Syracuse Football: Here's why All-American TE Oronde Gadsden II has found great NFL fit

Former Syracuse football All-American tight end Oronde Gadsden II was the first Orange player picked in the 2025 NFL Draft, and I love his future destination.

On Saturday in the late afternoon, the Los Angeles Chargers made a trade with the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles and selected the 6-foot-5, 236-pound Gadsden in the fifth round, with the No. 165 overall pick.

A huge congrats from Orange Nation to Oronde!

From a press release via the Chargers: "Gadsden is regarded as a strong prospect in the tight end class. ... The selection of Gadsden adds a young tight end to the position room alongside Tyler Conkin, Will Dissly and Tucker Fisk."

After he was picked by Los Angeles, the experts on the ESPN broadcast discussed Gadsden. The pundits noted that the Chargers were in need of another tight end, Gadsden has strong positional size, and he could make a run at the starting rotation early on in his NFL career.

Love it.

I think former Syracuse football star TE Oronde Gadsden can do well with his first NFL team.

Gadsden, who hails from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., caught 73 passes for 934 yards and seven touchdowns through the air during the 2024 term under first-year head coach Fran Brown.

As the 'Cuse went 10-3 overall in 2024 and finished No. 20 in the final Associated Press top-25 poll, Gadsden was named to the AP All-America third team and also resided on the All-ACC first squad. Per SU Athletics, throughout his tenure on the Hill, Gadsden set several Syracuse football program records for a tight end.

Gadsden joins a Chargers group that went 11-7 overall a season ago and reached the NFL playoffs, falling in the wild-card round to the Houston Texans. Los Angeles has a talented quarterback in Justin Herbert, who ranked No. 9 in the NFL last year when he threw for 3,870 yards along with 23 passing touchdowns and just three interceptions.

Also, leading the Chargers is a tremendous head coach, former NFL quarterback Jim Harbaugh. He got Los Angeles to the playoffs in his first campaign as the team's head coach and immediately prior to that, as the head coach of Big Ten Conference school Michigan, he guided the Wolverines to the College Football Playoff national championship.

In analyzing this pick for Los Angeles, ESPN's Kris Rhim wrote in part: "The Chargers lacked a vertical pass catching threat at tight end last season which significantly hampered their offense. Gadsen gives them a player who could potentially fill that void and the reason the Chargers traded two sixth round picks (No. 181 and No. 209) to take him."