Fifth of ten questions that will determine Northwestern’s season.
Northwestern lost its top two producing tight ends, Thomas Gordon (27 catches for 252 yards) and Marshall Lang (11 catches for 115 yards) to graduation last season. Of the astonishing 10 tight ends on roster for 2025, just one, Hunter Welcing, caught a ball for the Wildcats in 2024, and his 20-yard reception in a Week 3 rout of Eastern Illinois was his only reception that season.
With so little returning experience, Northwestern targeted a tight end in the portal, adding 6-foot-6, 250-pound veteran Alex Lines. Lines is a significant change of pace from Northwestern’s typical transfer model: the Wildcats will be his fifth team in the past six years. He started his career at UNLV in 2020, transferred to Arizona for 2021-22, spent 2023 in JUCO playing for Garden City, then was on the roster with New Mexico State in 2024.
Lines did not play for the Aggies last season, so the staff is betting on his 2023 campaign — 31 receptions, 309 yards, 2 TDs — for Garden City, and his 2021 season at Arizona, where he recorded 10 catches for 138 yards.
That sporadic production is still far and away the most complete body of work in the room.
Northwestern Tight End Career Production
TEN QUESTIONS SERIES: 1. Can Preston Stone return to form? | 2. Does Northwestern have enough depth at wide receiver? | 3. Will Anto Saka be an elite pass rusher? | 4. Can an influx of transfers boost the defense?
Importance of tight end to Northwestern’s offense
The Wildcats have big and experienced bodies for blocking with Lines, Welcing and Albright. All three are listed 6-foot-3 or taller, and 250 pounds. While Welcing and Albright might not have racked up receptions, Albright has appeared in 33 games, Welcing in 24, often on special teams.
They have game experience, and they have a year in offensive coordinator Zach Lujan‘s system. Now is the time for them to take the next step with Gordon and Lang graduated.
In 2023, at South Dakota State in Lujan’s second season as coordinator, tight end Zach Heins was third on the team in receiving with 27 catches for 410 yards and seven touchdowns. In 2022, Heins was fourth and Tucker Kraft, a third-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, was third. Kraft was limited to just nine games due to injury, but still finished with 27 catches for 348 yards and three touchdowns.
Now, a talent like Kraft probably isn’t on Northwestern’s roster, but Lujan’s offense clearly works best with a tight end as more of a receiving threat. Even with Gordon and Lang, two experienced hands, the Wildcats threw for just 367 yards and two touchdowns to their tight ends last season.
Having a legitimate receiving threat at tight end can lend more weight to the shift-trade-motion actions that Lujan favors to draw the eyes of the defense, get his tight ends to the right spot for blocks, or flat-out get them open. It’s an element of the offense the Wildcats have been sorely missing over the years; the last tight end with 30+ receptions or 300+ receiving yards was Cameron Green, who had 57 catches for 483 yards in 2018.
New quarterback Preston Stone is already going into the season with a young and inexperienced wide receivers room. Northwestern’s tight end room has plenty of experience and plenty of options. But can they find the production to match?
The answer to that question will have an impact on whether Northwestern’s offense can improve on its woeful performance in 2024, when they finished 128th in the nation in scoring at just 17.8 points per game.
