Tight end

Route participation is the chance and target share is the conversion. The tight ends in the top right are running the routes and drawing the looks; the ones adrift to the right of the median with nothing above it are on the field for a living, not for the ball.

The same route count, divided differently. Target share rewards a tight end whose offense throws a lot; targets per route run does not care how often his team drops back, only how often the ball comes when he goes out. Where a name sits well below its position on the first chart, the volume was the offense’s, not his.

Touchdowns are the noisiest thing a tight end does and the easiest to draft on. Yardage per game is close to a role measure; touchdowns are a role measure multiplied by the field position his offense happened to find. A season high on the vertical and ordinary on the horizontal is the one least likely to happen twice.

Air yards share says how far downfield the offense is willing to look for him; targets per route run says how often it looks at all. Together they separate the seam threat from the safety valve. Two tight ends can catch the same number of balls and be doing completely different jobs.

The pair the history below actually turns on. Yards per route run is efficiency with the route count divided out, so it survives a change of offense better than yardage does; holding it against participation shows whether the rate came with a starter’s workload or from a sample small enough to flatter anyone.

One column per factor, each name carrying his own figure for it. The argument is not that any single column picks a TE1. It is that the same few names keep appearing column after column, measured against the fifteen-year averages above, and a player who clears five of six is not doing it by accident.