Josh
Whyle.
Josh
Whyle.
Cincinnati· 6'7"· 248 lb· 4.69s 40
"A 6-foot-6 red-zone problem who broke his school's tight end touchdown record without ever learning to separate, which is why the pick was made on Day 3 and not before."Pre-draft read
Whyle is a tall, long-striding move tight end who played the flex role in Cincinnati's spread offense. He aligned inline, in the slot and detached, and his money trait is the catch radius: he tracks the ball over either shoulder, high-points above defensive backs in the red zone and turns contested throws into completions with strong, late hands.
Route running is functional rather than nuanced — he wins on stems that let him build speed and on seams where his frame boxes out a safety. Blocking effort is willing but the play strength lags the size. A 4.69 forty at 248 pounds confirms the vertical speed that shows on tape, and the separator is scoring production: 15 touchdowns, a school record for a Cincinnati tight end.
Spread, 11-personnel passing offense that flexes the tight end into the slot and attacks the seam and red zone with his frame.
Year 1: TE3 and core special teams with a red-zone package. Ceiling: high-end TE2 who plays 400 snaps and steals five touchdowns a year.
A gap-scheme, two-tight-end run offense that asks him to block down on 290-pound defensive ends and dig out linebackers at the point of attack.
The bigger the field and the closer to the goal line, the more valuable he gets.
Josh Whyle Cincinnati TE Highlights || Mismatch Expert
Full college reel showing the catch radius, seam speed and red-zone wins that defined his Cincinnati tape.
American Draft Tape: TE Josh Whyle - Cincinnati
Conference-produced draft tape with route-by-route usage from his senior season.
Josh Whyle (Cincinnati TE #81) Vs. Arkansas 2022
Single-game cut-up against an SEC front, useful for the blocking limitations and contested-catch strengths.
Whyle came out of the 2023 class as a redshirt senior with a rare frame and a track record of finishing plays. Cincinnati used him as a flexed pass catcher first and an inline blocker second, and everything on his tape flows from length: a 6-foot-6 target who won the ball above the rim and lived in the red zone.
The production was consistent rather than explosive. He posted 28 catches for 353 yards and six scores in the 2020 AAC championship season, 26 for 332 and six more in the 2021 playoff year, then 32 for 326 and three touchdowns as a senior captain. Fifteen career touchdown catches broke the school record for the position. The flags were the same in every report: he is a build-up athlete who struggles to separate against tight man coverage, and his blocking is more effort than displacement at the point of attack.
The board saw a Day 3 TE2 with special teams value and a red-zone package — a Senior Bowl invitee whose testing backed the tape but whose game lacked the suddenness of the top of a loaded tight end class. Tennessee took him at 147 to develop behind Chigoziem Okonkwo.
- 01
Catch radius
At 6-foot-6 with strong hands he wins throws outside his frame, plucking away from his body and adjusting to back-shoulder and over-the-shoulder balls.
- 02
Red-zone finisher
Fifteen career touchdown grabs and a school record for a Cincinnati tight end, built on boxing out safeties inside the 20 and winning at the goal line.
- 03
Vertical speed
A 4.69 forty at 248 pounds shows up on seam routes, where he outruns linebackers up the hash and forces a safety to declare early.
- 04
Special teams value
Blocked a punt against UCF and logged real coverage snaps, giving a coordinator a fourth-phase reason to keep him on a 53-man roster.
- 05
Experience and durability
Five years in the program with 48 games played and starting reps in two AAC title runs, including a College Football Playoff season.
- 01
Separation quickness
He builds speed instead of exploding out of the stem, so tight man coverage from physical defenders stalls him at the line and through the break.
- 02
Blocking strength
Willing in the run game but he catches contact and gets stacked, lacking the anchor and grip strength to move an edge defender off the spot.
- 03
Route nuance
The tree is short: seams, flats and drags. He rarely wins with tempo changes or head fakes, so the yardage comes on volume rather than deception.
- 04
After the catch
Long strides make him easy to gather up in space, and he does not create missed tackles once the ball is in his hands.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.69sp50
- Vertical
- 33.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 115inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Cincinnati | 12 | 2 | 51 | 0 |
| 2020 | Cincinnati | 10 | 28 | 353 | 6 |
| 2021 | Cincinnati | 14 | 26 | 332 | 6 |
| 2022 | Cincinnati | 12 | 32 | 326 | 3 |
| Career | — | 48 | 88 | 1062 | 15 |
2020-2022 verified line by line against cfbstats.com (bowl and championship games included); 2019 verified against the official Cincinnati bio (12 games, 2 catches, 51 yards, no scores). Season sums match the career totals of 88 receptions, 1,062 yards and 15 touchdowns in 48 games. The 2018 redshirt year (four appearances, no receptions) is intentionally not listed as a statistical season.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Big-bodied TE2 whose value is red-zone matchups and roster flexibility rather than volume.
Long, athletic seam target who grew into a starter by adding functional blocking strength Whyle never quite found.
Move tight end who bounces between rosters because the receiving role never grows and the blocking never arrives.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Tennessee got exactly the TE2 it drafted. Whyle played 11 games with three starts as a rookie in 2023, caught nine passes for 94 yards and scored his first NFL touchdown against the Bengals in Week 4 while filling a heavy special teams role. His 2024 season was the peak: all 17 games, 28 receptions for 248 yards and a score behind Chigoziem Okonkwo in the Titans' pecking order. Tennessee waived him on August 26, 2025 during final cuts. Green Bay signed him to the practice squad two days later, elevated him to the active roster on November 4, and he finished 2025 with eight games, five catches, 36 yards and a touchdown. He enters 2026 on the Packers roster with 36 career games, 42 receptions, 378 yards and three scores.
In hindsight the evaluation held up almost exactly. Nobody projected a starter and nobody got one, but the traits that made him a fifth-rounder — size, hands, special teams reps — kept him employed through a roster cut and a change of teams. The one miss was optimism about the frame turning into blocking value; he never became the inline piece that would have earned TE1 snaps. As a 147th pick, three-plus years of roster life and a real 2024 role is a fair return.