ALLEN PARK -- The Detroit Lions built a hill on the north side of their practice field this offseason, and players have been dreading what exactly that would mean for them since reporting for camp last week. On Wednesday, they found out.

Coaches ended practice by sending them for six gassers up the hill

"Honestly, I don’t even want to look at that hill no more,” safety Tracy Walker said a few minutes later.

But Isaac Nauta didn’t just look at it.

When practice finally broke and players began heading for the locker room, he went back to the hill and ran up it some more.

“Got to, man,” the rookie tight end said. “Got to get a little extra work in. Man, it’s all about conditioning. Just trying to get some extra work in, and be in the best shape possible.”

Nauta is sort of the forgotten man in a tight end group that has been completely remodeled this offseason. Levine Toiolo, Luke Willson, Michael Roberts and Hakeem Valles -- all four tight ends who caught a pass in Detroit last season -- are out. T.J. Hockenson and Jesse James are in, which has a whole lot of people excited. And for good reason. Hockenson is the highest-drafted tight end since 2006, and has been tearing up camp, while James was a solid all-around tight end in Pittsburgh who got $22.6 million in free agency.

Throw in the signing of converted quarterback Logan Thomas at the lower levels of free agency, and the case can be made Detroit has invested more heavily in its tight ends than any other team in the league. But GM Bob Quinn still wasn’t done, using his final pick of the draft to add yet another tight end, Georgia’s Isaac Nauta, in the seventh round.

Using multiple picks on tight ends is kind of unusual -- Buffalo was the only other team to do it this year -- but it’s not like Quinn planned for it to happen either. He just believed the value was just too good to pass up.

“Just at the board at that time, he was sticking out like a sore thumb,” Quinn said. "So we just felt like just a really, really good value. And he’s got position flex, too."

One week into training camp, it’s easy to see what he means.

Nauta might not have the best foot speed, but he gets open because he runs great routes, especially for a rookie. And he has terrific hands. He’s caught several touchdown passes during red zone drills, and snagged a bomb over the weekend. But nothing was better than the deep route with which he beat safety Will Harris on Tuesday.

The coverage was actually pretty good, but Nauta was able to get behind Harris and spear the ball with his left hand while on a dead sprint down the left hash marks. It was one of the most impressive plays of the first week of camp.

“I had the other hand up, but kind of lost (the ball) in the sun,” Nauta said. “But yeah, I caught it with one hand and was able to reel it in. Just kind of threw my hand up, and the ball was there. Just happy that didn’t turn into a drop.”

Nauta isn’t just a pass-catcher either. He was known as a good blocker during his days at Georgia, and can line up both in line and in the backfield. He’s been the up-back in two-back sets several times throughout camp.

And this staff loves versatility in players at the end of their roster.

“He’s a guy that we can kind of move around a little bit,” Quinn said after making the pick in April. "Move him off the ball, move him in the backfield a little bit. He’s got that type of athleticism, that type of just movement skills that he’s not just an in-line guy, he’s not just a receiver guy, he can kind of be an H-type guy that moves.”

If Nauta can catch and block and line up all over the place, why was he still available for Detroit in the seventh round? A poor performance at the combine certainly played into that. He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.91 seconds. That was faster than just two of the other 27 tight ends who ran in Indianapolis, and sent him plummeting down draft boards across the league.

“He was a guy we really had good grades on (at Georgia),” Quinn said. “He didn’t test as well as we all thought. You watch this guy at Georgia, like, he gets open in the passing game when you watch Georgia film. He went to the combine, and I remember us all looking around, like, ‘Wow, he ran that? He’s not going to go as high as we thought.’ Did a good workout with him, had a good meeting with him, and just at the board at that time, he was sticking out like a sore thumb."

Hockenson and James are locked into the top two jobs, make no mistake about that, and Thomas, a rangier athlete, looks likes the odds-on favorite for the No. 3 job. With the Lions usually only keeping three tight ends, Nauta might have to be good enough to convince Detroit to carry an extra tight end to make this team.

Through one week of camp, though, he’s sure making a compelling case.