraft\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tucker Kraft<\/a> is on pace to turn in the best year ever by a Packers tight end.<\/p>\n<p>Consider these single-season records for Green Bay tight ends:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The most receptions is 61 by Jermichael Finley in 2012. With 30 catches through seven games, Kraft is on pace for 73.<\/li>\n<li>The most receiving yards is 814 by Paul Coffman in 1983. With 469 yards thus far, Kraft is on pace for 1,139.<\/li>\n<li>The most receiving TDs is 11, set by Coffman in &#8217;83 and tied by Robert Tonyan in 2020. With six TDs in 2025 to date, Kraft is on pace for 14 or 15.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The recent addition of a 17th regular-season game has, comparatively speaking, boosted those projections a bit, and there&#8217;s admittedly a long way to go beginning with Sunday&#8217;s home matchup against Carolina. So this is not meant to set unrealistic expectations for Kraft, only to point out he could be in the midst of a historic season in the long and storied history of this franchise.<\/p>\n<p>Also, defenses certainly will adjust, especially now that Kraft has set his own career high for receiving yards in a game twice, with 124 in Week 2 vs. Washington and then 143 last week at Pittsburgh. So as they say about the stock market, past performance does not guarantee future results.<\/p>\n<p>As a side note, there are a grand total of three 120-plus yard performances by tight ends in the NFL this season, and Kraft has two of them (the Chargers&#8217; Oronde Gadsden has the other). So Kraft is only going to attract more and more attention from opposing defenses from here on out.<\/p>\n<p>How he and the Packers respond to that remains to be seen. But here&#8217;s the other side of the coin: Kraft is about to turn just 25 on Monday, and he&#8217;s not a finished product. He&#8217;ll likely keep getting better.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;His growth,&#8221; receiver <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.packers.com\/team\/players-roster\/romeo-doubs\/\" title=\"Romeo Doubs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Romeo Doubs<\/a> answered when asked what&#8217;s impressed him the most about Kraft. &#8220;I remember when he first got here as a rookie, and from that time on he&#8217;s been doing nothing but just grinding and being the best he can be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of rookies, safety <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.packers.com\/team\/players-roster\/evan-williams\/\" title=\"Evan Williams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Evan Williams<\/a> remembers last year as a newly arrived fourth-round pick trying to cover Kraft in practice and, well, struggling to do so.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s funny, going against him a couple times, he&#8217;s one of the only tight ends who&#8217;s pretty consistently beating me,&#8221; Williams recalled. &#8220;I&#8217;m like, damn, there&#8217;s no way I can&#8217;t guard a tight end. I pride myself \u2026 that&#8217;s my job description. I&#8217;ve got to be able to guard all these tight ends.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But after seeing what he&#8217;s done these past couple years, it&#8217;s no surprise. Just his work ethic, how he approaches every day. Yeah, he&#8217;s a beast, man.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>League-wide, he leads all tight ends in receiving yards per game at 67.0, and his six TDs are tied for second behind Philly&#8217;s Dallas Goedert, who has seven and has played one more game. On Sunday against the Panthers, Kraft is looking to score a receiving TD in his fourth straight home game.<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s one more statistical nugget from NFL Research\/Next Gen Stats to put proper context around just what Kraft is doing so far this season:<\/p>\n<p>QB <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.packers.com\/team\/players-roster\/jordan-love\/\" title=\"Jordan Love\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jordan Love<\/a>&#8216;s passer rating while targeting Kraft this season is 150.3, as his 30 catches for 469 yards and six TDs have come on just 41 targets with no interceptions. That&#8217;s the highest for any QB-pass catcher duo in the league this year (min. 40 targets) by 19 rating points.<\/p>\n<p>Next best is Seattle QB Sam Darnold and WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba at 131.3, and the duos of Dak Prescott-George Pickens in Dallas (128.5) and Jared Goff-Amon-Ra St. Brown in Detroit (128.2) are more than 20 rating points behind.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the current season isn&#8217;t quite half over, but that 150.3 rating when targeted is the second-highest in the decade-long Next Gen Stats era (since 2016, min. 40 targets). Back in 2018, Seattle QB Russell Wilson and WR Tyler Lockett fashioned a maximum 158.3 rating when Lockett caught 57 passes on 70 targets for 965 yards and 10 TDs with no interceptions when the ball was thrown his way.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;ll be a fun stat to track as the season continues, particularly with Kraft&#8217;s penchant for taking short passes and turning them into big plays with substantial yards after the catch.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and he&#8217;s also one of the offense&#8217;s best blockers, not just among tight ends, but among all players on the team.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no weak point in his game,&#8221; Williams said. &#8220;There&#8217;s nothing that a defense can attack.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad that guy&#8217;s on my team, I&#8217;ll say that much.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREEN BAY \u2013 The season isn&#8217;t quite half over, but Tucker Kraft is on pace to turn in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":348625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[170114,11822,51440,164810,54418,1232,62,95048,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-348624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-carolina-panthers-at-green-bay-packers-2025-reg-9","9":"tag-homepage-cp","10":"tag-news-national-feature","11":"tag-news-one-last-look","12":"tag-news-stories","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tucker-kraft","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115476054013645549","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}