Is Cole Kmet good? That’s a simple question, and it would’ve been nice for the Bears to have an answer to it by now.
But, like other talented young players on the team, any assessment of his progress has been clouded by the Bears’ various maladies. Kmet spent his first season playing with Mitch Trubisky and Nick Foles as his quarterbacks and listening to coach Matt Nagy spend the first half of it talking about Kmet should get more snaps but not actually giving them to him.
Kmet is certainly playing more in his second season, but many of the issues contaminating the offense at large have continued.
While Justin Fields might one day become a star, he certainly isn’t there yet and has had plenty of rookie travails. Nagy’s system isn’t working, regardless of whether it’s him or offensive coordinator Bill Lazor calling the plays. And the offensive line has struggled enough that the Bears are frequently asking tight ends to help in protection.
When those factors are weighed, Kmet’s 53 catches for 539 yards look decent. But the Bears drafted him as the top tight end in his class, No. 43 overall, hoping he’d be the solution to their persistent problems at the position.
To his credit, Kmet’s yardage is more than any Bears tight end had in 2019 or ’20, and if he gets another 31 yards he’ll be their most productive tight end since Martellus Bennett in 2014. And his two-year totals of 81 catches for 782 yards are the most of any tight end in his class. The Browns’ Harrison Bryant is next, and his stats are about half that.
But from the start, Travis Kelce has been the name that has come up most often in comparisons. That’s an impossibly high bar for Kmet given that Kelce is a three-time all-pro and counting. He has nearly double Kmet’s yardage this season.
“He’s been the best in the league for a while now,” Kmet said. “The rapport he has with his quarterback and his feel for that offense is just pretty special, so definitely things that you watch and you aspire to be like.”
Tight ends tend to take a while, similar to quarterbacks, but the Bears are hitting a point where they need to know whether Kmet can deliver what they need. He hasn’t done enough for them to cross tight end off their list of needs going into next season, and he’s one of many players still out to prove something over the final two games.
It’s an opportunity to close with a strong case for himself as a central part of the Bears’ future. Kmet had 10 catches for 120 over the last two games and needs to stack a couple more good ones on top of that.
While the numbers haven’t been convincing, Kmet has grown in his grasp of the offense and ability to read coverages. The offense will almost certainly be changing, of course, with Nagy nearly certain to be fired, but much of what he has learned will carry over.
“Just being more comfortable with coverage recognition and being more confident in what I’m seeing on the field,” Kmet said of his growth this season. “There’s looks you’ll see throughout a season that obviously I’ve never seen before, but the more you play, you become more comfortable.
“You take all these reps that you get throughout the season and you log them in the memory bank, and it definitely helps develop your route running. Definitely something I’ve been continually working on since the spring and something I think I’ve been doing a better job with as the year is closing down here.”
