I think maybe we need to start looking more at hand size with pass catchers. A part of being a great receiver, after all, is jumping up next to another great athlete and being the guy who comes down with the ball – outfighting the other guy.

I saw a quip last year about Tyler Eifert, the tight end the Bengals took in the first round, having small hands. And sure enough, inside the 10 last year, Eifert caught only 2 of the 6 passes thrown his way. I don’t have the film for all of those plays in front of me, so I can’t illustrate visually that if he had bigger hands he would have caught them all. But it’s a little something to go by.

I started playing around with this. I looked at the hand measurements (as taken at the combine) for all of the tight ends selected in the first, second or third round since 2010. I think they measure them from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the pinky. I have 8.5-inch hands, which I believe is about average for an NFL cheerleader.

Sure enough, looking at these tight ends, the three guys with the largest hands are also probably the three best guys at pulling down passes when they have two defenders all over them – Rob Gronkowski, Kyle Rudolph and Jimmy Graham. You may be surprised that I toss Rudolph in with those guys, but he was a major stud in 2012, when he caught a bunch of in-traffic passes around the goal line.

Julius Thomas wasn’t selected in this sample, but he’s another guy with big hands.

Eifert has the smallest hands of all of these tight ends.

So this makes me less confident that Eifert (like Rudolph) will have a butt-kicking breakout-type second year. Rudolph and Eifert, of course, played together at Notre Dame.

On this list, I’ve added three tight ends I expect will be drafted early in next month’s draft. Ebron definitely is going in the first round. Seferian-Jenkins will be chosen before the end of round 2.

TIGHT END HAND SIZES
YearPlayerHands
2010Rob Gronkowski10.75
2011Kyle Rudolph10.75
2010Jimmy Graham10.63
2010Tony Moeaki10.13
2013Vance McDonald10.13
2012Coby Fleener10.00
2013Jordan Reed10.00
2014Eric Ebron10.00
2014Troy Niklas10.00
2010Ed Dickson9.75
2011Rob Housler9.75
2012Michael Egnew9.75
2013Zach Ertz9.75
2013Gavin Escobar9.75
2014Austin Seferian-Jenkins9.75
2010Jermaine Gresham9.63
2011Lance Kendricks9.63
2012Dwayne Allen9.63
2013Travis Kelce9.63
2013Tyler Eifert9.13

—Ian Allan’’