Benjamin Yurosek: TE1, or Fool's Gold?
Some will say he's Brock Bowers 2.0, others won't buy it. Today I take a look and provide some thoughts.
(Maverick) What's your problem, Kazansky?
You're everyone's problem. That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous.
- Ice Man, Top Gun (1986)
Pigs, welcome back to the farm. Today, is a special day. It’s the day that 2024’s first Tight End (TE) profile is being featured on VolumePigs.
As many of us know, the TE position is often a complete shit show in College Football (CFB), and this inevitably affects the market for College Fantasy Football (CFF) TEs. Finding consistently productive TEs is as cumbersome and painstaking as dog-fighting an enemy MiG-28 at the best of times. So, when you get a good one, that tends to provide a noticeable advantage. The problem being, of course, that it is very hard to identify these players in advance, unless they are slam dunk obvious picks like Brock Bowers at UGA last season.
UGA’s recent transfer— Benjamin ‘Ice Man’ Yurosek, a lean 6’4, 240 pounds coming out of Northern California (hmm, where have I seen this before?) is an interesting name headed into 2024. He joins the program by way of Stanford, as a graduate transfer.
UGA already has a plethora of offensive weapons in the fold (notably, the two WRs they brought in via transfer last year, and Florida’s RB1 Trevor Etienne), but could Yurosek be a potential featured weapon in the toolkit, or is he just another guy on the roster? Today I will exercise this question in detail, and provide some thoughts where relevant.
Benjamin ‘Ice Man’ Yurosek — 6’4, 242
The first thing that stood out to me when I researched for this profile was that this son of a gun looks like Val Kilmer from Top Gun; the character named ‘Ice Man’ to be precise. The next thing I said to myself is: I like this kid’s style. He must be a high IQ individual, coming from Stanford. Then you consider that he’s already been a CFF relevant TE asset in the past, and all of a sudden you have a very interesting recipe cooking here.
Ice Man Yuro spent the last four seasons at Stanford, joining the program as a three star prospect out of Northern California in the 2020 class. In his first season he appeared in six games, but barely registered any stats.
In 2021, his second season with the Cardinal, he caught 43 of 64 passes for 658 yards and three scores (11.6 PPG in 1PPR formats) in 11 games. He would unfortunately take a step back the following season. In 2022, his numbers regressed to 445 yards and one score on 49 catches (66 targets), averaging to about 8.5 PPG.
This past season under the new regime he was off to a hot start. He began the year scoring 28.8 points vs. Hawaii, and then followed that up with 11.3 vs. USC. His season would be cut short due to injury (shoulder), and he finished the year appearing in only six games.
What caught my eye — and probably the UGA staff’s — was the way the new staff at Stanford used Yurosek. In his first three seasons, he carried the ball a total of three times—simply put, he just wasn’t being used very creatively, but he was still a solid TE asset as a downfield receiver. This past season, Ice Man received 11 carries in only six games, including five vs. USC. You’ll recall that a non-insignificant part of Bowers’ profile while at UGA was actually his rushing usage.
Over his three seasons in Athens, Bowers rushed 19 times for 193 yards and five—count it—five TDs. Those numbers might not stand out too dramatically on the whole, but remember— we’re talking about the TE position here. Anybody who plays under a staff that is trying to find more ways to get them the ball is immediately on the A-List watch each season. Combine that with the fact that Yuro already demonstrated versatility in his skill set at Stanford and all of a sudden you have… what should we call it… a recipe so spicy it would give even Val ‘Ice Man’ Kilmer indigestion?
And god help the janitors in the rest room once you’ve digested the contents of this article. But surely, this is simply too good to be true, right?
UGA: Was it the System, or Bowers?
Let’s get one thing straight: you don’t get bestowed a nickname like ‘Lord of the Rings’ by a prestigious publication such as this unless you’re a stud. And by now, everybody and their mother knows Bowers was a stud. He moves on to the NFL. This raises the question: is the UGA TE1 a favourable one to have in CFF? Or was the production through this position over the last three years simply due to Bowers being an elite level player? Or perhaps its a combination of both?
