Austin Hooper

10 NFL seasons, 5 teams — and 4,610 receiving yards, 9th-most among TEs since 2016.

Hooper's career total — 452-4,610-32 across 159 games — sits 9th among all TEs since 2016. He's never been TE1 in receiving for a full season, but he's been a starting-caliber TE in every offense he's played in.

Why it matters. Hooper has never been a focal point in any offense, yet sustained TE-relevant production through a decade and five teams. Sitting 9th on the post-2016 yardage leaderboard places him in the conversation with names usually reserved for primary targets — a function of longevity and reliability rather than peak.

72.9% career catch rate — 3rd-best among TEs with 400+ catches since 2016, ahead of Kelce.

Among the 11 TEs with 400+ receptions since 2016, only George Kittle (73.6%) and Dallas Goedert (73.5%) have caught a higher share of their targets than Hooper's 72.9%. He's ahead of Travis Kelce by a hair and ahead of Mark Andrews by 5 percentage points.

That's the journeyman's calling card: 452 catches on 620 targets, 7.4 yards per target — coaches keep finding a roster spot for him because the ball doesn't hit the ground.

Why it matters. Catch rate is a proxy for what coaches actually trust a TE to do — short, high-percentage looks on third down, in the red zone, off play-action. Hooper outranks every TE on this list except Kittle and Goedert, both of whom play in scheme-heavy West-Coast systems built around YAC. That he's hung with them across five offenses, none designed around him, is the explanation for the journeyman career.

The 4-team post-Atlanta journey: CLE → TEN → LV → NE, each one a step in target volume.

After the Atlanta peak, Hooper bounced through 4 teams in 6 years. The 2023 Raiders year (31 targets, 25 catches, 234 yards, 0 TDs) was the low point — the only sub-300-yard season of his career.

The 2024 Patriots reset was the bounce-back: 45-476-3 in 17 games — his best season since Cleveland 2020. He stayed in New England through 2025.

Why it matters. Hooper's volume has roughly halved since the Atlanta peak, but his role keeps cycling: every team that signs him does so as a starting in-line TE, and every team eventually moves on. The 2024 Patriots reset (45-476-3) shows there's still functional production left even at 30+, just at a lower target ceiling than the Falcons years.

32 career TDs on 452 catches — a 7.1% TD rate that's middle-of-the-pack for high-volume TEs.

Hooper's season-high in receiving TDs is 6 (2019 Atlanta), and he's hit 4+ TDs in 4 different seasons (2016, 2018, 2019, 2020). His career 7.1% TD-per-reception rate ties Zach Ertz and sits well below the red-zone specialists at the top — Mark Andrews (10.9%) and Hunter Henry (10.3%), two TEs with nearly identical reception totals to Hooper.

The gap: at 7.1%, Hooper would have needed 17 more career TDs to match Hunter Henry's rate on the same 452-catch base. Less a goal-line option, more a chains-mover.

Why it matters. TD rate among same-volume peers separates red-zone weapons from possession TEs. Hooper sits at the median of this cohort — productive between the 20s, less of a structural threat at the goal line. That's a real explanation for why teams sign him at TE2 money rather than franchise-tag him: he moves the chains but isn't who you target on a fade.

Career-best receiving game: 9-130 vs Tennessee — and the 2nd-best was a 2-target, 64-YPR fluke.

In Week 1 of 2017, Hooper turned 2 targets into 2 receptions for 128 yards and a TD vs Chicago — a 64.0 yards-per-reception day that's the wildest efficiency line of his career. The 9-130 vs Tennessee in 2019 is his volume peak.

He has 3 career 100-yard games, all in Atlanta — none since leaving the Falcons in 2020.

Why it matters. Hooper's career has been a high-floor, low-ceiling line — but the 2017 Week 1 line at Chicago (2 catches, 128 yards, TD) is the rare game where a low-volume TE breaks open a defense. All three of his 100-yard games came as a Falcon; since the Atlanta peak, defenses haven't let him over the top.

159 career games across 5 franchises — 31.8 games per stop, the textbook journeyman TE.

At age 31 in 2025, Hooper has played 159 games across 5 franchises — Atlanta (63), New England (33), Cleveland (30), Tennessee (17), Las Vegas (16). That's 31.8 games per franchise, with only Atlanta accounting for a true multi-year run.

Despite the team-hopping, he's missed roughly 10 games to injury his entire career. The TE position has churn — but Hooper has been a 60%+ snap-share starter on every roster he's joined, even at 31.

Why it matters. ["Five franchises in ten years is unusual for a TE who has never been benched or released for performance; the churn reflects market timing (Cleveland's 4-year, $42M deal in 2020, then the post-Stefanski regime cleanout) more than declining play. Each landing spot has handed him a starter's snap count, which is what makes the journeyman label feel earned rather than punitive."]