Kenny

Yeboah

The Lions also signed OG Gunner Britton, OG Keaton Sutherland, TE Gunnar Oakes, and correspondingly placed OT Justin Herron, OL Colby Sorsdal and TE Kenny Yeboah on season-ending injured reserve.

Yeboah set career-high receiving sums across the board last year, catching 5-of-8 targets for 47 yards and one touchdown. He will serve as a deep, rotational option in Detroit.

Yeboah was a restricted free agent who is not returning on an RFA tender. He had no shot of drawing the “low” tender and its attendant $3.16 million salary. A 25-year-old former UDFA out of Ole Miss, Yeboah has four career catches, and will be on the outside looking in of a 2024 53-man roster spot. His early return does help his odds.

A buzzy 2021 UDFA, Yeboah survived his rookie year on the Jets’ 53-man roster but caught only two passes, each in Week 17. Already two months shy of his 24th birthday, Yeboah isn’t necessarily guaranteed of landing back on the practice squad.

With Tyler Kroft on the COVID-19 list and Ryan Griffin on IR, Yeboah made some impressive third-down catches to keep drives alive. His competition, Daniel Brown (not the Da Vinci Code guy) had two targets of his own, but 24 of his yards came on one leak play to the flat where he was wide open. If any of this information matters for your fantasy objectives in Week 18, your league is amazing.

Yeboah got some second half playing time because Ryan Griffin -- who caught two passes for 15 yards and a touchdown -- suffered an ankle injury. Yeboah, a preseason DFS star who had 100 yards and two touchdowns against the Eagles in August, would presumably get the Week 14 start if Griffin is sidelined. He would only be worth picking up in deep tight end premium formats.

A “name” undrafted free agent, Yeboah took advantage of a Hail Mary to post a 4/100/2 line in the preseason finale, but he was always going to be up against it to crack the 53-man roster, at least initially. Something of a pure pass catcher/field stretcher up the seam on film, Yeboah will probably get a chance to develop on the practice squad.

A buzzy undrafted free agent, Yeboah entered this evening with just two grabs for six yards. Tonight’s huge statline came against the bottom of a not-good Eagles roster, but it will give the Jets something to think about as they ponder final cuts. If Yeboah can stick around on the 53-man roster, he might be worth an end-of-bench spot in deeper Dynasty leagues. He’s a potential field stretcher up the seam for a TE-needy franchise.

It’s an intriguing deal that includes a $20,000 signing bonus and $180,000 base salary guaranteed. Yeboah (6'3/250) spent four years as an inline blocker at Temple before transferring to Ole Miss for his final collegiate year under Lane Kiffin and ranking fourth in the nation in receiving yards per game (65.5) and yards per reception (19.4) among tight ends. He remains undersized with unreliable hands — 13 drops on 87 catchable targets in college — but pops on tape as a field stretcher with lengthy arms (34 1/3-inches); his performance against Alabama (7/181/2) is a prime example. His usage during his rookie deal will ultimately come down to how limited he is as a blocker, but Yeboah at the very least enters a tight ends room with negligent competition behind (and with) Chris Herndon.

Technically, Yeboah could have stayed another year thanks to a ruling that allows players to retain a year of eligibility due to COVID. The Ole Miss TE won’t be taking that year, though, and will instead hop to the NFL as a senior normally would. Yeboah, a 6-foot-5 and 240-pounder, already has a Reese’s Senior Bowl invite on the table, so his chances of hearing his name called on draft weekend are already quite good. Yeboah caught 27 passes for 524 yards and six touchdowns in 2020. Yeboah is more of a “move” tight end and jumbo WR than he is a legitimate Y tight end, and should be expected to be drafted somewhere on Day 3.