NFL Draft 2026 trends: Tight ends and the 13 personnel revolution

It isn’t often that one NFL season will see a radical trend shift that will then subsequently inform the entire league’s draft process, but Los Angeles Rams head coach and offensive mastermind Sean McVay’s sudden heavy lean into 13 personnel in the middle of the 2025 season appears to have done just that.

Last season, the Rams had by far the most snaps with 13 personnel — one running back, three tight ends, and one receiver. They lined up that way on 331 of their snaps, and the Pittsburgh Steelers ranked second with 140 snaps. The most interesting part of this internal Rams revolution is that McVay didn’t call a single play with 13 personnel until Week 6, when they were facing the Baltimore Ravens, and receiver Puka Nacua suffered a sprained left ankle early in the second quarter. McVay than called eight plays with 13 personnel through the rest of the game, a 17-3 win for the Rams, and all eight plays were run plays.

The next week against the Jacksonville Jaguars in London, McVay started to unleash the 13 personnel packages that must have been brewing in his mind for a long time. Matthew Stafford completed six of nine passes in 13 personnel for 59 yards and three touchdowns, and that was the start of something big. By the end of the season, Stafford had completed 99 of 145 passes in 13 personnel for 1,261 yards, 661 air yards, 22 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 134.8. To put into perspective just how off the rails that was, Aaron Rodgers of the Steelers and Jacoby Brissett of the Arizona Cardinals ranked second in touchdown passes with 13 personnel — a grand total of three each.

As one would expect with such things, especially when Sean McVay is leading the charge, the copycat brigade was in full swing in time for the 2026 draft. Twenty-two tight ends were taken in this draft, the most for a draft since 2002, when 23 were selected. Again, to put that in perspective, 16 tight ends were taken in the 2025 draft.

So yes, this is a thing.

Why 13 personnel works against modern defenses is a detailed matter best left to its own tape study article, but to put it succinctly for the purposes of this piece, teams that can run 13 personnel concepts out of heavier personnel are far more likely to burn defenses on edge. It also helps if your 13 personnel concepts don’t lean too heavily to the pass or the run.

The Rams mastered this, the rest of the NFL has seen the effects, and now, the rest of the NFL is ready to buy in.

How will each team get to 13?

The New York Jets started the tight end run when they selected Oregon’s Kenyon Sadiq with the 16th overall pick. Sadiq was the consensus TE1 in this draft, which put him in a very good place from a timing perspective. The 2025 Jets were not at all a heavy personnel team — their 172 snaps in 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends, two receivers) ranked 24th in the NFL, and their three snaps of 13 personnel… well, you can guess where that put them.

“Sadiq was a player that, obviously we studied and spent a lot of time on, and valued as an offensive weapon,” head coach Aaron Glenn said after the pick was made. “When he was there, it was really a no-brainer for us, just to add another weapon to the offense. [New offensive coordinator] Frank [Reich has] got a great vision for the player, and how we can use him in multiple ways, and get in 12 personnel. Do different things, and just use him as another weapon, and make it tough on the defense.”

Well, 12 personnel is one thing, but the Jets already had 2025 second-round pick Mason Taylor and 2022 third-round pick Jeremy Ruckert, so moving one up to 13 isn’t that big of a stretch. Especially given Sadiq’s potential as a red zone target in those heavier personnel looks.

The Philadelphia Eagles are looking to get past Kevin Patullo’s offensive disasters with replacement offensive coordinator Sean Mannion, and it would appear that multiple tight ends sets will be a big part of that. The Eagles made that clear with the selection of Vanderbilt’s Eli Stowers with the 54th overall pick in the second round. This after a 2025 season in which the 6’4”, 239-pound Stowers caught 62 passes on 85 targets for 769 yards and four touchdowns, and then broke the tight end records for the vertical jump (45½”) and broad jump (135″) at the scouting combine while running a 4.51-second 40-yard dash (96th percentile for tight ends at the combine since 1999).

“The guy is super-talented,” head coach Nick Sirianni said of Stowers. “Athletically, he does some things that nobody else can do. Just to be able to create mismatches with him on third downs, and first- and second-down situations, he is a tough cover. [He] catches everything, good after the catch, [has] speed, quickness. So, really excited to have him.”

