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Top 3 tight ends at NFL scouting combine bring defensive mentality to draft
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Cade Stover plays tight end with a linebacker’s ferociousness.
He’s aggressive, relentless and willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. When other NFL draft prospects opted out of bowl games rather than risk injury, Stover defied his agents and bucked the trend by playing in the Cotton Bowl. And he’d prefer being paid in tractors rather than NIL cash.
This is how Stover views football — hard and tough with no place for those who’d rather turn down a challenge. See, he’s still a defensive player at heart.
“They’ve asked if I’m capable of helping defensively and there’s no doubt about it, I can help wherever you want me to help,” Stover said Thursday at the NFL’s annual scouting combine in Indianapolis. “I love playing tight end, but then again I’m there to do whatever we need to win a ballgame.”
The truth is Ohio State wanted the 6-foot-4, 255-pounder to play linebacker. But once he arrived on campus, the Buckeyes started experimenting with other positions.
First, they tried him at defensive end. For spring football in 2020, he moved to tight end. In January 2022, with the Buckeyes depleted by injuries and opt-outs, they asked him to play linebacker and he had six tackles in a 48-45 Rose Bowl victory over Utah before finally finding his calling at tight end.
Over those final two seasons, Stover emerged as one of the most athletic and productive tight ends in school history and now he’s one of the position’s top three draft prospects.
Not everyone is as versatile as Stover. But Brock Bowers of Georgia, Ja’Tavion Sanders of Texas and Stover do have one thing in common — each was once considered a future defensive star.
Playing for winless Napa High School as a sophomore, Bowers was lightly recruited. He had only one FBS scholarship offer, Nevada, before one of his coaches fought hard for him to be included at a Nike camp. There, he was so good, the offers started pouring in, including one from Notre Dame to play linebacker.
Eventually, the Fighting Irish changed course and asked Bowers to play tight end. The problem for Notre Dame was that Bowers dreamed of playing football in the South and took advantage of his opportunity in 2021 when Darnell Washington was injured.
A year later, Bowers beat out Notre Dame star Michael Mayer for the John Mackey Award as the nation’s best tight end and last season, despite his own battle with an ankle injury, he repeated as the Mackey Award winner.
Yes, he patterns his style after four-time Super Bowl champ Rob Gronkowski and, yes, the guy likely to be the first tight end selected in April’s draft has drawn comparisons to George Kittle and Travis Kelce. Each of the three thrived after contact, and Bowers thinks he has a similar style.
“I feel like I’m yards after the catch and just being able to make people miss. Just turn good plays into great plays,” Bowers said. “You have to have a good relationship with the quarterback, build trust. That kind of comes through reps at practice, and I’ll try to work on that the first place I go.”
Sanders took a different path to the draft.
A two-sport athlete at Billy Runyan High School in Denton, Texas, he also was a prep star as a receiver and defensive end. How good was he? Sanders was a finalist for the 2020 Texas Mr. Football Award.
The Longhorns thought he could play both sides, too, so when he arrived on campus that’s how he practiced. Things changed quick when Steve Sarkisian took the Texas job in 2021.
He got his first big break in 2022 when Jahleel Billingsley, the Longhorns’ projected starter, was suspended for the first six games, and once Sanders had the job, he never let it go. Instead, he started breaking school records as he found a perfect fit at tight end.
“Coming off that big national championship win (for Alabama where Sarkisian was the offensive coordinator before going to Texas), I knew I was too big to be a wide receiver in his offense,” Sanders said. “But I was just big enough to be a tight end, so I knew I was going to be a tight end.”
And does that defensive moniker still fit? Well, Sanders said he’s aware defenders are wary of the spin move he once used to bother quarterbacks.
Stover, who spent his teenage years bailing hay and raising cattle on his parents’ Ohio farm, is far from a finished product, too. And with his mentality, Stover could make one team a big winner come draft weekend.
“I don’t think you can measure what’s inside of me, I don’t think you can measure the kind of person I am, and I don’t think you can measure how good of a football player I can be because I’m just scratching the surface,” said Stover, who intends to work out this weekend. “I’m going to do everything you want me to do, exactly how it should be done, every single time with everything I’ve got.”
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A record 274 climbers reached the summit of Mount Everest in a single day this week, as critics warn the world’s tallest peak is becoming dangerously overcrowded with thrill-seekers willing to pay $15,000 for a shot at the top.
The surge shattered the previous Nepali record of 223 climbers set in 2019, Rishi Bhandari, secretary general of the Expedition Operators Association of Nepal, told Reuters on Thursday.
“This is the highest number of climbers in a single day so far,” Bhandari said, adding that the final summit total could rise even further as some climbers had not yet officially reported their successful ascents.
Nepal has already issued 494 Everest climbing permits this season, each costing climbers $15,000.
