Mark Andrews Camp Update — August 16: The Drops Are Not Correcting

Mark Andrews opened training camp with drops and has not corrected them. That is the report from Jonas Shaffer at The Baltimore Banner this week, including a Tuesday rep where Kyle Hamilton jarred a Lamar Jackson pass loose, and Shaffer adds that Andrews's receiving production in the new scheme has been limited. For this particular player, that is the most unwelcome sentence a camp could produce.

The June preview made a skeptical case, and it was about volume. We said that for tight ends, targets are the stat that repeats year over year, and that Andrews's targets were exactly what had collapsed, down to about four a game in a season that produced 422 receiving yards, the fewest of his career. Three straight per-game declines, each steeper, with a meaningful share of what remained held up by touchdowns, the least repeatable stat we track. The counterweight we offered was real: Baltimore extended him in December, three years and just over 39 million dollars, and then let the tight end room empty around him. If a new offense simply chose to feed him six targets a game again, we said, the skepticism would look silly.

So the thing to watch was whether the new offense feeds him. The camp evidence, per Shaffer, says it has not so far, and the drops are an efficiency problem stacked on top of a volume problem. The context makes it heavier: Isaiah Likely, Patrick Ricard, and Charlie Kolar are all gone, leaving Andrews as the lone returning tight end anchoring an inexperienced room in Declan Doyle's system. The opportunity argument has never been stronger on paper, which makes the limited production more telling, not less. The week's one bright Andrews quote was about someone else. He called Derrick Henry "a scary sight" going downhill on the perimeter, per James Dudko at Heavy.

Does the June read hold? CONFIRMED, on the early evidence. We said the trend under the name was four years long and pointed one direction, and camp is pointing the same way. The fair pushback is that it is August, drops in practice are cheap data, and the emptied room still guarantees him snaps and a red-zone presence that could rescue plenty of value. The extension says the front office believes that version. Nothing this week showed it.

The checks for next week: whether Andrews starts stacking catches in the joint practices against the Vikings Tuesday and Wednesday, and whether Lamar Jackson looks his way when they share a field in Minnesota. Target flow is the whole question, same as June. We'll check next Sunday.

_Data via nflverse._