Each year, NFL teams have at least one player return from injury the season before and perform at a high level. Often times they match their on-par production and in some cases even exceed expectations.
Pro Football Focus’ Bradley Locker recently projected who this year’s bounce-back player could be for all 32 teams across the league. For the Baltimore Ravens, Locker named tight end Mark Andrews as the team’s prime candidate for a bounce back season in 2024.
“Andrews has been one of the NFL’s best tight ends year in and year out, but a fractured fibula caused him to play in just 10 games last year,” Locker wrote. “The result? His fewest receiving yards in a season in his career.”
To his point, Andrews did appear in a career-low 10 games, which was four less than his previous low of 14 games in 2020. . Andrews was absent in Week 1 with a quad injury and then missed the final nine games of the year after suffering a broken fibula against the Bengals in Week 11. He caught 45 passes with 544 receiving yards and six touchdowns.
Andrews made a return for the AFC championship game in late January, more than two full months after his previous appearance. He was only targeted twice against the Kansas City Chiefs in that game and caught both passes for 15 receiving yards.
“Other tight ends like Sam LaPorta gained traction with Andrews out,” Locker claimed. “But with the 28-year-old getting a clean bill of health, expect Andrews to reclaim his post as maybe the NFL’s best at his position with a monster 2024.”
As Locker notes, Andrews’ absence may have shifted his place a little in the conversation around the best tight ends in the NFL. After earning first-team All-Pro honors in 2021, Andrews was considered by some to have supplanted Travis Kelce as the league’s top tight end. During that season, Andrews caught 107 passes for 1,361 yards with nine touchdown receptions.
His production not surprisingly regressed a bit the following season, albeit he played two less games and caught passes from backup quarterbacks during the second half of the year. Even so, Andrews was still considered one of the two or three best at the position.
Now, with the emergence of some up-and-comers like LaPorta, there’s more competition at the cream of the crop. Other tight ends like T.J. Hockenson and David Njoku also boosted their stock with career-best seasons in 2023 too. George Kittle remains a fixture in the top group and other established talents include Dallas Goedert, Kyle Pitts, and Even Engram.
To Locker’s point, though, Andrews can re-emerge as a candidate for No. 1 in the hierarchy this coming season.
Prior to his mid-November injury last year, Andrews was on pace to finish the regular season with more than 70 catches, almost 900 receiving yards, and surpass his previous career-best touchdown total of 10. He’s still Lamar Jackson’s go-to receiving option and will again be the focal point of the Ravens’ passing attack in 2024.
What other Ravens’ players could be primed for bounce-backs seasons this year