Payne Durham: Everything you need to know

Durham brought in one of four targets for 11 yards across 17 games during the 2025 season. Fellow tight end Ko Kieft's season-ending leg injury, which he suffered in Week 3, led to Durham being utilized almost exclusively as a blocker throughout the 2025 season. Durham was coming off a 2024 regular season where he'd posted a career-best 11-115-2 line on 14 targets across 16 games, but those numbers were almost exclusively the byproduct of No. 1 tight end Cade Otton sitting out the last three games of the campaign due to a knee injury. Durham will be playing out the final year of his rookie contract in 2026 and appears ticketed for a similar minimal pass-catching role.

Durham went without a target while taking the field for nine of the Buccaneers' 67 offensive plays in Sunday's 20-17 loss to the Dolphins. Durham has suited up for all 16 of the Buccaneers' games to date but continues to remain an afterthought in the passing game as Tampa Bay's No. 2 tight end behind Cade Otton. He's drawn just three targets on 43 routes across his 333 offensive snaps on the season, totaling one catch for 11 yards.

Durham failed to catch his only target, his first since Week 2, in Sunday's 28-23 loss to the Patriots. Durham saw a drop in snaps to 19 (28 percent) after having played on at least 30 percent of plays in each of the previous four contests. The third-year tight end surprisingly has been a complete nonfactor in the air attack through nine contests after posting a 16-173-2 career line on 21 targets over his first pair of seasons, and even the Buccaneers' perpetually injury-hampered receiving corps has done nothing to expand Durham's involvement beyond his role as a blocker.