Scouting Report: McCallan Castles
Two commits? (The first being Brandon McIlwain) Man. Busy week of content here from me.
Anyway, the latest addition the Cal class, tight end McCallan Castles, has himself a five star name. No getting around that one, so we might as well make full mention of it now.
As far as being an actual football player, however, he’s still a bit of a work in progress, sporting a thin for his size 6’5, 220 pound frame and a three star rating from out of Lake Tahoe. (Side note, he’s the first ever player I’ve ever heard from out of that region.)
With Castles, the Bears have three total tight ends on the roster for the future, and each of them is distinctly different. We’ve pegged Ben Moos as the most “ready to play” guy, because he’s already a huge 240 pounds with a well-rounded tight end skill set, while Gavin Reinwald is a receiver threat who is filling out to become a tight end.
Dimensions suggest that Castles would be closer to the Reinwald mold, and the tape will show you the same – both guys use their size to go up and get it and have some athleticism after the catch/deep speed, with Castles a slight cut above Reinwald in both those areas. He already boasts 2 inches, 10 pounds, plus 8 D-1 offers over his 2017 counterpart, and actually more closely reminds me of the converted Matt Laris, another talented, stretch-the-middle-of-the-field type receiver who’s bulked up to 235 and could make some noise in the future. That’s the kind of skillset we’re talking about in Castles.
What I also enjoy about Castles is his willingness to mix it up so far. He’s not big enough to play in line yet and doesn't quite dominate anyone, but he makes a concerted attempt to at least block. That bodes well.
I usually end these write-ups with some sort of guess on what the future holds for the player by looking at the depth chart, but it is incredibly hard to project where any of these three guys will be, mostly because we haven’t seen the tight end position utilized under Baldwin/Wilcox quite yet. Will they be deployed sparingly? Will they function as safety valves? Used in an attempt to generate mismatches? We don’t quite know, and we only really have Ray Hudson slash giant fullback Malik McMorris at the moment. Should be fun to figure out how the Castle holds up, though. I like the addition.
Still lacking on sexy high end talent in the 2018 class, though. All of the players the Bears have added are good transformative, foundational depth pieces. The hunt remains for a true stand-out.