TE Cameron Brate – 6-5, 249 – 28 years old – 7th season

Almost 29 years old and entering his seventh season in the NFL, Cameron Brate is in the last guaranteed money year of a six-year contract signed in 2018. An undrafted free agent out of Harvard, Brate earned his big payday after stellar 2016 and 2017 campaigns, but has posted disappointing production since then while seeing his role reduced to backup behind O.J. Howard.

Bucs TE Cameron Brate – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

In many ways, Brate is the complete opposite of Howard. Where Howard has elite size and length for the position, Brate is well below-average, with some of the shortest arms in the league for a tight end. Where Howard galloped to a 4.51 40 at the NFL Scouting Combine, Brate managed just a 4.77 at his Harvard pro day after not being invited to the Combine at all.

Even on the field, Brate has consistently been at his best as a possession receiving, underneath option who isn’t much of a big play or post-catch threat. He’s reliable, consistent and a technician as a route runner, all things Howard has struggled with despite his far superior physical and athletic talents.

“Brate does not bring much as a blocker, as he is not overly athletic and he is limited in how you deploy him,” Sikkema said. “But he has extremely reliable hands, is nuanced in the details of the position and has been a best friend for whoever has been playing QB on the field for the Bucs over the last three or four years. He’s fearless and reliable over the middle and in the red zone, and that will always have a role on any team.”

Most of Brate’s production came against zone coverage, or against man coverage with the assist of a bunch release or a rub route working him free in the short game. As a result, a lot of Brate’s success has come in the red zone, where pick plays are common and more defenses are in zone coverage.

How Brate wins is about what you’d expect: with reliable hands and clean routes/timing. He’s never dropped more than three passes in a season, and let only two slip through his hands last year, albeit on just 52 targets. Brate is a chain-moving type of underneath threat at tight end, whose real value comes when he manipulates defenders at the top of his route with impressive attention to detail.

Yes, Brate’s lack of juice and suddenness is evident, but this is a great route. He widens the corner by releasing on an angle slightly toward the sideline, then quickly stems back inside as if he’s running a post. The defender, realizing he has more ground to cover because he was widened initially off the release, bites down hard and can’t recover when Brate breaks outside. Great catch away from his frame as well.

That’s Brate at his absolute best, a detailed short-intermediate route runner that won’t give you a ton down the field, won’t give you a ton in contested spots and won’t give you a ton after the catch. The limitations are real, but when he’s not asked to be a top option in the passing game, Brate can still help be an underneath chain-mover and a great security blanket for a quarterback.

Again, not a sudden route runner who will drop his hips and explode out of his break, but the attention to detail to keep working back to the ball and shielding it with his body from hard-charging defenders is a pro move. You even see some physicality to work off of the linebacker’s jam at the top of the route. Possession receiver 101 stuff.

Unfortunately, Brate’s downward spiral in the NFL started when defenses realized they could just put a safety on him and erase him fairly easily. As safeties across the league have improved in man coverage, Brate’s limitations have been revealed more often. He just can’t consistently separate from better athletes who know what they’re doing in man coverage.

Brate gets off the line of scrimmage with necessary urgency, but defensive backs don’t fear his speed, allowing them to sit on underneath routes like this one. The ball is late here and this incompletion isn’t Brate’s fault necessarily, but his inability to sell vertically and push defenders into their pedal makes it tougher to complete underneath passes to him against man coverage.

Brate is the single receiver to the boundary in the play above, where Lions’ safety Tracy Walker plays bump-and-run defense on him and locks the tight end down. No throwing window is open for even an instant, and the pass is broken up.

Brate is the No. 3 receiver to the field here, failing to get separation from Walker, who runs the route for him. If defenses can spare a defensive back to manage Brate, his ability to get open diminishes greatly, especially against press coverage.

It’s no secret that Brate isn’t exactly an open-field juggernaut after the catch, but most tight ends aren’t, so you can live with that weakness. What is tougher to live with is Brate’s jump ball limitations, especially considering that the red area is one spot on the field where you’d love to use him more. Brate just doesn’t have the leaping ability or the size/strength to be a consistent “my ball” type of receiver in contested situations.

Brate, the No. 1 receiver to the boundary here, can’t elevate over tight coverage and corral an average throw in the end zone. Again, it’s not like he’s missing easy stuff out there, Brate won’t hurt you in that way. It’s just about recognizing his limitations in these situations and not asking him to be something he’s not.

Limited by a lack of size, long speed, burst, change-of-direction quickness and jump ball ability, Brate is best suited for a No. 2/3 tight end role, where he can consistently draw weaker defenders in coverage, see a lot of his snaps against zone coverage in the red zone or work in bunches and get free releases on quick-hitting routes.

Because Brate is just an average blocker at best, he may end up as a misfit in this current Bucs tight end room. Gronkowski and Howard are going to get the vast majority of snaps and targets over Brate in the passing game, and Auclair might already be a better blocker. Where does the undrafted veteran see a path to real playing time in Tampa Bay this season?

“Nothing against him, but at first it was the drafting of (O.J.) Howard and the signing of (Desean) Jackson that limited Brate’s opportunities,” Sikkema said. “And then the development of Godwin. There’s just too many superior hands to feed in this offense.”

Brate has dealt with hip and back injuries, and is a decent enough tight end to see the field somewhere else, and if he hadn’t agree to a pay cut this offseason he’d probably be doing just that. Unfortunately for him, I don’t know that he’ll see a ton of playing time this season unless Gronkowski or Howard can’t stay healthy. That could lead to Brate being traded before the deadline if the Bucs feel comfortable with their tight end room by that point in the season. It’s something to monitor moving forward.