In a still-raw memory for Bears followers, Cole Kmet caught seven passes for 85 yards and two touchdowns against Denver at Soldier Field in October of 2023. Numbers that stoked hope about his future and made him resemble a cornerstone in Chicago’s offense rebuild. Only months earlier, the Bears signed the 24-year-old tight end to a four-year, $50 million contract. The regime’s first splashy big-name deal by GM Ryan Poles. Kmet was a homebody, grizzled and productive. A neighborhood hero compensated abroad as the focal point in an offense built to unfurl.
But a year on, the contract elicits as much criticism as admiration. A recent YouTube analysis had Bears fans thinking, explaining why head coach Matt Eberflus‘ offense and he himself could not best utilize the skillset of Kmet. The analysts are highlighting how the tight end’s production “doesn’t match the money” based on the number of times he’s being called to block as opposed to run routes. One pointed out that Eberflus’ offense failed to get its largest weapons out in optimal situations.
The statistics bear it out. Kmet’s 2024 deployment decreased dramatically. He averaged fewer than 19 routes per game. Reported in to block on close to a third of his snaps, and recorded just 47 for 474 yards and four touchdowns over 17 games. These numbers weren’t merely a fallback from his 2023 breakout year. But they put his production on a per-year basis at best in the NFL tight-end ranks. And when the Bears’ offense imploded and ranked near the bottom of the league, it was unclear whether Kmet had regressed or simply wasn’t being used enough.
Kmet’s $12.5 million average annual salary is in the league’s top seven at tight end. As a producer, however, his stats barely broke the top 20. His usage more often tended to diverge from seam threat and toward extra blocker, a concession made by the staff to give young quarterback Caleb Williams some space. But in the process, the offense lost one of its few certainties and the investment payoff crashed.
Kmet complained about wanting to be used more, even getting annoyed with having to make shallow crossings or catch in the flats on big plays. But Eberflus’ system wasn’t constructed to highlight diversity. It was constructed to constrain error and what that meant for Kmet was too often constraining him.
Kmet’s production hasn’t justified the price tag
The disparity between pay and production is now not only absurd but impossible to overlook. Since inking the contract, Kmet’s yards per game have fallen from 42 to 28, and his red zone involvement has been intermittent. Among tight ends paid at least $10 million annually, none received fewer targets in 2024 than Kmet. For a player hyped as an offense’s focal point just twelve months prior, his box score spoke softly.
The Bears dipped deep into discussion only when they spent their 2025 first-rounder on Michigan tight end Colston Loveland. That addition, in conjunction with the signing of veteran Durham Smythe, made Chicago’s tight end unit one of the costliest in the league. But not one of the most productive. The personnel’s overuse of three-receiver sets also cut back Kmet’s utilization. Having him on the sideline often for the sets that pervaded their calls.
Chicago spent on a position unit that it did not often make plays to. Kmet was an afterthought as a passing option, utilized more as a safety valve than a concern. And while his leadership, blocking, and locker room presence are all complimented, none of those attributes alter the reality that his on-field worth hasn’t come close to living up to the dollar value placed on his name.
Now with new head coach, Ben Johnson, there is optimism the tide can shift. Johnson was imaginative in his utilization of tight ends in Detroit. And initial indications were of more motion, play-action, and 12-personnel concepts that might be more to Kmet’s liking. But with a threatening $18 million cap figure in 2026 and another talented young tight end riding shotgun in the rearview. Time is running out for Kmet to prove his contract in the manner the fans had fantasized.
The Eberflus age was an era of locked calls and misused talent. The statistics don’t lie, but they don’t say it all. Kmet wasn’t grossly overpaid—he was underutilized. But in a league where judging is by results, the subtlety gets lost more often than not. For the Bears, the fresh start is to turn the error around. For Kmet, it’s to show the issue was never him.
The post Matt Eberflus Era Leaves Costly Mark on $50M Cole Kmet as His Worth Fails to Justify the Deal appeared first on EssentiallySports.