The 2025 Senior Bowl will take place on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025, at Hancock Whitney Stadium in Mobile, Alabama, but the practices leading up to the event are often seen as the highlight of the week. With the practices kicking off Monday, here are five prospects at the tight end position that can gain the most with a good week in Mobile.
Top TEs to Watch in the 2025 Senior Bowl
5) Gunnar Helm, Texas
Aside from having a name truly fitting of the tight end position, Gunnar Helm broke out in a major way in 2024 after spending the bulk of his college career sitting behind Ja’Tavion Sanders at Texas.
In a Longhorns offense stuffed to the gills with playmakers, Helm put up 786 yards and seven touchdowns after having only 236 career receiving yards entering the season. Helm does plenty of work after the catch, making defenders miss and even occasionally hurdling potential tacklers. He has good hand placement and patience in blocking and only had two drops in 95 career targets.
What teams are going to love about Helm is his route running IQ, which should make him a valuable safety blanket option at the NFL level. A good week at the Senior Bowl could put him in a good position to get drafted on the second day of the draft.
4) Mason Taylor, LSU
Whenever you have an NFL bloodline, teams are naturally going to take notice. When your dad is Miami Dolphins legend Jason Taylor, NFL eyes are going to be fixated on you.
Mason Taylor’s numbers won’t jump off the page — he’s never hit 600 yards in a season and has a season career-high of just three touchdowns, which he did as a freshman in 2022. But still, Taylor’s role has never been the focal point of an LSU offense that has had elite wide receivers his entire career.
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College production isn’t a bone of contention with most NFL teams, but Taylor did have a career-high 55 receptions this season.
Having been mostly used as a blocking tight end at LSU, his uptick in production is something teams will cling to, knowing that he already has the baseline abilities in athleticism and blocking. With a solid week, he can put himself in contention to be a top-five tight end in the class.
3) Elijah Arroyo, Miami
Think about everything I said about Gunnar Helm, and crank it to 11. That’s the best way to describe the rocket-fueled breakout that Elijah Arroyo had for the Hurricanes this season.
After compiling 11 catches for 163 yards in his first three seasons combined, due to knee injuries and other players being ahead of him in the pecking order, he was finally allowed to get extensive playing time this year. He rewarded the team’s faith in him by posting 35 catches for 590 yards to go along with seven scores.
The first thing that stands out when watching Arroyo’s film is his freakish athleticism and absurd body control, which should make him a highlight machine on social media in the receiving drills. Pair that with his size profile — 6’”4, 245 pounds, and a massive catch radius — and he won’t be hard to find when watching film.
Arroyo’s blend of athletics and run-after-catch ability is going to gain him plenty of fans down in Mobile as teams get an up-close look at him. He might end up being more of a “big slot” as opposed to a true tight end, but players like him are hard to find. A good week should go a long way in him locking up a top-100 selection.
2) Terrance Ferguson, Oregon
Oregon has had a high-powered offense for the better part of the last 15 years, and this year was no different — especially due to the efforts of Terrance Ferguson.
A two-time all-conference tight end, Ferguson has been a reliable target for their passing attack for the last three years, having tallied between 30 and 45 catches each year and 14 total touchdowns in that time. Listed at 6’5″, 255 pounds, Ferguson provides a massive target in the passing game and has solid hands, as is shown in his sub-6% drop rate.
Ferguson isn’t only a weapon in the passing game. Like many Oregon tight ends before him, he’s also a proficient run-blocker, showing good pad level and hand placement.
Ferguson’s game doesn’t have any elite standout trait, but being a jack-of-all-trades tight end can go a long way in the NFL, and Mobile is a great place for him to show his array of skills.
1) Harold Fannin Jr., Bowling Green
It’s hard coming up with words to describe the season that Harold Fannin Jr. put together at Bowling Green this year. If he’d duplicated his 2023 stat line of 44 catches for 623 yards and six touchdowns, he’d have been a solid mid-round draft pick for anyone looking for a “big slot” tight end.
Instead, Fannin nearly tripled his catches (114) and more than doubled his yardage (1,555), scoring 10 touchdowns in the process.
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Bowling Green built their entire offense around Fannin, which won’t happen at the next level, but the tight end took full advantage of his athleticism compared to the level of competition in the MAC. He also went over 100 yards against Texas A&M and Penn State in his Power Four-level opportunities. You could even argue that those were his two best games.
Fannin has a massive opportunity to solidify himself as the number two tight end in the class with a good pre-draft process, and it starts in Mobile. He’ll be used similarly to how Isaiah Likely has been used in Baltimore at the next level — a matchup nightmare against linebackers and safeties that can swing out wide.
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