Why are Bears keeping such tight rein on tight end Cole Kmet?

It seems the Bears don't like tight ends. Not good ones, anyway.

They had Mike Ditka once upon a time, and maybe him being a tough, sure-handed All-Pro at that position overwhelmed their dainty offensive sensitivities. The Bears traded him to the Eagles in 1967 after a contract impasse, leading to Ditka's statement that Bears owner George Halas ''threw nickels around like manhole covers.''

The Bears got a taste of tight end Greg Olsen's excellence after his combined 101 receptions in 2009 and 2010. They obviously didn't care for that and traded him to the Panthers in 2011. Olsen played 10 more years in the NFL and had a stretch from 2014 to 2016 in which he caught 241 passes for 3,185 yards and 16 touchdowns, making the Pro Bowl each season.

Oh, well.

Which brings us to current tight end Cole Kmet.

Drafted in the second round out of Notre Dame in 2020, the 6-6, 262-pound Kmet seemingly was brought in to be an offensive hit. He eased in as a rookie and has started every game since. In 2022, he caught 50 passes for 544 yards and seven touchdowns. Last season, he was targeted 90 times and had 73 catches for 719 yards and six touchdowns.

Seemed as though Kmet was on the way up, right? In Week 3 this season against the Colts, he caught 10 passes for 97 yards and a touchdown. Nice numbers.

Then . . .

In the Bears' disastrous loss Sunday to the Cardinals, Kmet not only didn't catch a pass, but he wasn't even thrown one. Zero targets. Sixty-three snaps and nothing.

The game before — the embarrassing ''Hail Mary'' loss to the Commanders — he was targeted only once. At this rate, he soon will be in negative territory, owe the Bears passes and be forced to throw patterns to rookie quarterback Caleb Williams.

On one of his touchdown catches this season, he annihilated Jaguars safety Andre Cisco, running over him for an extra seven yards to cross the goal line. Muscle and finesse. On top of it all, Kmet was named special-teams player of the week after that game for his five extra-point snaps and one field-goal snap. Here was a versatile tight end, folks.

Now he has fallen off the face of the earth.

What is wrong with the Bears' offense that it can't try to use Kmet the way the Chiefs use Travis Kelce, the 49ers use George Kittle, the Cardinals use Trey McBride?

There was a third-down play in the fourth quarter Sunday on which Kmet lined up in the backfield, made a quick block, then released into the flat, where he was wide-open. Williams scrambled, seemed to look at Kmet, then threw a pass to running back Roschon Johnson that was far short of the first down.

You had to wonder what was going on. Of course, with a porous offensive line and no time to set up, Williams is thinking about survival as much as he is about completing passes. But a good tight end can be a savior, a quick dart, a near target that's a lifeline for a sinking quarterback. On 41 passes in a messed-up offense, you'd think at last one of them might have gone Kmet's way.

Kelce has a special relationship with Chiefs superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Most of what he has done Kmet can do. That is, sprint down and feel your way into spaces against zones or, if it's man coverage, smash into a linebacker and get that small separation that gets you momentarily open.

Maybe this is all part of Williams' learning curve. The tight end is there as a hybrid blocker and receiver. He's there for you, Caleb.

Or is it the play-calling from Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron that's the problem? Or just the ingrained Bears culture that has given us only two tight ends — Ditka and Martellus Bennett — who have played in Pro Bowls?

The great tight end Antonio Gates was a college basketball player. So was the terrific Jimmy Graham. The best tight ends have extraordinary skills. Kmet has the good hands of a former college baseball player. At the NFL Scouting Combine, he had a vertical leap of 37 inches and a long jump of more than 10 feet. He's uninjured. He's in his fifth season.