Trey
Mcbride.
Trey
Mcbride.
Colorado State· 6'4"· 246 lb
"The Mackey Award winner who scored once through the air as a senior: McBride was never going to run past anyone, and the whole evaluation came down to whether hands, strength and blocking were enough."Pre-draft read
Every-down Y tight end who lined up attached, in the slot and in the backfield, and was the safety valve, the chain-mover and the lead blocker in the same drive. McBride separates with strength and timing rather than speed: he stacks defenders off the line, sits in soft spots against zone and catches everything thrown near him, including low and behind.
After the catch he plays like a fullback, running through arm tackles and finishing forward. As a blocker he is genuinely willing, latching in-line and sustaining on the move in the outside run game, which is what makes the every-down projection real. The signature is dependability — 132 targets in a twelve-game season with almost nothing dropped.
Play-action offense that uses an attached Y as the primary intermediate target and asks him to block in-line on outside zone.
Year 1: two-tight-end blocker and third-down outlet. Ceiling: 100-catch every-down tight end who is the offense's leading receiver.
A vertical seam-stretching offense that wants its tight end to run past safeties and win on deep overs, where the lack of a top gear is a hard cap.
His game is volume, strength and reliability, so the fit is any offense willing to make the tight end its target leader.
Trey McBride | Colorado State Rams 2021 Senior Highlights
Mackey Award season: zone settles, contested grabs and in-line blocking reps.
Trey McBride Colorado State Highlights
Career compilation covering his development from part-time target to every-down Y.
Trey McBride Colorado State TE Highlights
Draft-cycle reel emphasizing yards after the catch and the strength-based catch point.
McBride was the rare tight end who did not need a scheme to hide him: a Colorado kid who stayed home, grew into the Mountain West's best player and won the Mackey Award as the country's top tight end in 2021. He was the pass game and part of the run game for a team that had little else.
The senior season is one of the strangest stat lines in the class: 90 catches for 1,121 yards and exactly one receiving touchdown, which said everything about how he was used — a possession engine on a bad offense that rarely reached the red zone. Everything else on tape traveled. He caught 68 percent of a 132-target load, blocked in-line without being an afterthought and beat Mountain West safeties with strength rather than tricks. The flag was explosiveness: he did not run away from anyone, and the touchdown total invited an easy criticism.
Boards had him as the clear TE1 of the class with a second-round grade, the debate being whether a non-explosive tight end from a Group of Five program deserved first-round capital. Arizona waited until 55 and took him behind an established starter, betting he would be a complete tight end by year three.
- 01
Hands you can script around
Catches away from his frame, low and behind, and converted a 132-target senior season into 90 receptions without the drops that plague high-volume tight ends.
- 02
Strength at the catch point
Plays through contact from safeties and linebackers, boxing them out with his body and finishing catches in traffic rather than waiting for clean windows.
- 03
Legitimate in-line blocker
Willing and technically sound attached to the tackle, sustaining blocks in the outside run game, which makes an every-down role realistic from day one.
- 04
Zone feel
Reads coverage rotations on the move and settles into soft spots at the right depth, giving a quarterback an outlet that is always where the progression expects him.
- 05
Yards after the catch
Runs through arm tackles and finishes forward like a fullback, turning eight-yard checkdowns into first downs on a consistent weekly basis.
- 01
No vertical gear
Does not threaten the seam with speed and rarely runs away from safeties, so his production depends on volume and spacing rather than on explosive plays.
- 02
One receiving touchdown as a senior
A statistical oddity tied to a poor offense, but it fed a fair question about whether he could win in the compressed space of the red zone.
- 03
Level of competition
Mountain West defenses rarely put an NFL-caliber safety or linebacker on him, so the strength-based wins needed to be projected rather than confirmed.
- 04
Rounded route running
Builds into his breaks and does not create sudden separation, which means tight coverage can stay attached on isolated third-down routes.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- —s
- Vertical
- 33inp50
- Broad jump
- 117inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 18repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Colorado State | 9 | 7 | 89 | 1 |
| 2019 | Colorado State | 12 | 45 | 560 | 4 |
| 2020 | Colorado State | 4 | 22 | 330 | 4 |
| 2021 | Colorado State | 12 | 90 | 1121 | 1 |
| Career | — | 37 | 164 | 2100 | 10 |
cfbstats verified 2020 (4 G, 22-330-4) and 2021 (12 G, 90-1,121-1); 2018 and 2019 from ESPN/StatMuse season tables. Season sums reconcile exactly with the 37-game, 164-2,100-10 career line.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A complete every-down tight end who blocks in-line and produces 700-plus yards as the second option.
The ceiling is a decade-long possession tight end who leads an offense in targets without ever needing to run past anyone.
The floor is a solid two-way TE2 whose lack of explosiveness keeps him in a complementary role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Trey McBride has played his entire career with the Arizona Cardinals, emerging as a primary pass-catching tight end in his second season. He has become a significant target in the Cardinals' offense.
Arizona buried him as a rookie behind a veteran starter — 29 catches for 265 yards in 2022 — and then handed him the job. The 2023 season was the proof of concept: 81 receptions for 825 yards while playing the entire year, in a passing game with no other reliable option. In 2024 he became one of the best tight ends in football with 111 catches for 1,146 yards and his first Pro Bowl, and in 2025 he went further, catching 126 passes for 1,239 yards and eleven touchdowns, setting the single-season reception record for a tight end, earning a second Pro Bowl and being named first-team All-Pro.
This is what a correct evaluation of a low-explosion player looks like. The concern that he could not run away from NFL defenders was accurate and completely irrelevant, because his game was never built on separation by speed — it was built on strength at the catch point, spatial feel against zone and hands that do not fail. The touchdown total that scared people off in 2021 was a function of a bad offense, not of his skill set; given a real one, he scored eleven in a season. Pick 55 produced an All-Pro, and the only mistake was that thirty-one teams passed on him at least once.
Data note: 2021 John Mackey Award winner