NFL Draft
4/15/25
10 min read
Tyler Warren vs. Colston Loveland: Who is 2025 NFL Draft's TE1?
While the 2025 NFL Draft lacks star power and blue-chip prospects at certain positions, the tight end class is one of the strongest in recent memory.
There’s a lot more depth than most years, and teams will likely find quality starters and role players on Days 2 and 3, but the top-end talent is what makes this class special. It’s rare to have two tight ends of Tyler Warren and Colston Loveland’s caliber available in the same draft, and it’s almost a certainty that they’ll both be selected in the first round.
Identifying Warren and Loveland as the tier-one tight ends is easy, but ranking them is a challenge. No other position group in this year’s class has a smaller gap between the top two players, and opinions are split on who is the better prospect.
Warren and Loveland are ranked 8th and 9th on my board, respectively, with nearly identical grades. Even though I value them similarly in a vacuum, they each have distinct strengths and weaknesses and fit into different roles in the NFL.
To highlight the differences between Warren and Loveland, I’ve broken down their skill sets into four categories: Route Running, Catch Point, YAC, and Blocking.
Tyler Warren vs. Colston Loveland
Route Running
Advantage: Colston Loveland
Colston Loveland is the best route-running tight end I’ve ever evaluated, so Warren never stood a chance here.
Loveland is a three-level separator with the speed, change of direction skills, and footwork to win as a deep threat or underneath target. Loveland explodes off the line of scrimmage and glides down the seam with long strides to pull away from single coverage. Most linebackers are unable to match his speed, and defenses will have to treat him like a receiver.
Loveland checks every box as an intermediate route runner, combining elite movement skills with rare technical proficiency for a college tight end. He has flexible hips to sink into breaks and make crisp horizontal cuts. His fluidity gives him access to the entire route tree, from simple in-breakers and comebacks to whip routes and complex double moves, but Loveland doesn’t rely solely on his athleticism to separate.
His footwork is precise and efficient, and he understands how to use salesmanship and tempo change to set up his routes. He also has an advanced release package to defeat press coverage and keep his route on schedule.
Like every tight end in this class, Warren isn’t nearly as smooth as Loveland, but he’s far from stiff. For a 256-pound tight end, he’s a lot more sudden and efficient in changing directions than you’d expect.
When his footwork is precise, he can explode horizontally and create massive separation out of his breaks. Warren dramatically improved as a route runner from Week 1 to the playoffs. Early in the year, his routes were lumbering and predictable, but he steadily developed into a more detailed route runner and became noticeably more effective at separating from man coverage during the second half of the season.
He uses his size to his advantage at the breakpoint to force his defender out of phase, although he’ll need to learn to be more subtle with his hand-fighting at the top of the route to avoid penalties.
As the season progressed, Warren significantly improved his nuance and salesmanship as a route runner, using body lean and deceptive stems to tilt the defender away from his break.
For a player of his size, he’s surprisingly vulnerable to contact down the stem and gets weighed down by physical coverage. He also needs to do a better job disguising curls and stop routes against off-coverage, as he tends to telegraph his break and drift into coverage at the top of the route.
His footwork and attention to detail are still hit-or-miss. Some routes are crisp and precise, and others are sloppy and run at half-speed. Still, Warren’s development during the course of the season is promising, and if he continues to tighten up his footwork, this can become a true strength of his game.
Catch Point
Advantage: Tyler Warren
I don’t have any insight into Warren's feedback from NFL scouts last offseason, but it wouldn’t take me more than one guess to figure it out.
Warren looked like a draftable tight end in 2023 and had better tape than Theo Johnson, who the Giants selected in the fourth round. He was an athletic receiver, physical blocker, and playmaker after the catch, but those redeeming qualities were negated by a 15.0 percent drop rate, which almost certainly tanked his draft grade and led him to return to Penn State.
In 2024, Warren not only eliminated his drop issues but became the most dominant jump-ball winner in college football. He cut his drop rate to 2.8 percent, reeled in 13 of 21 contested targets, and started receiving Rob Gronkowski comparisons.
His ball skills went from a debilitating weakness to the first line in the “Strengths” section of his scouting report.
Warren has rare body control and ball tracking to make acrobatic adjustments to back-shoulder fades or underthrown seams. Despite having just a sixth-percentile wingspan, he consistently plays above the rim and points deep targets. He weaponizes his size and physicality, boxing out smaller defenders and bullying them at the catch point.
