Cole
Kmet.
Cole
Kmet.
Notre Dame· 6'6"· 262 lb· 4.70s 40
"A two-sport Notre Dame kid who finally gave up baseball, broke a collarbone in fall camp, and still became the most complete tight end in the class across eleven games."Pre-draft read
In-line Y tight end who was asked to do the ugly work at Notre Dame and did it: attached to the tackle, he sets his hands inside and sustains on the edge in the run game rather than grazing and falling off. Built thick through the chest with a wide catch radius, he works the short-to-intermediate zones, sits down in windows and takes the hit to finish the catch.
The secondary trait is hands and body control at the catch point, which is what made the red-zone production spike as a junior. He is not a vertical seam threat who runs away from safeties, and the release against physical linebackers can stall, but the combination of real blocking, reliable hands and a starter's frame is the profile teams draft in round two.
A play-action offense with a wide-zone run game that keeps one attached tight end on the field for the majority of snaps.
Year 1: starting in-line tight end with 40 targets. Ceiling: a 70-catch, six-touchdown Y who never leaves the field.
An empty-set spread that only uses a detached move tight end and asks him to win isolated man coverage against nickel safeties.
His value is in staying on the field for all three downs, not in any one matchup.
Notre Dame TE Cole Kmet 2019 Highlights
Junior-season reel: intermediate-zone work, contested catches and the in-line blocking that made him the class's first tight end.
Cole Kmet 2019 Notre Dame Highlights
Includes the nine-catch, 108-yard return game at Georgia three weeks after the collarbone break.
Cole Kmet 2019-2020 Junior Year Highlights
Red-zone body control and catch radius across the full junior season.
Kmet is the safe, complete tight end in a class without an obvious star at the position. He played both football and baseball at Notre Dame for two years, closing games on the mound while working as the number two tight end, and it was only when he gave up baseball and spent a full spring on football that the pass-catching game took off.
The resume is short by design. He caught two passes for 14 yards as a true freshman in 2017 and 15 for 162 as a sophomore in 2018 behind Alize Mack, then broke his collarbone in fall camp before his junior year. He returned in week three and announced himself with nine catches for 108 yards and a score at Georgia, finishing 2019 with 43 receptions for 515 yards and six touchdowns in eleven games — a 60-catch, 691-yard career line that is thin on volume but steep on trajectory. He scored in four straight games and caught every ball thrown his way in the Southern Cal win.
Boards liked him as the first tight end off the board because the blocking was already NFL-grade and the receiving arrow was pointing straight up. Chicago, with no tight end room to speak of, traded up to 43 and took him as a plug-in starter with room to grow.
- 01
In-line blocking
attaches to the edge with inside hands and leg drive, and is already capable of being the single tight end in a base run package.
- 02
Catch radius and hands
big target with strong grips who plucks away from his frame and holds on through contact in traffic over the middle.
- 03
Red-zone body control
uses his frame to shield defenders and adjust late, which is why he scored six times on a 43-catch junior season.
- 04
Trajectory
only one season as a full-time football player and the production jumped immediately, with obvious room left in the route detail.
- 05
Toughness and makeup
broke a collarbone in camp, returned in three weeks and played through the whole season as the offense's security blanket.
- 01
Vertical speed
not a seam stretcher who threatens safeties; the explosive plays come from yards after the catch rather than from separation downfield.
- 02
Route nuance
stems and breaks are still basic, and he can be rerouted by physical linebackers who get hands on him at the line of scrimmage.
- 03
Production sample
60 career catches across three seasons is a thin base, and almost all of the receiving tape comes from eleven games.
- 04
Separation against man
struggles to create space on isolated man coverage and relies on the quarterback throwing him open in tight windows.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.70sp50
- Vertical
- 37inp50
- Broad jump
- 123inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.44sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.41sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Notre Dame | 13 | 2 | 14 | 0 |
| 2018 | Notre Dame | 11 | 15 | 162 | 0 |
| 2019 | Notre Dame | 11 | 43 | 515 | 6 |
| Career | — | 35 | 60 | 691 | 6 |
Season sums match the career line exactly (60-691-6). Missed the first two games of 2019 with a broken collarbone suffered in fall camp; totals include bowl games.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Blocking-first starter who catches 50-60 passes a year and keeps the offense on schedule.
The complete Y who becomes a franchise record holder through volume, reliability and never missing a snap.
Useful in-line blocker whose receiving role never grows past the third option.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Chicago has used him as its everyday tight end for six seasons and he has outlasted three head coaches. After a quiet 28-catch rookie year in 2020 he started every game in 2021 and caught 60 passes for 612 yards, then found the end zone with seven touchdowns in 2022 and posted his best season in 2023 with 73 receptions for 719 yards and six scores. The arrival of Caleb Williams and a rebuilt receiver room cut into his targets — 47 catches in 2024 and 30 in 2025 — but the blocking role never shrank, and in 2024 he even filled in as the emergency long snapper and won NFC Special Teams Player of the Week for it. Through Week 2 of 2026 he has 290 career catches for 2,974 yards and 22 touchdowns in 102 games, second among Bears tight ends all-time in receptions, yards and touchdowns.
The evaluation holds up almost exactly as written. He was never going to be a matchup problem who dictates coverage, and he has not been; he was going to be a durable, complete Y who blocks at a starter's level and catches everything in the intermediate zone, and that is precisely the career. At pick 43 a team got six years of a starting tight end and a franchise record book entry. Boring, and correct.
Data note: from Las Vegas