Falcons tight end roster review: The Kyle Pitts conundrum continues

Atlanta’s free agent tight end did great work, but he was overshadowed by the most controversial Falcon currently on the roster.

You have a take on Kyle Pitts. You may not be as loud as some about it, or as passionate about what that take is, but you likely have a strong opinion about the Atlanta Falcons tight end. Just about everybody does.

It is impossible to put together a positional review—to talk about this roster or this offseason, really—without the focus inevitably going to Pitts. He’s the highest-drafted tight end ever, a player who mostly lived up to his considerable promise his rookie season, and a tight end who has been chasing (and falling well short) of those highs ever since. In a vacuum, he’s a useful player the Falcons and a potential trade chip this offseason, but nothing Pitts does happens in a vacuum. That’s the price of the expectations placed on him, and his failure to meet them thus far.

But Pitts was not the only tight end working on this team in 2024, and as we move on to our roster review, we’ll talk about all three.

Kyle Pitts

Age: 24 | Experience: 4 seasons

2024 Stats: 47 receptions, 602 yards, 4 touchdowns, 41.9% success rate, 63.5% catch rate, 12.8 yards per reception, 4 drops

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These were full season career lows for Pitts in receptions and yards, though his four touchdowns were a new career high. Under the microscope all season long, Pitts had a handful of huge catches and big downfield plays that seemed to foreshadow bigger things ahead, but it ended up being yet another up-and-down season. For every nice grab in traffic or gallop down the sideline, Pitts had an accidentally tossed ball that led to an interception or a near miscue crossing the goal line holding the ball too carelessly.

Pitts is only 24 years old, is 13th in receiving yards among tight ends over the past five seasons (per StatsMuse) despite playing in just four seasons and missing half of one in that span, and has moments where the ability is evident even if the miscues are still there. There are plenty of teams who will look at Pitts and think they can maximize that talent for a still-quite-young player, should the Falcons want to move on, and the Falcons themselves can almost certainly get more out of him than they did this year.

The reality is that Pitts is a good-but-not-great player who has improved his blocking but still isn’t an asset there, can be a standout receiver in stretches but is not close to dominant, and is inconsistent enough given this team’s huge investment in him means he’s not guaranteed to return in 2025 if there’s a standout trade offer out there. If he does stick around, expecting him to finish among the top ten tight ends in terms of receiving yardage is far from an unreasonable expectation, but he’ll likely be the fourth option in this passing game even so. We may never see the Pitts the Falcons were hoping they were getting when they drafted him fourth overall back in 2021, but we’ll likely look back on his body of work someday and see a quality career.

Charlie Woerner

Age: 27 | Experience: 5 seasons

2024 Stats: 7 receptions, 46 yards, 33.3% success rate, 58.3% catch rate, 6.6 yards per reception, 1 drop

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Here’s what Woerner is not: A plus receiving option. If the Falcons do elect to move on from Pitts, they’ll need to acquire someone to replace his production (unless they really love new signing Nikola Kalinic), because Woerner is not someone who can produce with volume targets. That was the case in 2024, too, despite a couple of nice grabs.

Here’s what Woerner is: A terrific blocking tight end. Over and over again in 2025, Woerner delivered key blocks to save Kirk Cousins from doom or (and more frequently) to spring Bijan Robinson or Tyler Allgeier. The Falcons brought him in to help out their ground game and he absolutely delivered in that regard, and he’s a critically important piece of the puzzle as the Falcons look to get even more out of Bijan and Allgeier in 2025. The reliability as a blocker is so important in Zac Robinson’s scheme that Woerner could very well go into the year as the functional top tight end, even if another player is going to by necessity be more important as a receiving option.

Terry Fontenot’s best work has always been in free agency, and Woerner was another nice pickup.

Ross Dwelley

Age: 29 | Experience: 7 seasons

2024 Stats: 1 reception, 5 yards, 100% success rate, 100% catch rate, 5 yards per reception

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Dwelley was one of the more puzzling signings of the offseason for Atlanta, not because he was expensive but because his track record suggested he wasn’t going to be much of an asset as a third tight end. That’s how it played out in 2024.

Dwelley played his lowest percentage of special teams snaps since 2019, was lightly used on offense, and did not deliver as a pass catcher or as a blocking option, particularly in pass protection. The chief reason to sign Dwelley was his work on special teams in San Francisco, and given that he wasn’t even particularly heavily used there by Atlanta, the signing did not move the needle for the Falcons in any way. I mean no great disrespect to Dwelley, but regardless of how the rest of the room looks in 2025, it would be good for the Falcons to prioritize a third tight end upgrade in case injuries crop up.