Bookends: Cardinals standouts Jackie Smith, Trey McBride show how NFL TE position has evolved
By Caleb Craig ·
Bookends: Cardinals standouts Jackie Smith, Trey McBride show how NFL TE position has evolved
by Caleb Craig, Cronkite News
November 4, 2026
PHOENIX – Jackie Smith hung up when the St. Louis Cardinals football team called to tell him they had drafted him. He thought someone was pulling his leg.
But Fran Polsfoot, then a Cardinals assistant coach, figured that a college hurdler as prolific as Smith was during his time at Northwestern State in Louisiana could probably also run a pass pattern, Smith recalled.
Football began as an afterthought that helped Smith get through college. His track scholarship covered only half his college costs, but joining the football team gave him a way to cover the rest.
When St. Louis selected him in the 10th round of the NFL draft in 1963, he went on to redefine the tight end position during 15 seasons with the Cardinals and one with the Dallas Cowboys. The side hustle turned into a Hall of Fame career in which he excelled as a blocker and receiver.
Now 63 years later, the Cardinals have another player setting the standard at the position in Trey McBride, who caught 126 passes for Arizona in 2025. No NFL tight end had caught that many in a season.
McBride has 66 receptions this season through eight games, 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.”
Five years before Smith arrived, the Cardinals hired Pop Ivy, a former end for the franchise, as coach.
“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,” Cardinals historian Joe Ziemba said.
By the time Smith reached the NFL, a tight end’s work predominately meant protecting the quarterback, while the other receivers ran downfield.
“They were required to be able to block kind of like a tackle and also be able to run routes,” said John Turney, a football historian who writes for Pro Football Journal.
Smith had that track-star speed, but he was also 6 feet 4, 235 pounds.
“He was known as much as a blocker, a guy who just seemed to have wiry strength,” Turney said.
Smith’s 56 catches in 1967 produced 1,205 yards and nine touchdowns over 14 games. He averaged 21.5 yards per catch.
McBride finished 2025 with 1,239 receiving yards in 17 games. The yardage was similar, but McBride caught more than twice as many passes as Smith in a season that lasted three games longer.
McBride’s 126 catches also set the Cardinals’ record for any player in a season, surpassing DeAndre Hopkins’ 115 catches in 2020. Following McBride’s 111 catches in 2024, he became the first NFL tight end with consecutive seasons of at least 100 receptions.
Some of McBride’s moves might look familiar to fans who recall watching Smith decades ago. Smith sometimes would move a few yards away from the tackle to keep a linebacker from reaching him. Once he was free, his track speed helped him against safeties who were not always prepared to cover him.
“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.
In 1978, a year after Smith’s final season in St. Louis, rule changes restricted contact with receivers beyond five yards and allowed offensive linemen to pass block with their arms extended. The changes gave receivers more room to run and linemen more freedom to protect the quarterback.
When defenses bring in smaller players to cover receivers, Turney believes it’s an opportunity for offenses with more tight ends. He described using three, including a couple who can catch passes.
“Then you can run, you can pound them (the defense), but if you still want to pass, you can,” he said.
Smith could do both, although he arrived in St. Louis as an outside receiver. Moving him beside the tackle gave Polsfoot more than a hurdler who could run a pass pattern. He could block, too.
Still, Smith never envisioned being in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, let alone as a tight end.
“It was really an accident,” Smith said.
Now in his fifth season, McBride has already earned two Pro Bowl selections and set an NFL receiving record. If he keeps producing at a consistent level, he could eventually join Smith in Canton, Ohio with a Hall of Fame bust of his own, perhaps taking Smith’s mantle as the best tight end in franchise history.
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Originally published by Cronkite News Sports