Chandler tries out for the role of Ivan Drago

The early 1990s were a simpler time. That’s doubly true when it comes to passing statistics, and triply true for tight ends. In week 2, the Bills and 49ers played a famous game in which neither team punted. In week 4 of the 2014 season, the Bears and Packers played just the second game in NFL history with no punts. A streak of 22 years and 2 weeks is pretty long, but that’s not even the longest streak to come out of that Buffalo/San Francisco game.

The Bills defeated the 49ers in no small part thanks to Pete Metzelaars, who caught four passes for 113 yards and 2 touchdowns. And until last Sunday, that was the last time a Buffalo Bills tight end gained 100 yards in a game. In 1993, Metzelaars had a 98-yard game; Lonnie Johnson had an 86-yard game two years later, and gained 90 yards in a 1996 game. Jay Riemersma had three 80+ yard games for the Bills, but that was about it. For over 22 years, no Buffalo Bills tight end hit the hundred yard mark until Scott Chandler caught 6 passes for 105 yards against New England.

In between Metzelaars and Chandler, there were 289 games where a tight end gained at least 100 receiving yards in a game. Unsurprisingly, the Patriots lead the way with 29 of those games, with Rob Gronkowski and Ben Coates responsible for 22 such performances. The table below shows — for each franchise — the number of tight ends who gained 100 receiving yards between week 3 of the ’92 season and week 5 of this year.  I have also included (in parentheses) the number of 100-yard games recorded by each tight end for that franchise:

• Martellus Bennett had the first 100-yard game of his career this year, which was kind of a big deal. Mike Ditka was the original tight end, of course, and he hit the 100-yard mark fourteen times during his stellar career with the Bears. But over the last 50 years, there have been just four times when a Chicago tight end gained 100 yards in a game. It was probably just a footnote that year, but in 1985, Emery Moorehead became the first Bears tight end in 21 years with a 100-yard game after catching 8 for 114 against the Bucs. It took 21 more years until Desmond Clark caught 7 for 125 and a pair of touchdowns against, uh, the Bucs. Four years later in the postseason, Greg Olson picked up 113 yards in a game against Seattle, although this post has otherwise ignored playoff games. That means Bennett’s game against the Packers earlier this year was the first 100-yard game by a Bears tight end in the regular season against a team not named Tampa Bay since Ditka. Three 100-yard games (or four, if you count the postseason) by tight ends in 50 years: nope, writing it again doesn’t make it seem any less insane.

• The Vikings history isn’t that much better. Since 1995, Visanthe Shiancoe is the only tight end with a 100-yard game for the team (Kyle Rudolph did go for 97 last year). Since the merger, the only other tight ends with 100-yard games for the Vikings are Steve Jordan (4) and Joe Senser (3), who combined for seven such games in the ’80s.

• While the NFC North has been a tight end desert, the AFC West has been home to three Hall of Fame level tight ends. While the Patriots take the top spot on the list, the Chiefs, Chargers, and Broncos occupy the next three spots. Oakland’s history with tight ends is not dissimilar from Oakland’s history with everything else: a barren wasteland in recent years, but hey they used to be great (Todd Christensen, Dave Casper, Raymond Chester).

• Tony Gonzalez is obviously the best tight end in Chiefs history, but he’s probably the best tight end in Atlanta history, too (Jim Mitchell and Alge Crumpler would be the other candidates). Kellen Winslow Jr. appears as the top tight end of the last 22 years for both the Browns and the Bucs. Winslow isn’t the best tight end in Cleveland history, Ozzie Newsome, but he just might be the best tight end in Tampa Bay history. That’s pretty weird. Then again, this is a post about Pete Metzelaars. As for the Bills, either Metzelaars or Riemersma would be the best at the position in franchise history. But as you can tell, it won’t take too much for Nelson to move past them.