Kyle Pitts walked slowly into the cramped visitors’ locker room at Raymond James Stadium on Sunday afternoon. He had just had his best game in at least three seasons and also just avoided the worst moment of his career, and the 6-foot-6 tight end wedged himself into one of the few spots of floor space not occupied by a teammate or their clothing and faced the cameras.
It was time again to do what seemingly everyone in Atlanta and around the NFL has been doing for four years now — talk about Kyle Pitts. That hasn’t stopped since the Falcons drafted Pitts with the fourth pick in 2021, the highest spot ever for a player at his position. There’s been some good and some bad. What there has never been is a break from it.
“I would just say it comes with being in this league and in this profession, so it is what it is,” Pitts said. “I was blessed to be drafted at No. 4, so people will be talking good or bad. It doesn’t really bother me.”
The conversation in Tampa came after a 31-26 Falcons win in which Pitts scored two touchdowns, the first time he’s done that in his career, but the second of those scores almost didn’t happen after he slowed near the end zone and was stripped of the ball near the goal line.
Kyle Pitts 49-yard TOUCHDOWN. #NationalTightEndsDay
📺: #ATLvsTB on FOX
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/GTk6Nm51LJ— NFL (@NFL) October 27, 2024
“The tight end gods saved us today,” Pitts said.
Specifically, they saved Pitts.
Maybe they are smiling on him again. Entering Week 5, Pitts had gone 16 consecutive games without reaching 60 receiving yards. He has now surpassed it in four straight weeks, which is the first time he’s done that since the final four games of his rookie season.
“I’m just trying to play my part,” he said.
This more productive Pitts is what everyone has been waiting to emerge again. Everyone in the fantasy football community, at least. Pitts’ slump had become so prolonged that “The Ringer Fantasy Football Show” podcast has been doing a segment called “Two Tight Ends That Outscored Kyle Pitts and a Lie” since the 2022 season. Each Sunday, the show’s hosts named obscure tight ends, trying to guess which ones had more fantasy football points that day than Pitts.
“I think Kyle Pitts is the No. 1 fantasy player we hear about for negative reasons,” said Danny Heifetz, the host of the show. “Honestly, considering how much people prefer to complain, I think Kyle Pitts might be the single most discussed player that we have.”
When Pitts became just the second rookie tight end ever to surpass 1,000 receiving yards, that talk was positive. After an MCL tear ended Pitts’ 2022 season in Week 11 and his slow return to form, not so much.
“It is a monster of our own making in a way,” Heifetz said. “Happiness is reality minus expectations, right? We built Kyle Pitts up as the best tight end prospect ever and then he came in and had the 1,000 yards, and then the next two seasons he was a huge disappointment.”
There may be no better indication of Pitts’ recent progress than this: on Sunday’s show, “The Ringer Fantasy Football Show” retired the segment.
As much as everyone else has been talking about Pitts, his teammates and coaches have been talking to him, none more than quarterback Kirk Cousins, acquired in free agency this offseason.
“My message to him all through camp is if you play at the absolute ceiling of your speed and then play big, that’s where you’re going to be the most dangerous,” Cousins said. “If I don’t feel he’s doing that, I just tell him those two things, I need you to play fast and I need you to play big.”
Pitts did that in Tampa on Sunday. The 24-year-old has 21 catches for 314 yards in Atlanta’s last four games. For the season, he has 29 catches for 419 yards and already has tied his single-season high with three touchdowns.
“He’s playing a lot faster, which is everything we’ve been preaching going back to the spring,” offensive coordinator Zac Robinson said. “‘If you play fast, you’re very hard to defend.’ He’s taking coaching the right way. He’s still a young player. He’s still growing up. He’s still learning what it means to be a pro every single day, every single play, whether he’s the primary target or on the back side of the route.”
Pitts’ teammates “keep on him” about continuing his momentum, wide receiver Drake London said.
“I can’t wait for him to keep on progressing and show the world who he is,” London said. “I keep on saying it and I’m going to keep on saying it, he’s a unicorn of a player.”
The Falcons offense would be “lethal” if Pitts reaches his full potential, London believes. That’s why the team picked up Pitts’ fifth-year option. He’s under contract through the 2025 season and will be paid $10.8 million next season.
“With Kyle, it’s about the detail in every play,” coach Raheem Morris said. “He’s doing a seriously different job in that stuff. It’s been great. I love the fact that he’s catching the ball, and he’s getting vertical. I love the fact that he’s gotten more targets the last couple of weeks.”
For all the talking about Pitts, he does little of it himself. He is quiet in public settings, usually speaking softly and with short answers. He said he uses an alias to summon Uber rides in Atlanta and usually keeps his headphones in and puts his head down along the way. One of the longest answers he gave this season was about his son, Kyle Jr., who will turn 1 on Nov. 10.
“Just being around him is fun,” Pitts said. “Going to the zoo, that was new. The Georgia Aquarium is amazing. I got to do the backstage kind of thing. Seeing him smile is the best thing ever. It’s a pretty cool motivation in the back of my head.”
There’s a much more outgoing Pitts behind closed doors, tight ends coach Kevin Koger said.
“He’s Mr. Personality,” Koger said. “He likes to have a good time. You can hear Kyle coming before you see him because he always has some music playing, and he has some interesting taste in music. He likes to crack jokes.”
Pitts knew when he entered the NFL that attention came with it, but he acknowledges now that he didn’t realize the “severity” of the spotlight then. He’s fully familiar with it now.
“Kyle is just becoming a better person, a better player every single day,” safety Jessie Bates III said. “I think the sky is the limit for Kyle Pitts.”
(Top photo: Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)
