Oscar Delp stepped up for Georgia after Brock Bowers was injured last year, but he won’t be the only important tight end on Kirby Smart’s squad this season.
When Brock Bowers was injured last season, Georiga promptly turned to sophomore Oscar Delp to fill in. Delp stepped up, catching 24 passes for 284 yards, although he never had more than three catches in a single game, demonstrating that he may never be the receiving threat that Bowers was.
That’s why, this summer, Kirby Smart went to the transfer portal and selected Benjamin Yurosek, a graduate transfer from Stanford, and it’s possible that Yurosek, not Delp, will replace Bowers in the passing game for Heisman Trophy favorite Carson Beck.
Yurosek has received wonderful praises in fall camp, not just for his maturity in a relatively young tight end group, but also for what he will bring to the field.
Delp’s offensive performance was unimpressive, with only 24 catches, although it was still more than Yurosek’s 2023 season. Yurosek caught only 16 catches for 239 yards over six games, but it wasn’t very representative of his abilities as a 6-foot-4, 245-pound playmaker.
In 2022, Yurosek caught 49 of 65 targets for 444 yards and one score. Not game-changing figures, but given that Stanford’s offense finished 92nd in the country that season, his inefficiency is understandable. Yurosek’s lifetime average of 1.50 yards per route run while playing on one of the poorest teams in the country outperformed Delp’s 1.31 or 1.37 yards per route run in 2023. Even last season, Yurosek averaged 14.9 yards per reception, ranking 18th among 106 tight ends who had at least 25 targets. Delp was placed 45th at 11.8.
Yurosek was doing this on a little more functional offense in 2021 with Tanner McKee at quarterback, and now he has the opportunity to play with the best quarterback in the country.
Despite all of this, and the buzz that has been emanating from Athens throughout August, Delp will remain the No. 1 tight end versus Clemson in Week 1. He’ll certainly get the most snaps at the position this season, but Yurosek might be a bigger factor in the passing game, and possibly even on the ground.
Smart targeted more than just tight ends in the portal. He also pursued wide receivers, signing Colbie Young from Miami (FL) and London Humphreys from Vanderbilt. Pairing those two with Dominic Lovett and Dillon Bell will give the Dawgs more depth on the outside than they have had since Smart took over, but Mike Bobo’s system may benefit from formations with two tight ends on the field.
There is unlikely to be a single player in Athens or college football who can replace Bowers’ contributions to the Georgia offense over the last two seasons, but with Oscar Delp and Benjamin Yurosek, the Bulldogs may have found a way to replicate him and his output.