The Eagles already have Dallas Goedert and Grant Calcaterra as their two primary tight ends, but Stowers’ athletic potential makes him an easy fit in just about any offense. Especially when it comes to his somewhat hidden ability to stretch the field in the passing game. In 2025, Stowers had just eight targets on passes of 20 or more air yards, but he caught four of those passes for 161 yards and a touchdown. Especially if the rumors are true and A.J. Brown is on his way to New England after June 1, Stowers could become an estimable replacement target on all the vertical stuff Mannion may be inclined to call.

The Jacksonville Jaguars had to go on the defensive right after they selected Texas A&M tight end Nate Boerkircher with the 56th overall pick in the second round. Not because Boerkircher is some kind of stiff; this was more about the Jaguars radically deviating from the overall consensus boards and going with their own internal model. Very few people projected the 6′ 4½”, 245-pound Boerkircher as a second-round pick, but Jags general manager James Gladstone couldn’t have cared less.

“That was rooted in our own internal sentiment, and understanding that the trend in the NFL was that heavier tight end sets was going to be something that got prioritized,” Gladstone said after Day 2 of the draft. ”We felt a heavier tight end run throughout the course of the back end of the second [round] into the third, and typically, that’s a window where the wide receiver run is really occurring. I think that certainly showed itself. But he was the one we were hunting up, and we weren’t going to allow that to ever be something that we risked.“

Boerkircher caught just 19 passes on 22 targets last season for 198 yards and three touchdowns, and never had more than six catches in any of his four seasons at Nebraska before that, but he’s all about the big picture, and showing where he can improve.

“Yeah, I think I’m a physical blocker,” Boerkircher said. “I like to put my face in the fan. I get in there and get physical and play through the whistle, and I think I have a lot of potential in the passing game. I’ve made big plays in my career. I haven’t always had the most production, but when the ball comes my way, I usually have been able to capitalize.”

The Jaguars alto took Houston tight end Tanner Koziol with the 154th overall pick in the fifth round, so head coach Liam Coen (who worked on Sean McVay’s offensive staffs in 2018-2020 and again in 2022) may be looking to up his heavy personnel ante in a big way. The 2025 Jaguars ranked in the back quarter of the NFL in both 12 and 13 personnel

The Chicago Bears have one of the NFL’s most interesting offenses under head coach Ben Johnson, and with the selection of Stanford’s Sam Roush with the 69th overall pick in the third round to add to a tight end group that already has Colston Loveland and Cole Kmet, these Bears could be all about 13 personnel quite a bit. Johnson is already on the path — in 2025, no quarterback had more dropbacks in 12 personnel than Caleb Williams, and Williams completed 123 of 210 passes with two tight ends on the field for 1,619 yards, 979 air yards, nine touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 89.4.

The 6’6”, 267-pound Roush isn’t a downfield playmaker like Sadiq or Stowers, but the Bears already have that guy in Loveland. with Kmet as the veteran glue guy. What Roush can do is to help open things up underneath with leak and release routes to give Williams the easy openings any quarterback would prefer in their route concepts.

For the Bears, who also ranked fourth in the NFL in dropbacks with 13 personnel last season behind the Rams, Cardinals, and Steelers, Roush isn’t replacing anybody — he’s adding to the overall picture.

“Another really good addition at the tight end spot for a team that runs a lot of 12 and 13 personnel,” general manager Ryan Poles said of Roush. “I think we were top five in both of those personnel groups. That was important for us to add a ‘Y’ [inline tight end] to the group. So we’ll have a really strong room there. I feel great about that.”

Johnson couldn’t be happier about what this does to his offense — and what it can do to enemy defenses.

“There were a number of really good [tight ends] coming out this year, and were fortunate to get one that we feel really highly about,” Johnson said during rookie minicamp on May 8. “He can contribute to the run game, pass protection, and catching down the field. We feel like we got one of the more complete tight ends that this draft had to offer.

“But in regards to big picture and just where the league is going, obviously teams have had success with the two-tight end, three-tight end sets. Things kind of always go full circle it seems like, and it wasn’t that long ago that three-receiver sets were kind of the norm. Now, it seems to be transitioning over a little bit more. But I think the more you can look to attack the defense, whether you want to [force] them [into] a base defense, or you feel comfortable competing against them when they’re in their sub defenses, the flexibility that tight ends give you, it adds a dimension to your offense.”

How the 13 personnel wave hits the league in 2026 remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure — Sean McVay and his Rams won’t be the outliers anymore.