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Rob Demovsky, ESPN Staff WriterDec 23, 2024, 06:00 AM ET
- Rob Demovsky is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Green Bay Packers. He has covered the Packers since 1997 and joined ESPN in 2013. Demovsky is a two-time Wisconsin Sportswriter of the Year as selected by the NSSA. You can follow him on Twitter at @RobDemovsky.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Mark Bavaro and Tucker Kraft had something in common: They had never heard of each other.
And why would they?
Bavaro is a 61-year-old Bostonian whose NFL career ended six years before Kraft was born.
Kraft is a 24-year-old native of Timber Lake, South Dakota (population 509), just trying to crack the inner circle of today’s top NFL tight ends.
Enter Rich Bisaccia, the old-school assistant head coach/special teams coordinator of the Green Bay Packers. The 64-year-old Bisaccia never coached Bavaro, but as a New Yorker, he watched — and loved — how Bavaro played tight end for the Giants in the 1980s.
One day early this season, Bisaccia brought up Bavaro’s name to Kraft.
“He said you’ve got to give this guy a look,” Kraft said in late September. “I did, and I was amazed.”
A trip down the rabbit hole of Bavaro highlights on YouTube confirmed for Kraft that he and the Packers coaches had the same vision for his career.
“Just being physical, being tough,” Kraft said. “YAC, that’s really all that guy was worried about … So just trying to channel my inner Bavaro.”
Three months later, Kraft has put together a Bavaro-like season. Entering Week 16, he led all NFL tight ends in both YAC categories and wasn’t even close: His 8.9 yards after catch and 4.44 yards after contact per catch were more than two full yards ahead of the second best in each category. Less than two full seasons into his NFL career, Kraft has put the league on notice that he’s aiming to be among the their most ferocious tight ends.
“That tells me the kid likes contact, he likes to hit,” Bavaro said in an interview with ESPN last week. “That’s the way I was brought up.”
After playing nine-man football in high school, Tucker Kraft played for the South Dakota State Jackrabbits in college. Bailey Hillesheim/Icon Sportswire
KRAFT’S UPBRINGING DIDN’T scream NFL stardom. He played at Timber Lake High — a school with about 100 total students — on its nine-man football team in South Dakota.
Kraft was barely 5-11 as a high school freshman, according to Timber Lake coach Ryan Gimbel. Now, he’s 6-foot-5 and 259 pounds. Still, he was big enough to play tight end and defensive end, at least in the nine-man game.
“Then he just exploded from his freshman year to his sophomore year,” Gimbel said.
He moved to quarterback as a sophomore. He could throw, according to Gimbel, but they also used him as a runner, while still playing defensive end.
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Kraft stayed at defensive end as a junior, but he played mostly running back, plus some at receiver.
As a senior, he played middle linebacker, running back and receiver.
Until one game.
“He got hurt in a game, rolled his ankle,” Gimbel recalled. “But he said, ‘I can still play, but I can’t run.’ So we threw him in at guard, and we ran his freshman cousin right behind. [Kraft] couldn’t run, but he could block.”
Lightly recruited out of high school, he went to FCS power South Dakota State in 2019. Even after a stellar career that included two appearances in the FCS national championship game, with one title, and twice being named an FCS All-American, Kraft wasn’t atop most NFL tight end draft boards.
The Packers picked another tight end, Luke Musgrave, in the second round (at No. 42 overall), but they doubled back and picked Kraft in the third round (No. 78 overall).
Six tight ends were picked before Kraft in 2023. Only one of them, Detroit’s Sam LaPorta, entered Week 16 with more catches this season than Kraft’s 41 and more receiving yards than Kraft’s 555 (43 catches, 556 yards).
Among all tight ends, only Baltimore’s Mark Andrews and San Francisco’s George Kittle had more touchdown catches (eight) than Kraft (seven).
ALTHOUGH KRAFT APPEARED in every game last season as a rookie, he went the first two months without much of a role in the passing game. Through nine games in 2023, he had three catches for 11 yards and was clearly TE2 behind Musgrave.
And then came “The Hurdle.”
In Week 15 against the Buccaneers, with Musgrave in the middle of a six-week absence because of a lacerated kidney, Kraft caught a pass and rumbled down the left sideline, where he tried to jump over Tampa Bay defensive back Dee Delaney. In the process, Delaney’s helmet hit Kraft in a, well, sensitive area.
Tucker Kraft might be regretting this hurdle pic.twitter.com/VFg2fGJsuR
— NFL on CBS (@NFLonCBS) December 17, 2023
Despite taking the shot to the groin, Kraft revealed his mantra: “Always [go] forward. Sometimes over, but always forward.”
That led to “The Hurdle II.”
Just a week after the Buccaneers game, Kraft tried to jump over Panthers linebacker Brian Burns at the end of a 27-yard catch-and-run. Fortunately for Kraft, Burns’ shoulder only grazed the underside of Kraft’s left leg as he fell out of bounds.
This season, Kraft has embodied his mantra, “Don’t let a DB tackle me in space.”
