INDIANAPOLIS — Cade Stover plays tight end with a linebacker’s ferociousness.
He’s aggressive, relentless and willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. When plenty of other NFL draft prospects opted out of bowl games rather than risk injury, Stover defied his agents and bucked the trend by playing for Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. And he’d prefer being paid in tractors — he comes from a farming family — rather than NIL cash.
So this is how Stover views football: hard and tough with no place for those who’d rather turn down a challenge.
Yes, he’s still a defensive player at heart.
“They’ve asked if I’m capable of helping defensively, and there’s no doubt about it, I can help wherever you want me to help,” Stover said this week at the NFL’s annual scouting combine in Indianapolis. “I love playing tight end, but then again I’m there to do whatever we need to win a ballgame.”
Ohio State originally wanted the 6-foot-4, 255-pounder to play linebacker. Once he arrived on campus, though, the Buckeyes started experimenting with other positions.
First, they tried him at defensive end. During spring practices in 2020, he moved to tight end. In January 2022, with the Buckeyes depleted by injuries and opt-outs, they asked him to play linebacker, and he made six tackles in a 48-45 Rose Bowl victory over Utah before finally finding his calling at tight end.
Over his final two college seasons, Stover emerged as one of the most athletic and productive players at that position in program history. Now he’s considered one of the top three tight end prospects for this year’s NFL draft, which will be held April 25-27 in Detroit.
Not everyone is as versatile as Stover, but Brock Bowers of Georgia and Ja’Tavion Sanders of Texas have at least one thing in common with him: Each was once considered a future defensive star.
AP photo by Adam Hunger / Rutgers quarterback Johnny Langan scrambles away from Ohio State linebacker Cade Stover during a Big Ten game in November 2019. Stover played tight end for the Buckeyes the past two seasons to close out his college career and is one of the top three prospects at the position in this year’s NFL draft pool.Playing for winless Napa High School as a sophomore, Bowers was lightly recruited. The California kid had only one scholarship offer from a Football Bowl Subdivision program, Nevada of the Mountain West Conference, before one of his coaches fought hard for him to be included at a Nike camp. He was so good there, the offers started pouring in, including one from Notre Dame to play linebacker.
Eventually, the Fighting Irish changed course and asked Bowers to play tight end. The problem for Notre Dame was that Bowers dreamed of playing football in the South and took advantage of his opportunity in 2021 when Darnell Washington was injured.
A year later, Bowers beat out Notre Dame star Michael Mayer for the John Mackey Award as the nation’s best tight end and helped the Bulldogs win their second straight national championship. Last season, despite his own battle with an ankle injury, he repeated as the Mackey Award winner.
Yes, he patterns his style after retired four-time Super Bowl champ Rob Gronkowski and, yes, the guy likely to be the first tight end drafted this year has drawn comparisons to George Kittle of the San Francisco 49ers and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, whose teams met in this year’s Super Bowl. All three are known for thriving after contact, and Bowers — the 6-3, 243-pounder had five rushing touchdowns during his time with the Bulldogs — thinks he has a similar style.
Of what makes him stand out, Bowers said “yards after the catch and just being able to make people miss. Just turn good plays into great plays. You have to have a good relationship with the quarterback, build trust. That kind of comes through reps at practice, and I’ll try to work on that the first place I go.”
AP photo by Stephen Spillman / Texas tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders is stopped near the goal line by TCU safety Mark Perry in November 2022 in Austin.Sanders took a different path to the draft. Also a basketball standout at Billy Runyan High School in Denton, Texas, his prep football stardom included contributions as a receiver and defensive end. How good was he? Sanders was a finalist for the state’s Mr. Football Award in 2020.
The Longhorns thought he could play on both offense and defense, too, so that’s how he practiced with them at first. Things changed quickly when Steve Sarkisian was hired as head coach ahead of the 2021 season.
He got his first big break in 2022 when Jahleel Billingsley, the projected starter at tight end, was suspended for the first six games. Once Sanders had the job, he never let it go. Instead, he started breaking school records as he found a perfect fit.
“I knew I was too big to be a wide receiver in his offense,” Sanders (6-4, 243) said of Sarkisian, who joined the Longhorns after serving in the coordinator’s role for Alabama’s national championship team in the 2020 season. “But I was just big enough to be a tight end, so I knew I was going to be a tight end.”
Does that defensive moniker still fit? Well, Sanders said he’s aware defenders are wary of the spin move he once used to bother quarterbacks.
Stover, who spent his teenage years bailing hay and raising cattle on his parents’ Ohio farm, is far from a finished product, too. And with his mentality, he could make one team a big winner come draft time.
“I don’t think you can measure what’s inside of me, I don’t think you can measure the kind of person I am, and I don’t think you can measure how good of a football player I can be, because I’m just scratching the surface,” Stover said. “I’m going to do everything you want me to do, exactly how it should be done, every single time with everything I’ve got.”