Cade Otton Examined
October 28th, 2025
Tight end Cade Otton, back when he was a red zone option.
There was a divide at JoeBucsFan.com world headquarters.
The Joe typing here was moaning about the Bucs not throwing the ball nearly enough to Cade Otton, and not utilizing the tight end position overall. The other Joe was saying Otton was staying in to block a lot, so catching the rock wasn’t really on the table for him.
The data shows that after eight games, Otton leads the NFL in routes run by tight ends, per the legitimate stats outfit Sumer Sports (graphic below).
What makes that even more interesting is the Bucs rank 17th in the NFL in total offensive plays. So Otton not only leads all tight ends in routes run, he’s run routes at the highest percentage of snaps in the league.
There’s a lot of ways to think about those numbers, but Otton has been an extremely busy man this season in the passing game and that’s likely to continue.
Otton has been catching more passes lately and rookie receiver Emeka Egbuka gushed about him yesterday on the Buccaneers Radio Network.
“I love playing with Cade,” Egbuka said. “He’s is a great leader for us. An I wouldn’t even call it him stepping up. I think he’s always been in that role just when his number is called. He’s super reliable. He’s one of the most reliable people on our team on and off the field. You can trust him to get his job done and whatever you ask him to do. So I’m grateful that I came into a team has someone like that to kind of lean on and be that steady, consistent rock for our offense.”