Ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft, Colston Loveland slots in as my TE2 behind Tyler Warren in the class. Let's dive into a player who holds the highest grade in Dwain McFarland's Tight End Rookie Super Model in this class.

Colston Loveland Slots In As TE2 In 2025 Draft

In the past 25 years, according to 247Sports, the state of Idaho has produced only nine consensus four-star football recruits. Interestingly, though, three have arrived consecutively in the past three classes. 

The success of Colston Loveland—the 2022 Michigan signee who started the streak—seems to have drawn more eyes to the state. Loveland hails from Gooding, Idaho. Population: 3,802. 

Loveland’s backstory feels lifted from The Natural. Just like Roy Hobbs, Loveland grew up on a family farm out in the country. Loveland raised sheep that he would present at shows and auctions. To this day he beams with pride about the 190-pound sheep he once raised.

Roy Hobbs drew a strike zone on the side of the family’s red farmhouse to practice his pitching accuracy. One of Loveland’s biggest tasks as a kid was removing big rocks from the fields before planting—the kind of rocks that would damage the machines if run over.

Loveland and his brother made competitions out of it. Their favorite was— who can pick up the biggest rock?

By high school, Loveland had grown into a rangy frame, with long arms and huge, callased, forged-by-the-rocks-of-Idaho strong hands (10”). He was a phenomenon of an athlete, first-team all-state in both basketball and football.

Loveland was offered a chance to join the rodeo around this time. “And I did talk about it with my family, but I was like, ‘I’m just gonna play basketball and football, keep it at that, and I’ll just hang around my cousins and do it with them.’ It’s fun, the rodeo stuff,” Loveland said at the NFL Combine.

As a senior, Loveland was named Idaho Gatorade Player of the Year. The secret was out. On the national recruiting boards, Loveland had risen to No. 588 overall in the penultimate 2022 consensus board update. 

When the final board was published, Loveland had soared another 300-plus spots to officially finish with a four-star billing. Loveland chose Michigan, becoming the second Idaho native since 1945 to play for the Wolverines.

Loveland contributed far sooner than expected. During his true freshman season in 2022, veteran starter TE Erick All suffered a season-ending back injury in Week 3. Loveland saw regular field time after that, finishing with a 16-235-2 receiving line.

The next season, on Michigan’s 2023 national-title-winning team, Loveland broke out with a 45-649-4 receiving line. He accounted for 20.3% of the team’s receiving yards. In 2024, Michigan’s passing attack sagged badly without J.J. McCarthy—the Wolverines threw for only 1,678 yards total over 13 games in 2024—and Loveland also battled a shoulder injury from Week 3 on. 

He only appeared in 10 games, but still managed to break Michigan’s single-season TE receptions record with 56. His 582 yards were 34.7% of the team’s sum total and his five touchdowns were nearly half of Michigan’s total receiving TDs (12).

Scouting Report on Colston Loveland

This guy was made to catch footballs. Standing a hair under 6-foot-6 with long arms and those baseball-mitt hands, Loveland’s catch radius is enormous. He maximizes every inch by extending to meet the ball, and meeting it at its highest point off the carpet downtown.

Those rock-hardened hands are strong and soft. Loveland had a strong 7.1% career drop rate, but he posted an elite 3.4% drop rate in 2024. He turns incompletions into completions spearing errant throws outside his frame. Loveland flashes late hands, delaying the defender’s reactions at the moment of truth.

Loveland is pliable at the catch point, with sudden adjustments and contortions to get himself into the best position to corral the ball. His production speaks for itself—Loveland was 96th percentile over the past two seasons in yards per route run.

Loveland is a sleek athlete for his size, quick-footed and fluid. Loveland is difficult to impede off the snap, and he pushes the envelope immediately. He’s got the speed to get downtown, where he’s a problem for one defender—Loveland converted 7-of-7 targets 20-plus yards downfield in 2023.

Michigan moved Loveland all over the formation to juice the matchup problems he naturally gives defenses. Over his three-year career, Loveland took 43.7% of snaps in the slot, 39.1% inline, and 16.4% as a boundary receiver.

At the NFL Combine, Loveland declared that he was “one of the best route runners in this draft.” He’s right. The time and work that Loveland has put into mechanics and technique show. You can send him anywhere on the field running a receiver’s route tree.

Loveland has a natural understanding of angles and feel for leverage. He’s sudden at the route break and swift in transitions. Loveland’s hip swivel and lateral quickness are difficult to deal with underneath. He was 93rd percentile in separation rate the past two seasons.

Loveland mentioned in Indianapolis that he thought he could improve as a runner after the catch by “slowing my tempo down, kind of seeing what's around me, knowing I'm athletic enough to make a move and make someone miss."

I agree. And though Loveland didn’t mention this, I believe the same tempo-related corollary applies to his route-running. In that area, he wins with propulsion off the line, rapid pace up the stem, movement, and seizing leverage—introducing off-speed pitches up the stem will make things easier for him when he reaches its end.

That could prove particularly helpful at the NFL level, because, at present, Loveland is unproven in contested situations. He prefers to avoid them via separation and catch radius whenever possible. Loveland was charted by PFF as 10-for-25 (40.0%) in an admittedly small sample size of career contested-catch opportunities.

In his defense, Loveland was 8-for-15 (53.3%) his first two seasons on campus. Last year, Michigan’s struggle-bus QB corps forced Loveland targets against coverages designed to stop him—he was repeatedly laid out to dry. Even so, Loveland, a wiry skyscraper, can get jarred with the ball on the doorstep. 

Michigan, which runs a 12-personnel offense, deployed Loveland inline on only 39.1% of snaps. Loveland will be most attractive to NFL teams running 12-personnel offenses to deploy in a similar way.

As a blocker, Loveland is perfectly acceptable in the slot/boundary, where his length and feet are enough to wall. But Loveland is given fits by power when deployed inline. And, really, that’s not a fair fight—he’s not built to win the leverage or power game.

Per PFF, Loveland finished with a meager 18th-percentile career positively-graded run-block percentage. Loveland’s broad, rangy frame certainly has room to fill out, depending on how a team envisions his exact usage distribution.

Loveland missed only one game with the shoulder injury he suffered in Week 3 last year. After that, through Week 11, he simply played through the pain—you can take the boy out of the rodeo, but you can’t take the rodeo out of the boy.

Loveland underwent shoulder surgery to repair a Type V AC joint dislocation on January 29. The typical recovery timeline is 4-to-6 months. Though Loveland will miss the pre-draft process, he’s expected to be cleared ahead of training camp. It is the first real injury that Loveland has ever had.

Loveland declared after his true junior season. He will turn 21 a few weeks before the NFL Draft. His skillset makes him a potential matchup nightmare in the NFL, with too much size and catch radius for defensive backs, and too much athleticism for linebackers.

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