EXTREME TRAVEL DESTINATION TO RESTRICT POPULAR MOUNTAIN ACCESS
Climbers walk in a long queue as they head to the summit of Mount Everest in the Solukhumbu district, Nepal, on May 18, 2026. (Purnima Shrestha/Reuters)
Climbers this year are ascending only from the Nepal side of Everest because China reportedly did not issue permits for expeditions from the Tibetan side.
Nepal has already issued 494 Everest climbing permits this season, each costing climbers $15,000. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Mountaineering experts have long criticized Nepal for allowing large numbers of climbers on Everest, warning that overcrowding can create life-threatening bottlenecks high on the mountain in Everest’s deadly “death zone,” where oxygen levels plunge to dangerously low levels.
LEGENDARY MOUNTAINEER JIM WHITTAKER, FIRST AMERICAN TO SUMMIT EVEREST, DEAD AT 97
Mountaineers line up as they climb a slope during their ascent to the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal on May 31, 2021. (Lakpa Sherpa/AFP)
Nepal has attempted to respond to safety concerns in recent years by tightening rules and increasing fees for climbers, though some expedition leaders have defended the high number of climbers.
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“If teams carry enough oxygen it is not a big problem,” expedition organizer Lukas Furtenbach of the Austria-based Furtenbach Adventures told the outlet. “We have mountains in the Alps like the Zugspitze where we have 4,000 persons on top per day. So 274 is actually not a big number, considering this mountain is 10 times bigger.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s groundbreaking plan to grant Ukraine “associate membership” in the European Union has received mixed reviews in Brussels, with questions raised about its legality, feasibility and political implications.
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In a letter to his fellow leaders, seen by Euronews, Merz proposes a tailor-made status that would give Ukraine access to decision-making bodies without voting rights or portfolio and to certain EU-funded programmes on a “step-by-step” basis.
He also envisions Kyiv able to request assistance from other member states in the event of armed aggression through Article 42.7 of the EU treaties. This, he argues, would create a “substantial security guarantee” to deter Russia.
“It is now time to boldly move on with Ukraine’s EU integration through innovative solutions as immediate steps forward,” Merz tells his peers.
In Brussels, Merz’s letter drew attention and raised eyebrows amid ongoing efforts to lift Hungary’s veto on Ukraine’s accession by the time the 27 leaders meet in June.
His push was compared to the op-ed that the chancellor wrote last year endorsing the use of Russia’s immobilised assets to finance a so-called reparations loan to Ukraine. The op-ed shocked Brussels, and the audacious project eventually collapsed.
The letter is “a rather hasty statement, and not very well coordinated. The timing is strange, especially since in June we will have good news with the opening of the cluster, so this letter is a bit surprising,” said a diplomat, warning of widespread scepticism.
“We need to do things differently. There is indeed a timeline, with June in view, and there is a method. Things will move forward.”
A second diplomat cast serious doubt on Merz’s assertion that the “associate membership” would not require amending the EU treaties, just strong political will.
“I don’t see how this could work from a legal point of view. You would need to change the treaties for that. Associate members with all institutions by way of political arrangement? I don’t see it,” the diplomat said.
A third diplomat said that in the letter, “some ideas are better than others”, while a fourth noted the real debate among member states was yet to begin.
‘Merit-based’ focus
By contrast, the European Commission, which oversees the accession process, was more positive and welcomed Merz’s proposal as showing a “strong commitment from member states to make enlargement a reality as soon as possible”.
“It is increasingly clear that enlargement is a geostrategic investment in our prosperity, peace, and security. And Ukraine’s accession to the European Union is also fundamentally linked to the security of our union,” Guillaume Mercier, the Commission’s spokesperson for enlargement, said in a statement.
“It is equally important that we deliver on the completion of the Union with all the candidate countries that have been working towards accession for many years.”
Mercier noted that any innovative solution should be underpinned by the “merit-based” logic that is supposed to guide the complex multi-chapter accession process.
Earlier this year, the Commission pitched a “reversed” membership under which Ukraine would become a formal EU member and progressively obtain the tangible benefits that come with it. Capitals largely rebuffed the idea, calling it dangerous and unrealistic.
Merz’s pitch suggests gradual integration to access EU funds and high-level fora, but with formal membership only at the very end of the road.
The German letter comes as the bloc sees a window of opportunity to finally lift the Hungarian veto on Ukraine’s accession, which has left the process paralysed for two years. The new government in Budapest has launched consultations with Kyiv to discuss the rights of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, a politically sensitive issue.
Brussels hopes that enough progress will be made to lift the veto in June and open the first cluster of negotiations with Ukraine, known as fundamentals, with the remaining five clusters unblocked across the remainder of the year.
It remains unclear how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will react to Merz’s letter. Last month, he flat-out rejected any overture for “symbolic” membership.
“Ukraine is defending itself and is definitely defending Europe,” he said. “And it is not defending Europe symbolically – people are really dying.”
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