Gunnar Helm finally looked like the tight end Tennessee has been waiting to see.
In Sunday’s 43-36 overtime loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, the Titans sophomore turned in a team-high 76 receiving yards on five catches, and he did it with the kind of efficiency that jumps off the page. Helm averaged 15.2 yards per catch, and his 25-yard grab stood as Tennessee’s second-longest offensive play of the day.
That kind of output doesn’t just show up in a box score. It changes how an offense feels. It also seemed to help quarterback Cam Ward, who put together his best game of the season while leaning on Helm as a steady option in the passing game.
The performance makes one thing hard to ignore: Helm may have been underused earlier in the year by offensive coordinator Brian Daboll.
Daboll had been leaning on Helm as more of a blocker, and that’s not the part of his game that stands out. His value is in the passing game, where he has the tools to create real problems for defenses. On Sunday, Tennessee finally treated him that way.
Pro Football Focus charted Helm with 15 run-blocking snaps, a number that was down from 26 the week before and marked his third-lowest total of the season in that category. He also logged just six pass-blocking reps.
The shift showed up in the passing numbers. Helm’s eight targets and five receptions were both season highs, and he posted a season-best 3.04 yards per route run. Before that, his top mark this year was 1.27, which sat well below his rookie-year average of 1.45.
Three of his catches moved the chains. Ward, in turn, reached 300 passing yards for the first time in his career, and the Titans had their tight end working as a dependable outlet throughout the game. That helped Tennessee stay in position to nearly knock off a stronger Bengals team.
What’s notable is that this didn’t require a huge change in Helm’s workload. He played 49 snaps, four fewer than in Week 7. Daniel Bellinger still had a major role, taking 40% of Tennessee’s offensive snaps, which has been pretty standard for him.
So the answer wasn’t more Helm for the sake of more Helm. It was smarter Helm.
Daboll adjusted how he used him, and the passing game benefited immediately. The bigger question now is why that version of the offense took so long to arrive.
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