Is Tyler Higbee playing today? Full injury update for Rams tight ends

LA Rams starting TE Tyler Higbee was injured in the Wild Card Round of the 2024 NFL Playoffs against the Detroit Lions. He suffered a serious ACL injury to his knee, an injury that has taken nearly a year to heal and rehab. And signs mounted that Higbee might be trending towards playing in Week 15 to face the San Francisco 49ers.

Higbee was a full participant in practice this week. He has been designated to return. Best of all, even a cameo appearance in Week 15 on Thursday Night Football would give invaluable feedback to both the team and the player as to how much of a role he is capable of handling. And if he suffered even the slightest setback, the team has a 10-day mini-bye to regroup and reformulate an action plan to get Higbee back in action.

Hope for Higbee's return had grown so much, that we even featured him in an article as facing the San Francisco 49ers for the first time in 2024. Now we know that he has been ruled out for Week 15. Better luck next week.

While the Rams have been chugging along without Higbee this season, second-year tight end Davis Allen is now fighting through a shoulder injury and is questionable for Week 15 as well. That is not a good sign for a team that deployed their 12-personnel package on nearly 50 percent of their offensive snaps to defeat the 49ers in Week 3.

In that game, the Rams tapped TEs Colby Parkinson and Hunter Long to handle business. Parkinson caught three of five passes thrown his way for 21 yards. Long was not targeted the entire game.

If Higbee suited up, I would have expected him to be involved in the offense. Without him, I do not see the team diverting offensive snaps to tight ends who are not active targets in the passing game when it has wide receivers like Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp who can block, and are capable of putting up 100+ receiving yards.

Tyler Higbee is out for Week 15. To be perfectly honest, I can't see any Rams tight ends having much of an impact in this game.

Thanks for reading.

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