Maybe, but once you remove Prescott from the equation and somewhat normalize the circumstances each player was in, but disregard the fact that Schultz still had significantly more WR firepower around him to draw coverage away, Schultz averaged under 9 YPC while Fant and Hockenson averaged nearly 11.
That's a pretty significant difference and an indicator that Schultz was mostly just gobbling up check downs against soft coverage within 10 yards and not doing much else while the WR's were the focus.
With Prescott his stats will undoubtedly improve, as will his opportunities downfield, but there is a lot of untapped ceiling there if we had a guy like Hockenson, Fant, or of course Pitts. I understand thinking that ceiling isn't enough to forego our defensive needs at 10, and I mostly agree, but it's pretty disingenuous to imply that there isn't much difference between Schultz and guys like Hockenson and Fant, and of course Pitts.
Again, Schultz had less targets. That's a pretty good indicator that he had less opportunities. And yet had similar counting stats. Better weapons around you mean less targets for you.
I think Fant and Hockenson are good solid TEs.
I think Schultz is also. I don't think he's quite as good as Fant and Hockenson, but I don't think the difference between them is large.
Certainly the impact on the field hasn't translated to a big difference.
Certainly not enough of a difference where you could reliably say TE is a need for one team and not the others.
As for Y/C, I don't think it's hugely important for TEs, but keep in mind Dalton's Y/A is pretty pedestrian across the board so I'm guessing that affects things. To be fair, Lock's YPA is similar to Dalton, but Stafford is much higher. Hard to judge in that context. Nobody will confuse Schultz with being a down field threat though and that's fine.
As for Pitts, he's clearly a different type of player, but for this team I'm not convinced there's enough impact given the talent we've accumulated to justify taking him.
