Comments by me about seeking help at a position shouldn’t be misinterpreted; I’m not seeking to end anyone’s career prematurely, and I am identifying areas that we can add help — if it’s available at a certain point in the draft. The point is to evaluate positions that would be aided by an incoming draft pick. And there aren’t many (a minority of them) that wouldn’t, so it’s a sorting out process to compare needs across positions. In this case, TE has suffered from injury problems that rob us of a consistent pass catching threat. Ideally, we’d like to have a pass catching TE who’s ‘consistently’ in the game, and this would be particularly true if were in the playoffs.

I probably should start yet another draft topic, but a few people took offense at the idea of thinking of the draft while the season was ongoing. Some of us, on the other hand, never stop thinking of way of helping the team, and part of that process involves identifying team weaknesses along with monitoring players who might help us in that area.

Re: durability factor. Graham isn’t the problem, but he’s no longer the pass catching threat he was in college. Quite obviously, Jackson and Scheffler are injury prone. I think TE who can remain healthy would be a nice addition. It would seem to make sense to have one who’s can perform both the blocking and pass catching. BTW — I see that Wisconsin’s TE, Travis Beckum has had injury problems that might affect his draft status. We’d be adding yet another — perhaps — injury prone TE but his skill set reminds me of Shannon Sharpe. We’ve had 4 TEs in the past and it might be one more way of addressing the problem. We could use one more good pass catcher, and this crop of WRs might not give us one, so TE could be a another way of adding one more receiver.

BTW — I’m expecting about a 3/2 defense/offense split in the draft. We’ll probably be hoping to fill the S/MLB/DT positions in the early rounds but the criterion later on will be whether the player can contribute, and the ability to fill certain niches provides a way for players to help the team. A power runner (durable one) like Shonn Greene, Iowa, or a Rashad Jennings, Liberty, would help the running game. A deep threat would clearly help, see various here. And there are other ways to go, too. The point here is that the middle and late rounds contain a lot of potential niche players who could provide important contributions.