Who Deserves To Be The All-Reid TE?

The Cynic wrote a great article over at FootballNation called the "All-Reid" team, in which he attempted to name the best players at every position in the Andy Reid era. On offense especially, the team pretty much picks itself. Check out the post for The Cynic's team, but I'm sure you can pretty much guess most.

That said, the one position I disagreed with at first look was TE. There's basically 3 candidates for "All-Reid" TE. Brent Celek, L.J. Smith & Chad Lewis. Football Nation picked Brent Celek, but my snap reaction was that it had to be Chad Lewis. But I figured I should look at the numbers to be certain.

Lewis played more games here than either of the other two. However despite playing about 30 more games than Celek or Smith, he's caught just 5 more passes than Celek and 3 fewer than Smith. As far as yards per game, he's 13 behind Celek and 8 behind LJ.

But I never remember Chad Lewis as a guy to be like another WR. He was that old school, red zone threat TE. His specialty, as I remember it, was catching the ball and falling down. More often than not, he seemed to do that in the end zone. And while he does indeed lead the other two in TDs (23 to Celek's 19 and Smith's 18), he's virtually tied with Smith (.21) and trails Celek (.24) in TDs per game.

Chad Lewis also made 3 Pro Bowls, while the other 2 have none. However, Pro Bowls, as we've learned, aren't necessarily indicative of you being the best at your position in a given year. They're more indicative of you being the best player that's healthy and feels like going. Plus, if I remember correct, Andy Reid may have even personally added Chad at least once during that time.

So while my memory of Chad Lewis is very fond, I gotta say that after looking at the numbers, Brent Celek is probably the objective choice as the All-Reid tight end. Plus, if he plays another 2 years generally at the level he's played, which is pretty likely given that he's only 27, it's going to be pretty elementary that he's the best TE in the Reid era.