Loveland’s hands also improved this year, as he cut his drop rate from 10.0 percent to 3.4 percent, but his contested catch ability pales in comparison to Warren’s and is actually one of his biggest weaknesses.
Loveland has the frame to be a much more viable jump-ball target, but he lacks the play strength and physicality to assert himself at the catch point. He waits for the ball to come to him instead of proactively working back and has a very low success rate in traffic.
Yards After Catch
Advantage: Tyler Warren
Warren became a force after the catch in 2024, ranking third among all offensive players in the FBS with 693 YAC. He’s a punishing runner with elite power and contact balance. He brushes off arm tackles with ease and is willing to drop his pads and truck defenders at the second level.
Penn State ran its entire offense through him this year and trusted his ability as a ball carrier enough to feature him on designed runs. On 25 attempts, Warren forced 11 missed tackles and averaged 8.7 yards per carry.
If he had enough carries to qualify, his 4.96 yards after contact per attempt would have ranked second to Ashton Jeanty. Warren’s a physical, downhill runner first and foremost, but he’s also fairly elusive in open space. He quickly processes pursuit angles and is agile enough to sidestep a defender in the flat if he doesn’t want to run through them.
This category is another blowout in Warren’s favor, as Loveland contributes next to nothing after the catch. He has the speed to take advantage of an open runway, but he rarely breaks tackles and lacks physicality and creativity as a runner.
Run Blocking
Advantage: Jackson Hawes, but if I have to pick, Tyler Warren
Neither of these players are particularly clean projections as run blockers. Loveland and Warren each have unique qualities that play to their advantage and flaws that could end up limiting them from ever developing into quality NFL blockers.
Warren has the necessary size for inline blocking, but Penn State didn’t use him in that role very often, and his sixth-percentile wingspan makes initiating and sustaining blocks much more difficult. The majority of his blocking assignments were at the second or third level against smaller defenders.
When he connects to his assignment cleanly, he has the athleticism to stay attached and sustain the block through the whistle. He blocks with a mean streak and unparalleled physicality, driving his legs and routinely finishing blocks 10-15 yards past the line of scrimmage.
Warren also has an impressive feel for lane development as a second-level blocker. He understands where he needs to steer the defender in order to maximize space for the ball carrier.
When he is tasked with blocking defensive ends, Warren can match their size and play strength and drive them off the line of scrimmage. However, securing the block is the biggest hurdle, as he doesn’t have the reach to establish first contact and take command of the interaction consistently.
He hunts pancakes and accumulated a lengthy reel of dominant finishes this year, but those came at the expense of a substantial number of missed blocks. His aggressive mentality leads to some reckless block fits, and his length doesn’t give him much of a margin of error to connect to the block if his technique is sloppy.
Overall, Warren is a boom-bust run blocker who will win blocks decisively and jumpstart some explosive runs. But until he refines his balance and hand placement, he’ll have just as many missed assignments that lead to negative plays.
Loveland is the inverse of Warren as a run blocker in almost every way.
He has extensive experience blocking inline, and his role in Michigan’s offense aligns closely with what he’ll be asked to do at the next level. His frame is much better suited for blocking at the point of attack, and he has the functional length to match up with defensive ends.
Still, he still needs to fill that frame out to survive on the line of scrimmage in the NFL. Loveland might have an easier time getting into block fits, but at his current weight, he won’t sustain the block, and bigger opponents will discard him easily.
Watching Warren and Loveland’s run-blocking tape back-to-back, I see a stark difference in motor, effort level, and physical edge – Loveland tolerates blocking and makes a reasonable effort to execute his assignment.
Warren relishes the opportunity to put a defender on his back. Loveland doesn’t have Warren’s reckless tendencies, and there were only a few technical lapses on his tape that led to clean losses. He stays balanced and square to his assignment and has decent hand placement to sustain the block.
But he also doesn’t play with the strain and punishing mentality that Warren does, and he seems content stalemating his assignment instead of finishing.
In summary, Warren has the play strength and demeanor that coaches dream of, but his technique is erratic, and his lack of length limits his upside. Loveland is technically sound and has a more prototypical frame, but he doesn’t play with much of an edge and isn’t strong enough yet to compete with NFL defensive linemen.
I’m not banking on either of these players to become top-tier inline blockers, but I feel more confident in the guy who blocks like a maniac and doesn’t need to put on any more weight.
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