Max Klare
Ohio State TE Max Klare.
Joe doesn’t know what to make of pre-draft visits prospects make to NFL facilities. The Bucs rarely draft guys who they brought in for interviews.
Joe has a strong hunch Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht mostly uses these visits as fishing expeditions, figuring the Bucs are likely to play these guys somewhere down the road, and thye try to see what makes these guys tick so the Bucs could use that against them.
Al Davis and Bill Belicheat, were notorious for these clandestine acts.
One guy reported last month to visit the Bucs is Ohio State tight end Max Klare. He had a solid year last year but he didn’t make as much noise as Kenyon Sadiq from Oregon or maybe even Michael Trigg out of Baylor.
In his exhaustive draft guide, “The Beast,” Dane Brugler of The Athletic has Klare rated as his No. 3 tight end in the draft.
A one-year starter at Ohio State (and two-and-a-half-year starter overall), Klare was used across the formation in head coach Ryan Day’s offense, alternating between the slot, backfield, wing and inline. After a breakout 2024 season at Purdue, he transferred to Columbus and had high expectations in the Buckeyes’ offense. However, he was underutilized in the passing game, in large part because of all the mouths Ohio State had to feed (his percentage of catches that went for 10-plus yards dropped from 60.8 in 2024 to 39.5 in
‘25).
Klare is a good-looking athlete and shows speed and urgency that suggest he has yet to play his best football. He needs to improve with some of the pacing and subtleties of getting open, but his route movements are crisp and fluid. He has the body control to play the ball well in the air and flashes a burst after the catch. The foundation is there to be a serviceable positional blocker, although it will likely never be a strength of his game. Overall, Klare has a low ceiling as a blocker and needs to continue adding refinement as a route runner, but his combination of athleticism, toughness and ball skills gives him a modern-day skill set. He projects as an F tight end, similar in ways to Dalton Kincaid.
Joe thinks Klare may be underrated. He had about a 30 percent drop in production from 2024 when he was at Purdue. That doesn’t bother Joe for a couple of reasons. One is, it seemed Ohio State head coach Ryan Day used him as a decoy as much as he was used as a tight end. Plus, Day had him lining up all over the place, not just as a tight end.
And as Brugler noted, Klare went from being the big dog at Purdue to just one of a big litter at Ohio State. Of course, the Buckeyes were going to target receivers Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate more than Klare. That’s just common sense.
Brugler thinks Klare may go as late as the third round. Maybe Brugler thinks Klare has more upside than Trigg, who Joe thinks is a mismatch nightmare?
Watching film of Klare, it seems like he has a sneaky quick first step or two to create separation.
Max Klare 7 REC, 105 YDS, 1 TD vs Rutgers Today.pic.twitter.com/bEoA7ux7Ja https://t.co/Vo9yZUObZn
— Football Performances (@NFLPerformances) November 22, 2025