Who’s the best blocking tight end in the NFL Draft? Kentucky’s Justin Rigg says it’s him.
By the end of his final season at the University of Kentucky, tight end Justin Rigg made 35 starts and played in a school-record 63 games. Maintaining such a high level of availability seemed far from given earlier in his career.
Two games into his freshman season in 2016, Rigg suffered a rib injury that resulted in a laceration of his kidney. He played in all 13 games as a redshirt freshman the next year before another organ laceration — this time his spleen — caused him to miss most of spring camp ahead of the 2018 campaign. He returned that fall and played in 48 of UK’s next 50 games (like many players in the 2020 season, Rigg ended up missing two games due to COVID-19 health-and-safety protocols). Rigg suffers no long-term effects from those freak internal injuries.
On Friday, he’ll participate in Kentucky’s Pro Day for NFL scouts. Rigg is one of four participants — along with wide receiver Josh Ali, defensive back Quandre Mosely and quarterback Terry Wilson — who did not receive an invitation to the NFL Combine this month. That won’t preclude them from getting drafted — several players invited to the combine go undrafted every year, and the inverse is true of non-invitees — but it does put quite a bit more pressure on them to perform at a high enough level to generate further interest from teams that may or may not yet have them on their boards ahead of April’s draft.
For Rigg, a 6-foot-6, 262-pound tight end, a 40-yard dash time in the 4.8-second range is the goal in terms of confirming what teams would anticipate of a player of his build at the next level. He’s not formally interviewed with any NFL teams but they’ve indicated awareness of him throughout the bureaucratic stages leading up to April’s draft. “Justin is a very known commodity,” his agent, Jason Donnell, said. “Teams have a lot of film on him, they know he’s a good character guy and there’s not a whole lot of medical issues there. They don’t have to vet him as hard.”
Over the last five drafts, an average of 14 tight ends has been selected in the NFL Draft; the most in that span was 16 in 2019 (12 were picked in both the 2020 and 2021 editions). Twenty-one players at the position were invited to this year’s combine.
Players at that position are increasingly glorified, and coveted, for their pass-catching ability and athleticism in the open field. Rigg is an effective receiver — he caught four touchdowns and averaged 10.9 yards per catch on 50 career receptions in an offense that was run-heavy most of his time at UK — but believes his blocking ability is what will ultimately earn him a spot in an NFL camp. That’s where his instincts for battling a defense are best on display; it’s not difficult to find tape of Rigg batting off his first block before meeting a would-be-tackler at the second level to help turn a 5-yard rush into a 20-yard gain.
“I feel like I can do everything, but my main thing I think I’m best at is blocking,” Rigg said. “At the next level, I’ll be able to show that I am better than those other guys at that. I think I’ll excel at that.”
His confidence was honed through five seasons worth of play in the Southeastern Conference, typically regarded as the toughest in college football and the generator of most draft selections each year. Only one tight end from the SEC, Texas A&M’s Jalen Wydermyer, was invited to the combine this year, but 10 have been selected from the league over the last three drafts. If Rigg gets selected, he’d be the first Wildcat at the position to earn that distinction since the Indianapolis Colts selected Jacob Tamme in the fourth round of the 2008 draft.
Rigg has leaned on Vince Marrow, his position coach at UK, and C.J. Conrad, who recently went through the draft process and was in an NFL camp before landing back at UK as a graduate assistant, as he prepares to make his best case for the league.
“Since day one, Vince has been talking about the NFL,” Rigg said. “Every single day I was there, he’d bring something up about the NFL and teach us in the tight end room about how certain things were going to help us at the next level and what we need to do to get there.”
UK Pro Day
What: On-campus combine for draft-eligible UK football players, attended by NFL scouts
When: Friday; measurements begin at 10:30 a.m., drills start 11:15 a.m.
Stream: UKAthletics.com
Participants: Josh Ali, WR; Yusuf Corker, DB; Luke Fortner, OL; Darian Kinnard, OL; Marquan McCall, DL; Quandre Mosely, DB; Josh Paschal, DL; Justin Rigg, TE; Wan’Dale Robinson, WR; Dare Rosenthal, OL; Terry Wilson, QB