By the numbers, Bowers averaged over 15 PPG every single season he played CFB. He averaged 6.16 targets per game over his three seasons, with his best average coming this past season (73 targets over 10 games, or 7.3 per). While his average this past season (17.2) was his best, Bowers’ best statistical output came in 2022, where he received 942 yards and seven scores, while running in three more and 109 yards. He led the Dawgs in targets each of his three seasons, and his targets per game average this past season was second only behind Holker (9).
But what about outside of Bowers? It’s not really worthwhile looking at UGA before his arrival, since the current OC wasn’t there. Rather, we’re probably better off looking to Bobo’s past—but even then, with the TE position, I find it is very hard to utilize past patterns, simply because there are so few TEs that get utilized each season. So it’s not really reliable to only target systems that have a history of using the position. That being said, Bobo’s history here is intriguing.
Nick Muse was his second leading receiver the year he OC’d and interim HC’d the South Carolina Gamecocks (2020), with 30 for 425 and one. Yes, the aggregate numbers still suck, but the role the TE had in his offence is at least somewhat illuminating, though perhaps more of an indictment on USCjr.’s passing attack that season.
In 2019, it was current NFLer Trey McBride who finished third on Colorado State’s (CSU) receiving leaderboard, with 45 receptions, 560 yards and four scores. TE Dalton Fackrell scored six TDs, but was fourth in receiving on the team (313 yards) in 2017.
Besides those lines, not much else stood out. So it’s not amazing, but it could certainly be worse when you’re talking about Bobo’s history. Another thing to keep in mind is that QB Carson Beck returns, and he showed a willingness to target Bowers even more than Stet the Jet did (7.1 per game in 2023 vs. 5.67 and 5.33 in 2022 and 2021, respectively). So there’s at least a familiarity here to the type of usage we would like to see.
When Yuro committed, he had this to say about his latest destination: “Obviously Georgia has the best of both worlds. They have big-time football and the use of tight ends.” I’m going to assume he did his due diligence and asked the coaches ahead of time what kind of role they had in mind for him, and I’m also going to assume that he liked what he heard.
Closing — Office Politics / Too Many Mouths?
Now it’s time to look at the other side of this. Yuro joins a UGA program that already rosters rising junior Oscar Delp, rising sophomores Luckie Lawson and Pearce Spurlin, and incoming Jaden Redell.
I mention ‘office politics’ in the headline because there’s a problem here when you recruit a position the way UGA does, and then all of a sudden bring in a transfer who usurps everyone on the depth chart. That’s a tough look to future recruits, and obviously can burn relationships with existing players and their families. This is true at every position and every program, but TE recruiting in particular has been really strong for UGA and I doubt they want to relinquish their strangle hold on the position, especially with the chosen one potentially coming up in the pipeline.
I mention this because I actually think Yuro will be #1 on the chart, but I don’t know if the staff would really just cut the others loose in terms of targets and snaps. What I mean by that is it’s reasonable to assume that Delp is going to be involved no matter what. It would be a bad look to shun him out of the offence. So even if Yuro secures TE1, like I think he will, how many targets does he really get, is my question.
On the other hand, the UGA staff are pretty gangster, and they’ve demonstrated in the past that they’ll play whoever gives them the best chance of winning (see Stet the Jet over JT Daniels in 2021). So it’s possible Yuro separates enough to warrant some nice feature-style volume. You can also make the argument that by simply adding him as a transfer, the staff have already accepted whatever comes with hurt feelings in the TE room. The question that remains is his blocking ability. His aptitude in this capacity will likely govern his snap %, so we’ll want to keep that in the back of our minds.
Overall, we know that Yuro will not be another Brock Bowers. We’re not asking him to be. The bar is so low at the TE position, that even the potential that Yuro is say—60% of Bowers (randomly chosen semi-reasonable number), that can still work as a potential viable TE asset.
There’s a lot to like here, and the opportunity cost of taking a swing on a high upside player at TE is virtually zero (as long as you’re not burning a high value pick on him, I wouldn’t draft TE until late in drafts). If it misses, so be it, you’ll be right where everyone else in the league is: scavenging the wire for 10 PPG at TE. So I say: swing away.
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