The Indianapolis Colts entered this season knowing that their tight end depth chart ran through Tyler Warren.
The TE1 is in his second year out of Penn State, had a great rookie season and is probably the best playmaker on the Colts' offense aside from Jonathan Taylor.
Warren, though, picked up a surprise injury on Friday at practice ahead of the Week 6 clash on Sunday with the winless Tennessee Titans. It's a groin injury, which doesn't sound ideal, and Warren is listed as questionable.
All of a sudden, that Colts' depth chart — and the big man Mo Alie-Cox — comes into a lot more focus.
Behind Warren, the Colts' tight end depth chart is reliable but not exciting.
The aforementioned Mo Alie-Cox is the TE2. He's the former basketball player from VCU who is a big target and a strong blocker, but he hasn't been frequently used in a few years.
Behind Alie-Cox are Drew Ogletree and Pharaoh Brown, two veteran players who aren't going to put a lot of fear into defenses.
The Colts don't have any TEs on their practice squad. They had recently signed Brown to the active roster from the practice squad.
Warren didn't miss any games as a rookie or so far this year, so we don't have a great place to look to figure out what Alie-Cox might do if Warren is out.
His lowest percentage of snaps in a game came as a rookie in Week 3 when he was on the field for 68% of plays. That was against the Titans, ironically — but the Colts didn't even target another tight end that day. In that game, Alie-Cox got 49% of snaps.
Alie-Cox has three catches for 30 yards this season through five games. In each of the last four seasons, he had between 13 and 19 catches.
It's a long time since he caught 24 passes and four touchdowns in 2021, or 31 passes for 394 yards and two TDs in 2020.
Alie-Cox is 33 years old now, and it's unlikely the Colts can use him anything like Warren between the 20s.
The one spot Alie-Cox could deliver for the Colts is in the red zone. Listed at 6-foot-5 and 267 pounds, the former Division I power forward remains a threat to catch a touchdown.
The Colts will have to figure out their passing game to get in those positions, likely led by slot receiver Josh Downs and even the RB tandem of Jonathan Taylor and Seth McGowan.
But once they're in close, keep an eye on Alie-Cox, because tossing the ball up toward him would not a be a bad strategy for Daniel Jones if Warren has to miss Sunday's game.
This article was originally published on HEAVY
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