Lions Senior Bowl roster tight ends have been announced

The 2022 Senior Bowl rosters are being filled out, and the Detroit Lions now know the tight ends they’ll have on their roster.

The Detroit Lions coaches will get a nice opportunity to coach in the 2022 Senior Bowl in preparation for April’s draft. They know the three quarterbacks and the seven wide receivers they’ll have on the American team roster.

On Saturday morning, the tight ends who will be on each Senior Bowl roster were announced. Here’s who the Lions will have.

Daniel Bellinger, San Diego State
Grant Calcaterra, SMU
Greg Dulcich, UCLA
Isaiah Likely, Coastal Carolina

Calcaterra makes it three SMU pass catchers the Lions will coach in the Senior Bowl, joining wide receivers Reggie Roberson and Danny Gray.

Senior Bowl director Jim Nagy offered a one-line summary of each of the four tight ends on roster of Detroit’s coaches.

"Bellinger-Tough, strong and versatile F/YCalcaterra-Fluid seam runner and athletic play-making FDulcich-Productive junior F with pull-away gear after catchLikely-Bouncy F w/legit RAC skills is low-key favorite of NFL teams"

“F” in layman terms, is a “move” tight end who can line up anywhere on the field. “Y” is a in-line tight end the way we traditionally think of it.

Tight end is a sneaky depth need for the Lions

T.J. Hockenson is obviously the Lions’ No. 1 tight end, and he’s not going anywhere. Brock Wright had a couple good moments as the No. 2 tight end this year after coming in as an undrafted rookie. But fter that the depth chart was inconsequential.

Head coach Dan Campbell wants to run the ball, which makes multiple tight ends who can capably play a valuable thing to have. I don’t agree with any idea that tight end is a huge need for the Lions, but according to Sharp Football they used multiple tight ends on 19 percent of their plays this season. On running plays, that rate went up to 29 percent.

There’s room for the Lions to upgrade their tight end depth chart, and it’s considered a deep draft class at the position. So getting a close look at a sampling of the group is another point to show the value of coaching the Senior Bowl.