PHOENIX - Jackie Smith never set out to become a tight end, and Trey McBride never set out to chase a place in the same conversation. Yet here they are, separated by 63 years and linked by a position that has changed dramatically since Smith first landed in St. Louis.
Smith’s path started almost by accident. When the Cardinals called to say they had drafted him, he hung up because he thought it was a prank.
At Northwestern State in Louisiana, he had been a college hurdler first and a football player second. His track scholarship paid only half the bill, and football helped cover the rest.
Fran Polsfoot, then a Cardinals assistant coach, saw enough in that speed to believe Smith could run routes, too.
That gamble turned into a Hall of Fame career. Smith was drafted in the 10th round in 1963 and spent 15 seasons with the Cardinals before finishing with one year in Dallas. He became one of the players who helped define the tight end role, excelling as both a blocker and a receiver.
Now the Cardinals have another player stretching the position in a different direction. McBride caught 126 passes for Arizona in 2025, the most ever by an NFL tight end in a season. He has 66 receptions through eight games this season, 25 more than any other tight end in the league.
“Trey’s so quick off the line of scrimmage and he goes for the ball,” Smith, 86, said. “I’ve never really met him, but I have a lot of respect for him.”
The roots of the position go back to a different Cardinals era, when the team hired Pop Ivy, a former end for the franchise, as coach. Cardinals historian Joe Ziemba said, “Ivy would use what was called a spread offense with two split ends in the game, or he might tighten things up to where he would have a tight end,”
By the time Smith reached the NFL, tight ends were expected to do a little of everything, but the job leaned heavily toward blocking. John Turney, a football historian who writes for Pro Football Journal, put it plainly: “They were required to be able to block kind of like a tackle and also be able to run routes.”
Smith had the speed to threaten defenses downfield, but he also had the size to handle the dirty work. He was listed at 6 feet 4 and 235 pounds, and Turney said, “He was known as much as a blocker, a guy who just seemed to have wiry strength,”
The numbers from Smith’s best season still jump off the page. In 1967, he caught 56 passes for 1,205 yards and nine touchdowns in 14 games, averaging 21.5 yards per catch.
McBride’s 2025 season looked different, but the production was just as striking. He finished with 1,239 receiving yards in 17 games. The yardage was close to Smith’s peak, but McBride got there with more than twice as many catches in a season that lasted three more games.
He also reset the Cardinals’ single-season receptions mark for any player, passing DeAndre Hopkins’ 115 catches in 2020. After posting 111 catches in 2024, McBride became the first NFL tight end with back-to-back seasons of at least 100 receptions.
Some of what McBride does would have looked familiar to fans who watched Smith decades ago. Smith would sometimes shift a few yards away from the tackle to keep a linebacker from getting hands on him, then use his speed to separate from safeties. “We even had an option pattern so that if the guy turned one way or the other, I’d go the other way,” Smith said.
The game around the position kept changing, too. In 1978, a year after Smith’s final season in St.
Louis, the NFL changed the rules to limit contact with receivers beyond five yards and let offensive linemen pass block with their arms extended. That opened more space for receivers and gave linemen more freedom in pass protection.
Turney sees that evolution as part of why offenses can lean on tight ends in new ways when defenses use smaller cover players. He pointed to the value of using three tight ends, including a pair who can catch.
“Then you can run, you can pound them (the defense), but if you still want to pass, you can,” he said.
Smith arrived in St. Louis as an outside receiver, but moving him next to the tackle gave Polsfoot more than a hurdler with speed.
It gave the Cardinals a player who could block, too. Even with all that success, Smith said he never imagined what his career would become.
“It was really an accident,” Smith said.
McBride is only in his fifth season, but he already has two Pro Bowl selections and an NFL receiving record. If he keeps producing at this pace, he could one day join Smith in Canton, Ohio, and maybe claim the same title as the best tight end in franchise history.
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