The tight ends will play a key part in Rice’s offense this season.
Best believes Myers, Bull good bets to fill NFL-styled position
A tight end has finished as one of Stanford’s top three receivers in eight of the last 10 years. And under Mike Bloomgren, tight ends and running backs nearly outnumbered wide receivers among the team’s receiving leaders.
It’s a trend that may continue at Rice, especially now that the Owls’ starting tight ends have a greater command of their assignments and responsibilities in a new scheme that puts a premium on the position.
“I would say in my estimation that the quarterback has the most on his plate in this offense, but the tight end is second most,” first-year tight ends coach Bill Best said. “I
mean he has to know all of it.”
For Best and Rice’s tight ends, learning a new system came with the added complexity of understanding how the offense best operates more holistically. And after beginning his career coaching air raid and spread offenses, Best experienced his own learning curve ahead of his players.
“The hardest part has been learning the language itself,” he said. “Learning the West Coast offense — it is an NFL curriculum as we say — is challenging and fun for me as a coach to learn this and then present it to the players where it’s a completely new system to them.”
In an air raid attack, “it’s basically a bigger receiver who’s a willing blocker,” Best said. “Here it is the full description of an NFL tight end. They’ve got to block power at the point of attack. They’ve got to cut off the back side of a zone. They’ve got to line up in goal line and get
grimy down there, catch the stick route, run seam routes. They’ve got to pass protect. We ask them to be playmakers in the run game.”
But that versatility lends itself to the Owls’ leading tight end duo.
“Jaeger Bull is a very solid kid,” Best said. “He was a high school quarterback who has a really high football IQ to begin with. The thing I love about him is his toughness. That dude would line up and play left tackle if he had to; he can line up at X receiver if we need it. He doesn’t have exceptional speed by any stretch, but he does everything at a high level. He wants the ball to be run behind him.
“Jordan Myers is just a football
player. The other day, he lined up at all kinds of positions: wing, (traditional) tight end, running back. The biggest thing about him is he’s a starter on three special teams and he does it willingly. We call him our Swiss army knife.”
In a way, Rice’s offense is fitting for an albeit undersized Myers (6-2, 217). The redshirt sophomore rushed for 199 yards and a touchdown, adding 11 receptions for 119 receiving yards in 2017. Best gushes about his explosiveness and his hand strength in blocks.
Meanwhile, Bull, a redshirt freshman, has taken the reins through spring, even becoming a teacher to the Owls’ new tight ends.
“I think we’re more of a force to be reckoned with in this offense,” Bull said of the tight ends. “It’s very exciting.”
Best is excited to see Bull and Myers in action on Saturdays this season. Before then, he’d like to
shore up the depth chart behind them.
“What we’re trying to do is develop depth behind Jordan and Jaeger. The third tight end is still being developed and settled on; different ones flash every day,” Best said. A few have caught Bull’s eye. Still, he’s most excited about how the group will contribute to the team’s overall offensive development.
“Jacob Doddridge is one who comes to mind,” Bull said. “He’s playing tight end and fullback for us right now. He’s just a bowling ball. … Robert French is also a guy who could shake some guys up at the top of a route.
“(The offense) is different from what other guys are doing in college football right now, so it’s exciting to see how defenses will react to that when we play them.”