What if the Los Angeles Rams are telling the truth about Terrance Ferguson, that the rookie tight end will get his opportunity eventually, but are hiding the part that Sean McVay doesn’t want to say out loud? That maybe the Rams drafted Ferguson with the future in mind. Specifically, if and when Matthew Stafford retires.
Stafford’s history with tight end receiving production has been suspect at best and now the Rams have arguably the least valuable tight end room in the NFL. I’m not going to say that Stafford is “to blame” for this, but are tight end investments a waste of valuable resources when the quarterback is Stafford?
Rams 2025 tight ends
Six weeks into the season, Tyler Higbee leads Rams tight ends with 103 routes run and he’s been targeted 15 times. Higbee has 10 catches for 102 yards, averaging 4.9 air yards per target, and he has one touchdown.
Higbee’s 46.7% success rate in 2025 is the lowest it has been since 2017, his second year in the league. Higbee is on a sorta-friendly deal, but his $8.7 million cap hit ranks 15th among all tight ends. It is by no means a crippling number, but keep in mind that Higbee is 34th in receiving yards among tight ends and as stated earlier he only has one touchdown. He’s be no means a red zone threat and has only averaged 2.5 touchdowns per season in his career.
But we’ll come back to Higbee in a moment and how much more productive he was prior to 2021.
Davis Allen is second on the team with 53 routes and Stafford has targeted him 9 times. Allen has 7 catches for 55 yards and 2 touchdowns, averaging 7 air yards per target. Allen is 27th in air yards per target, whereas Higbee is 56th. This just illustrates that the Rams don’t have a downfield threat at tight end…
Wait, they do. They just don’t use him.
Finally we get to Colby Parkinson, who has run 33 routes and been targeted 5 times. Parkinson has 4 catches for 11 yards and averages 4.8 air yards per target.
If you just want a tight end to dunk the ball to less than 5 yards away, you can grab those guys off of the street. Strangely, the Rams are paying Parkinson MORE than they’re paying Higbee: Parkinson’s $9.8 million cap hit is 13th among all tight ends in the league.
Over at Next Gen Stats, Parkinson ranks 111th out of 113 tight ends in receiving EPA (Estimated Points Added), ahead of Bengals teammates Noah Fant and Mike Gesicki. It’s actually more impressive that Parkinson has managed to get this low despite only being targeted 5 times and catching 4 of those passes. But that’s how bad Parkinson has been with his limited opportunities.
Because EPA is not a volume stat. It measures the value of each time you touch the ball and Parkinson’s opportunities have been THAT bad.
$9.8 million. Parkinson’s cap hit is higher than Trey McBride’s. McBride has run the most routes of any TE this season (203) and he has been targeted 53 times. He has a receiving EPA of +16.3 and he has 347 yards. Yes, McBride has more guaranteed money, he’s going to get a lot more in career earnings than Parkinson. Just remember that L.A. saw Parkinson play, said “we gotta have that”, and guaranteed him $15.5 million.
I don’t blame Colby Parkinson. This was the identification of a player who the Rams believed they could use and almost immediately we could see that was a poor evaluation. Is it just a coincidence that the same team doesn’t know what to do with their rookie tight end?
Targets per Routes
It’s really important to point out, especially with Puka Nacua potentially sidelined, how little Stafford uses his tight ends in the passing game. Will that change in London?
- Higbee has 15 targets on 103 routes (6.9 routes per target)
- Allen has 9 targets on 53 routes (5.9 routes per target)
- Parkinson has 5 targets on 33 routes (6.6 routes per target)
Typically, if a team is going to pay premium for a tight end, that player would expected to be targeted every 4 routes. Brock Bowers, Tyler Warren, Trey McBride, Dalton Kincaid would be players targeted roughly every 4 routes. The next tier would be every 5 routes and those guys, like A.J. Barner, Mark Andrews, Cole Kmet, Tucker Kraft, Sam LaPorta would be in that range and can be very valuable.
Higbee being targeted every 7 routes is very unusual for a tight end that a team decides to put in the top-15 for salary. Okay, Higbee had a serious injury last year.
But then Parkinson is targeted almost less often per route and more importantly only plays 1/3rd as often.
Ferguson doesn’t play at all. His routes are practically non-existent despite Parkinson being as bad as he is for the Rams.
Allen might deserve more targets and routes, he’s certainly the only Rams tight end who is doing anything as a receiver, but he’s just 46th in TE targets this year. Darren Waller, who the Dolphins lured out of retirement, has 12 targets and 4 touchdowns on just 65 routes!
Tight ends like Parkinson are dime a dozen, but the Rams paid $15 million. That might be acceptable if this were to blame on only one player, but why would Parkinson be to blame if the only consistency is that RAMS tight ends seem to underwhelm every time?