Take the Week 5 win over the Rams when, on one of Kraft’s two touchdown catches, he stiff-armed cornerback Darious Williams and cast aside safety Quentin Lake on the way to a 66-yard, catch-and-run score.
Tucker Kraft with the stiff arm and tuddy! 🧀
: #GBvsLAR on CBS/Paramount+
: https://t.co/waVpO8ZBqG pic.twitter.com/fijvAwHlla— NFL (@NFL) October 6, 2024
Even when Kraft goes down, it’s dramatic. When he got drilled by a pair of Lions defenders in the Week 14 game, Kraft pulled out an old WWE “Kip-up” move to get back to his feet like nothing happened.
Tucker Kraft. Wait for it… Athlete #GBvsDET on Prime Video
Also streaming on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/Ntk1fOawkH— NFL (@NFL) December 6, 2024
“He is a little crazy, but I love it,” Packers running back Josh Jacobs said. “Crazy in all the good ways. You see the way that he plays, man.
“It’s fun playing with a guy like that, that’ll put his body on the line for you, get hit by four people to get a first down, things like that. You’ve got to love teammates like that.”
It’s that kind of style, plus a penchant for trash talk, that could make Kraft not only one of the next star tight ends on the field but also a Rob Gronkowski-like marketing personality.
Before the rematch with the Lions this season, Kraft took a shot at Detroit safety Kerby Joseph, who had been questioned for low hits last season that caused significant knee injuries to two tight ends, the Vikings’ T.J. Hockenson and Rams’ Tyler Higbee.
Said Kraft: “I might not agree with some of the places he likes to lay contact. He’s taken some of my brothers out of the game and I think about that, too. I get my chance to get my hands on him playing football.”
He almost got his hands on him in a pregame dust-up before players were separated.
“[Kraft is] a guy that gives energy to other people, just with his love for the game, his love for the team, and then obviously the plays he makes, the way he plays the game,” Packers quarterback Jordan Love said. “I think everybody is a fan of that around here and loves watching him.
“Like I said, it gives off energy to everybody else.”
Kraft isn’t just interested in catching passes. During the offseason, he attended Tight End University — the offseason camp founded by Kittle, Travis Kelce and Greg Olsen. It was there he focused on another aspect of the position: blocking.
“One of my major goals, beginning of this season, was to be one of the best blocking tight ends in the NFL,” Kraft said. “[So] many things come off of being a good run-blocking tight end. George works the same way.”
In 14 games this season, Packers tight end Tucker Kraft has 41 catches for 555 yards and seven touchdowns. Rich Storry/Getty Images
WHILE KRAFT IS playing a far different game these days than he was back in Timber Lake, he reached into his memory bank earlier this season when he suggested to the Packers coaches that they use him as a ball carrier in a short-yard situation.
He told offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich about a play they ran in high school, when he motioned under center and ran a sneak.
“Yeah, we studied the tape back in the South Dakota high school film,” Stenavich joked.
Kraft was serious.
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Eventually, he got Stenavich and coach Matt LaFleur to try the play in practice.
“I didn’t realize he was good at that, so we tried it out,” Stenavich said.
It didn’t make LaFleur’s call sheet the first week, or even the second.
“I think he had to accept it before he could believe it,” Stenavich said of LaFleur. “That’s why we had to do it a few times in practice.”
In Week 6, he got his chance on a third-and-1 play against the Cardinals in the fourth quarter. Kraft motioned from his tight end spot, and with Love in the shotgun, Kraft ducked under center and took the direct snap. With a push from behind by running Emanuel Wilson, Kraft got the first down.
Three weeks later, in the first game against the Lions, Kraft did it again. This time, he converted a fourth-and-1.
When asked whether he had seen those plays, Gimbel, the Timber Lake High School coach, began to laugh.
“It reminds me of when he played quarterback, and it was like, dive in the middle,” Gimbel said. “SDSU did the play as well. Whenever I see him run the ball like that, it’s like watching that high school kid that was out in front of me just doing the same thing.”
Mark Bavaro, a two-time All-Pro tight end, won a pair of Super Bowls with the New York Giants. Bill Kestroun/AP Photo
BAVARO DIDN’T SEE either of those plays, but when ESPN reached out to him and told him that Bisaccia had mentioned his name to Kraft, Bavaro did some research before he returned the call.
That’s because before receiving the message, he had never heard of Kraft.
“Everybody looks good on the highlight films, but he looks really good,” Bavaro said. “I’m surprised I had not heard of him. I don’t watch much football anymore. People tell me stuff, but I had never heard of him before.”
In nine NFL seasons, Bavaro won two Super Bowls and was twice named to the NFL’s All-Pro and Pro Bowl teams.
But it was his tough-guy reputation that stuck with him more than his 351 career catches for 39 touchdowns. Early in Bavaro’s career, someone gave him the nickname “Rambo” after Sylvester Stallone’s rugged character. Bavaro once suffered a broken jaw in the first half of a game in 1986 against the Saints — but then came back and caught a touchdown pass in the second half.
“I look at Tucker Kraft, and I see the game of football the way I was brought up to play it,” Bavaro said. “And I recognize a fellow traveler on that road to playing real football. I’ll be watching the kid now.”
