Rise of New Breed of Tight End Goes Unchecked So Far San Francisco tight end Vernon Davis danced into the end zone after a 49-yard touchdown against the Saints on Saturday. John Lynch spent 15 years as one of the N.F.L."s hardest-hitting safeties, so when he watches the hulking and high-speed tight ends barreling into this weekend's conference championship games, it is with the particular bloodlust of a defensive player with a lingering distaste for offense. "It still bothers me," Lynch said in a telephone interview. You get them earlier, or they'll get you later. Nobody seems to be taking care of them at the line of scrimmage. That body type - typically where a guy like that would struggle is with starting and stopping. If you break their momentum you have a chance. That is Lynch's suggestion - essentially, he is telling defenses, "Do something!" - for a matchup that teams have struggled to solve all season. It's worth a try. When the Giants play the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens face the New England Patriots on Sunday with Super Bowl berths on the line, they will encounter the new breed of tight end - direct descendants of Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates - who terrorized defenses all season, but especially in the divisional round, with their absurd mix of wide receiver speed and power forward girth. When Vernon Davis caught the 49ers" winning touchdown pass at the goal line Saturday, he looked like nothing so much as Charles Oakley boxing out an entire secondary. And Davis, who finished with seven catches for 180 yards, might be the easier tight end matchup this weekend. For the ones that will keep Ravens defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano awake at night turn on the video from the Patriots" annihilation of the Denver Broncos last Saturday night. The game will be remembered for Tom Brady's six touchdown passes, including one in which tight end Rob Gronkowski laid out and tipped a pass to himself in the corner of the end zone. It was a pass that Lynch initially thought was a throwaway, until he saw how quickly Gronkowski caught up to it. Gronkowski just finished one of the best seasons by an N.F.L. tight end, with 90 receptions (fifth among all receivers) for 1,327 yards (sixth) and 17 touchdowns (first). But it was a 43-yard run on the Patriots" fourth play from scrimmage - by Aaron Hernandez, a 6-foot-1, 245-pound tight end who lined up in the backfield - that stands as the most eye-opening play of the night. "We didn't have any backs in the game in that personnel grouping, we just had the three receivers and the two tight ends," Patriots Coach Bill Belichick explained late Saturday night of the Hernandez play. You see all those receivers on the field and you're not really thinking too much about the running game defensively, so we tried to pop a couple runs in there just to keep them honest. When Belichick chose Gronkowski in the second round of the 2010 draft, and followed that two rounds later by taking Hernandez, it stumped plenty of people around the league. What was Belichick going to do with two tight ends when his offense at the time placed little emphasis on them? The answer, now, is clear: anything he wants. Now the Giants and the Ravens need to stop this new breed of tight end. Davis presents a mostly straightforward challenge because he and receiver Michael Crabtree are the 49ers" most potent threats. San Francisco will try to create favorable matchups by having Davis split out like a receiver, but Charley Casserly, the former general manager of the Redskins and the Texans, recommends essentially what Lynch does: double-team Davis or press him at the line of scrimmage with a safety that has some speed, a cover safety. There aren't many of those available because the fastest athletes are usually switched to cornerback. "It's the hardest thing to find," said Michael Lombardi, an analyst for the NFL Network and a former personnel executive in Cleveland and Oakland. You might have to play four corners. Some teams might choose to use a third cornerback on the tight end because even though the smaller cornerbacks can be outmuscled, they can at least keep up. But no matter who is lined up against the tight end, there is one edict that cannot be ignored. "You can't give up a free release," Casserly said.