Higbee before Stafford
We have to link this back to the original premise that Stafford is bad for tight ends, right? Well, Higbee would have some argument there:
- From 2018-2020, Higbee averaged 8.5 yards per target and had a success rate of 64.5% on 183 targets.
- From 2021-present, Higbee averages 6.4 yards per target and has a success rate of 55.5% on 290 targets.
Higbee averaged at least 8.2 yards per target every year from 2018 to 2020, but has not averaged more than 7.1 yards per target with Stafford.
Parkinson before Stafford
There had to be SOME reason to sign him, right?
- In 2022, Parkinson had 322 yards, 13 yards per catch, 61.8% success, 9.5 yards per target
- In 2023, Parkinson had 247 yards, 9.9 YPC, 52.9% success, 7.3 YPT
- In 2024, first year with Rams, he had 294 yards, 9.8 YPC, 53.1% success, 6.0 YPT
Although Parkinson’s volume stats look identical from the year before, his yards BEFORE catch dropped from 6.4 in Seattle to 4.5 in L.A. Stafford is throwing him the ball 2 yards shorter than the targets he was getting from Geno Smith. Not a “downfield weapon” by any means, the Seahawks used Parkinson differently than the Rams do and now he could be the worst tight end in the league.
Why would the Rams sign him if they didn’t want to use him in a way that had worked in the past? His yards before catch in 2025 is all the way down to 2.3.
Stafford and T.J. Hockenson
In 2019, the Lions used the 8th pick in the draft on tight end Hockenson, one of the highest drafted tight ends in the history of the league. Stafford is by no means responsible for Hockenson’s underwhelming career — and he was a Pro Bowl tight end in 2020 after catching 67 passes for 723 yards* — but the better version of Hockenson didn’t really show up until he was traded to the Vikings.
What does it say that Detroit was so nonplussed by his career that he was traded to a division rival?
*In 2020, Hockenson still only averaged 7.2 yards per target. The league average was 7.5 yards per target (Hockenson ranked outside the top-100) and that might be a decent number for a tight end, but not a tight end picked in the top-10.
Stafford and Eric Ebron
Go back a little more and the Lions drafted Ebron 10th overall in 2014. After 4 pretty disappointing seasons in Detroit, scoring just 11 touchdowns, Ebron signs a free agent deal with the Colts. In his first season there, Ebron catches 13 touchdowns (rushes for a 14th), and makes his first Pro Bowl. Ebron, like Hockenson, wasn’t great. But without Stafford — for WHATEVER reason — he was better.
Ferguson watch continues
Six weeks into his career, the fourth-highest drafted tight end still has the fewest yards of any of the first 10 tight ends drafted: 21 yards on one catch.
Tyler Warren is at 370 yards, third rounder Harold Fannin is at 254, Mason Taylor is at 177, while day three picks Gunnar Helm and Oronde Gadsden are over 140. I recently had a Panthers fan tell me that the second-best receiver on the team right now is probably rookie fifth round tight end Mitchell Evans.
I wrote about this a month ago and it just happens to be more relevant now: Ferguson’s production isn’t the problem, but in the context of playing on the Rams it certainly should raise some red flags.
With the worst tight end in football and rather unremarkable numbers from Higbee and Davis, with Puka having done so much of the work so far, how could McVay still believe that Ferguson is of no use — unless the answer is the simple one staring fans right in the face?
That Ferguson is of no use to the Rams because they made a mistake in the draft.
In modern NFL terms, rookies have to contribute. Taylor and Fannin are both a year younger than Ferguson. Gadsen and Evans are the same age. If a rookie isn’t contributing, it’s usually because he wasn’t a huge investment or he is buried on the depth chart. Neither of those should apply to Ferguson.
Consider that Colston Loveland only has 54 yards and he was the 10th overall pick. But the Bears still gave Loveland 18 routes in each of his first two games, then he got injured, and this past week he had more routes run than Cole Kmet for the first time in 2025. Loveland’s start is slow but the Bears are actively trying to get him more involved. Ferguson did run a season-best 7 routes against the Ravens, but Stafford did not target him…even though Puka Nacua missed half of the game. The 7 routes may also have only come because Parkinson was inactive due to a concussion.
The Rams have Ferguson for just four years of his rookie contract, possibly the only 4 years of his career with L.A., which is why draft picks will always be more valuable when they contribute for all 4 years.
Most of the top receivers in the NFL are on their rookie contracts. Tight ends DO take much longer to develop and have longer shelf lives than receivers and that all matters when considering Ferguson’s slow start. That being said, what evidence do we have from McVay and Stafford that development is guaranteed? It didn’t happen for Brycen Hopkins or Jacob Harris. It lowkey hasn’t really happened for Allen. A change of scenery was terrible for Parkinson.
At a certain point when you’re asking “What’s wrong with the player?” you may need to point the finger back at yourself.
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