Michael Mayer

Pos: TE

School: Notre Dame

Ht. 6’4″ 

Wt. 249

Games Watched: Notre Dame, Cal, North Carolina

One Liner: Powerful tight end who wins with blocking, contested catch ability, and functional strength.

Strengths: 

  • Very good strength. Mayer plays with great strength at the POA as a blocker, and has the muscle to will his way out of blocks to get on delayed routes. Mayer’s strength can be seen at the catch point as well as he can go up and grab the ball in 50/50 situations. 
  • Very good blocking ability. Mayer is an excellent blocker, and uses his massive frame to take care of outside linebackers, and has the strength and size to block 5t’s as well in combo and zone blocking situations. Mayer has solid technique, and combining that with his functional strength results in excellent blocking on tape for a tight end.
  • Very good hands. Mayer has really good, soft hands that are reliable for the most part. He makes tons of catches in traffic, and has a knack for finding the football. He will be draped in coverage and can be physical to get the ball in his hands. 
  • Very good ball skills. Mayer has great ball skills and is able to go up and compete for the ball in the air, and plays with great timing displaying an excellent catch radius. 
  • Very good toughness. Mayer is a high effort player, and shows great competitive toughness as a blocker, inline and in space, and will have great resilience to fight for the ball in man situations where he may have more than one defender on him at the catch point. 

Weaknesses:

  • Marginal fluidity. Mayer is by no means an athletic or twitchy threat on the field. He moves with quite a bit of stiffness, as would be expected for a tight end his size, and lacks the fluidity to be a formidable YAC threat or someone who can win off the release with great explosiveness. 
  • Adequate route running. Because of Mayer’s stiffness, he struggles to win with footwork as a route runner. His lack of fluidity means that he will almost never win as a pure route running threat, instead with 50/50 wins and catches in traffic. Mayer lacks explosiveness out of his stems, but he has average salesmanship as a route runner. 

Overall Assessment: Michael Mayer is an old school tight end who has an extremely high floor due to what he provides as a blocker and as a receiver with great hands. Mayer goes up and competes for 50/50 balls and has great ball skills to go with his hands. As a blocker, Mayer has good technique and hand placement and keeps his frame square with solid mirroring ability as well. He lacks the fluidity to be explosive off the release and his stem, and won’t really win with route running at the next level, but that isn’t Mayer’s game. Any team selecting him will get a boost on their offensive line as a great blocker and an added receiving threat that will be tough for smaller corners to defend. 

Scheme Fit: In-line blocking tight end that can be a killer against man

Pick Projection: Top 20

Grade: 6.58