Received a question this week on why didn’t we draft a TE in this draft. The answer lies within a young man that is being developed & groomed to be the eventual starting TE for the Dallas Cowboys. That has to be the teams hope. None other than Rico Gathers! There isn’t much tape on Rico as last year was really a red shirt year for him. He didn’t play football at Baylor during his collegiate years.
He had the luxury of getting significant action on the scout team with a pretty decent QB last season. From what I heard, Tony Romo made a concerted effort to do all he could to help develop Rico, to the point of forcing the ball to him. Apparently, Tony would look for a few inches of space and zip one into Rico or use his 6′ 8″ height and put it up top. As a forward for Baylor in basketball, Rico knows how to put a defender on his hip and snatch the ball out of the air. Recently, on Cowboys Break, they interviewed Will McClay and he was asked if their might be a role for Gathers this year. Will replied, that they are working on that and very hopeful, as their starting defense couldn’t stop him last year. That coincides with the report that Tony & Rico were taking it to our starting defensive unit day in and day out.
What should we expect? First, to get a fair number of snaps in preseason and do so even with the starters. That’s how you can see how far he has progressed. Saw a quote from Scott Linehan who said that if the defense is playing man coverage, then find the guy who’s 6′ 8″, 275 pounds! Now the key issue will be actually how does he block? If he can block reasonably well and knows his assignments, he can get on the field in two TE sets. From there, they’ll have some routes in there that can produce good results in favorable match ups. Let’s keep an eye on how far he’s come and if he can get worked into the mix this year.
This play below he just left Hitchens in his wake, total mismatch when covered by a linebacker and doesn’t look like anyone wants to run into that mountain of a man …….
