Carsen Ryan wasn’t invited to the NFL combine. For a draft prospect, that can be a major hurdle to get over.
Ryan’s position coach at BYU, tight ends coach Kevin Gilbride, understood that as much as anyone. Gilbride’s two-plus decades of coaching experience includes 12 years spent at the NFL level, including a Super Bowl with the New York Giants.
However, GIlbride also knew what kind of player he had in Ryan, whom the Browns selected No. 248 overall in the seventh round of the draft. So he knew it was just a matter of teams putting on the film and watching the Cougars tight end in action.
Subscribe to Browns Insider newsletter
“I think it definitely hurts him that he didn’t get a trip to the combine,” Gilbride said in a phone interview with the Beacon Journal this week. “Now, again, bigger, faster is usually what gets to the combine, so not necessarily the best football player. I just had a feeling that when people truly put the film on, they were going to see what I see, which is a guy who could, if he’s in the right situation and gets the right opportunity, could have an eight- to 10-year NFL career. That’s truly how I see Carsen.”
Gilbride’s NFL resume includes working with the likes of Evan Engram, Trey Burton and, while he was Giants wide receivers coach, Victor Cruz and Hakeem Nicks. Engram and Nicks may have been first-round draft picks, but both Burton and Cruz went from being undrafted rookie free agents to becoming NFL starters and, in Cruz’s case, a Pro Bowler.
That gives Gilbride a certain insight into what it takes for a player taken at the back end of the draft, or even after it, to find his niche on a team. Gilbride said what will help Ryan is how he has a chance to showcase the kind of profile that generally draws teams to late-round picks.
“In other situations and circumstances, I love this guy when I watched this film,” Gilbride said of what NFL teams look for late in the draft. “He just continues to be a great football player. He might not be as big and fast as some of these other guys or might not have the glaring numbers or statistics that some of these other players have, but he’s a really, really good football player, so we can utilize him in many areas if he’s good enough to make the team.
“That’s kind of how I see Carsen, and those were the conversations that I had with a significant amount of coaches right before the draft, because it seemed like that’s when they finally actually put the real film on and watched his film, the game film, where you see him doing things right all the time.”
The 6-foot-3⅜, 255-pound Ryan only played one season (2025) at BYU after having gone from two years at UCLA to one season at Utah before jumping to the Utes’ rivals in Provo. During his two seasons at UCLA, he was a teammate of Carson Schwesinger, one of his newest Browns teammates.
In that 2025 season with Gilbride, Ryan caught 45 passes for 630 yards and three touchdowns. That came after having a combined for 29 catches for 400 yards and four touchdowns between 2022-24.
“His efficiency is what he maximized,” Gilbride said. “And what I mean by that is he continued to get better and better with zero wasted movement, or at least eliminating the majority of the wasted movement, which by the end of the season really started to maximize his game in the pass game. A big part of that was yards after the catch, the way he would catch the football and then drop step and get north and south and then attack defenders the way that we tried to teach them to attack the defenders. He did that incredibly well.”
Ryan played mostly inline as a tight end at BYU, something the Browns really lack at that position. However, while he played more than 56% of his snaps inline, that still left 44% of them to be spread around the formation.
Buy Cleveland Browns tickets
Gilbride said that makes Ryan a potential fit for Cleveland. He’s well aware of coach Todd Monken’s propensity for utilizing tight ends in the offense, whether it was someone like Cameron Brate or O.J. Howard with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Brock Bowers with the University of Georgia or Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely with the Baltimore Ravens.
“The offense, I do believe, suits him perfectly because of the versatility and what he can do,” Gilbride said. “Split out is number one, have his hand in the dirt, playing the inline Y, being the move tight end, creating separation versus band defenders and getting open in zones. He can do it all. So if he truly gets the opportunity, I think it’s the perfect offense for him.”
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ. Sign up for Browns Insider newsletter at https://profile.beaconjournal.com/newsletters/browns-insider/
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Carsen Ryan’s coach at BYU sees perfect opportunity with Browns
Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
