Cade Otton And His Rash Of Dropsies
July 20th, 2025
Ball security an issue for PFF tribe.
Cade Otton can’t buy a break.
The Bucs’ fourth-year tight end (in a contract year) had top-10 numbers for tight ends last year. Doesn’t seem as if many noticed.
As Joe pointed out, in Jeremy Fowler of BSPN’s annual top-10 list at each position ranked by a blue ribbon panel of some 70 NFL suits, scouts and coaches, not one cast a vote for Otton as a top-10 tight end yet 22 tight ends got at least one vote.
It gets worse.
John Kosko of the notorious PFF tribe has Otton ranked as the No. 20 tight end. It seems Otton’s nasty habit of being loose with ball security turns Kosko off, but he complimented Otton on his production.
Otton, per Kosko, has the third-most drops the past two seasons (11) among tight end, and that Otton also has three fumbles in that time.
Clean up the ball security, Kosko said, and Otton has the skillset to be one of the better tight ends in the game.
Two summers ago, Otton had a really bad case of the dropsies in training camp. So much so Joe wondered if he would lose his starting job.
Once after practice, someone who covers the Bucs remarked that Otton had a terrible day with the dropsies, “This team puts the ball on the ground a lot.”
She wasn’t wrong.
So yeah, if Otton can improve his hands, it may just get him a nice contract from Team Glazer in March.
July 20th, 2025 at 12:26 am
Otton needs to work on ball security too, he has fumbled a lot, most of the time near the sidelines so it just went out of bounds, but every time he’d get open and start running, I’m always yelling to protect the ball as he has a habit of putting it on the ground. Also, early in the year, he was dropping quite a few balls – but to give him credit, when he was needed in the middle of the year when the Bucs lost all their WRs, he was pretty clutch. As a receiver he’s really quite good, but he’s not much of a blocker – that’s the one area I hope he’s spending a lot of time working on. He seems OK when he’s engaged as a blocker, but he way too often just fell down on blocks – not sure what that is about, if it’s a leverage issue or what, but watching the ALL22, you’d see him on the ground during blocks a lot (and to be clear, it’s not him getting knocked down, he just simply falls for some reason). Still, not trying to sound too negative on Otton, I think he’s still a top 15 type of TE, and if you’re just talking about receiving TEs, he might break into the top 10.
July 20th, 2025 at 12:52 am
Someone get gloves on this guy.
July 20th, 2025 at 3:48 am
Cade Otton and how he’s avoided getting sent to the hospital catching hospital balls.
Cade has fumbled 3 times in 3 years. That’s how many times Baket fumbled in one season, let’s not do that
July 20th, 2025 at 7:08 am
Cade Otton can’t buy a pair of gloves?
July 20th, 2025 at 7:33 am
Otton had 856 offensive snaps in his 14 games; that averages out to 61 snaps/game. Bucs team had 1094 total offensive snaps last season or 64 snaps/game average.
Kyle virtually never came off the field. And every play he was either running a route full-bore or blocking for the play; IOW he was going 100% virtually all game. They flat wore him out is my guess, and him dropping some passes more than likely is the result of that ‘over-use’.
If Bucs find a way to incorporate Durham & Culp more into the offense this season, it’ll cut down appreciably on Otton’s snaps and I’ll bet his catch percentage will incease from his current 67.8% to at least about 75%. We can’t keep running him into the ground and expect 100% perfection.
July 20th, 2025 at 7:35 am
Brady made him wear gloves.
July 20th, 2025 at 7:51 am
I recall him finding that he does better withOUT gloves
July 20th, 2025 at 8:35 am
I have been saying for a few years, we need an upgrade at TE
To make matters worse, the Bucs carry 4 TEs on their roster
Cade Otton gets the majority of the snaps
We need one solid all around TE, and two capable backups
July 20th, 2025 at 8:40 am
He needs to be wearing receiver Gloves!!!!!!!!!
July 20th, 2025 at 8:59 am
He’s a “pretty good” tight end. Well worth a 4th rounder, I guess. Kinda like most players. Definitely a better receiver than blocker from what I see during games, but not really a bad blocker. I don’t have all 22. Face it: most players are average. Even on great teams.
July 20th, 2025 at 9:00 am
This offense doesn’t prioritize the TE. Bucs who have a lot of players coming up for extentions can’t pay every one. Something has to give. Since the Bucs take pride in their drafting, I wouldn’t invest in Cade’s jersey.
July 20th, 2025 at 9:01 am
“Cade has fumbled 3 times in 3 years. That’s how many times Baket fumbled in one season, let’s not do that”
Warren, sorry but that stat is so skewed as to be virtually meaningless.
Baker touches the ball on EVERY play. Otton touches the ball how often?
Baker faces a D looking to take his head off…DL and LB’s…Cade gets some LB hits but he’s mostly getting hits from smaller DB’s.
Not exactly an apples to apples comparison.
July 20th, 2025 at 9:17 am
^^^
3 fumbles in 3 years ≠ ball security problems, and Cade has been a top 3 recieving target Bakers entire time here.
Everybody on offense is facing defenders looking to take their heads off, lol the way some of you romanticize this dude is hilarious.
As offensive BALL CARRIERS, Cade is as secure as anybody else on this team.
Cade is also getting targets from a QB who’ll throw him the ball in multi-coverage looks. If anything Mayfields’ tendencies on to force passes into traffic, the ones that actually go over the LOS has shown how tough Cade Otton these pass 2 years
July 20th, 2025 at 10:05 am
Watching Otton it seems to me that he makes the difficult catches, don’t remember seeing him fumble a lot or drop a lot of passes.
July 20th, 2025 at 10:27 am
What Defense Rules said.
Particularly his comments about using Payne and Devin more often.
Both showed serious potential in the limited snaps they got last year, and I’d agree that giving Cade a few less snaps may increase his productivity and performance.
Cade has shown improvement every year. He still has some things to work on, but I’d lean in the direction of us offering him a new contract when the time comes.
July 20th, 2025 at 10:49 am
“Kyle virtually never came off the field.“
DR… you are making our Trask boys drool.
July 20th, 2025 at 11:06 am
I think Devin Culp is going to be used more in the receiving game this year. He might take some snaps away from Cade if his drops continue.
July 20th, 2025 at 11:22 am
I have been a buccaneer fan for most of the franchise’s life and have never seen a better tight end than Otton, besides gronk. The so “called EXPERTS” will always see the negatives in a player without recognizing the good!
July 20th, 2025 at 12:40 pm
@Cantor: Jimmie Giles was way better than Otton. Otton is good. Giles was great.
July 20th, 2025 at 2:46 pm
Culp
July 20th, 2025 at 3:10 pm
Culp has proven he can catch. Durham has proven he can catch and block. Both can take some of Ottons snaps to give him a rest and maybe less fatigue makes him even better. I am very pro-Cade and am pro-TE room. We don’t need another superstar there ( especially a high priced one) because our offense will always be WR driven based on our immense talent there. Durham and Culp do not hurt us at all when they need to be on the field. We are solid on offense but IMO we need better OL depth and a proven backup QB.
July 21st, 2025 at 1:20 am
Warren Brooks Lynch Says:
Cade has fumbled 3 times in 3 years.
———–
Yeah, but as I said, a lot of them were on the sideline and went out of bounds, those don’t show up on the stat sheet. Heck I think he fumbled at least twice in the Broncos game alone. Again, not trying to sound negative about Otton, I do like him, but the article was about his case of the dropsies, and to me, that includes dropping the ball after you catch it. It’s just something he needs to clean up.