Perhaps no position in football has gained and lost favor as much as the tight end.
In football's run-oriented distant past, tight ends were mostly used as another blocking tool meant to ground down opponents, as they were sparingly targeted by quarterbacks.
In the early 1990s, tight ends were almost declared extinct thanks to the "run-and-shoot," a flashy, gimmicky scheme that simply involved five smallish wideouts running downfield.
Not long after that, bigger, athletic tight ends -- some of them who opted for football over basketball -- began to make their way onto the scene, reviving the pass-catching, big-play-producing position as the game grew more pass-happy and salary cap circumstances dictated that players be able to fill more than one role.
