Personally, I think a lot of our TE woes have been less personnel issues and more due to:
1. The protection schemes we have been running on offense.
2. The desire to get the ball to AJ/DD. If DD is used a lot as your safety valve, and AJ is getting a lot of the dink passes attempting to get YAC, you are not going to have fat TE stats, no matter who you have playing at TE.
Rivers showed some promise near the end of the season, I thought.
Under the new system and with Brian Pariani as coach, the TE position will have a greater priority, it won't be so much of an afterthought position. If they think that the current TEs can't work out, they will get somebody new to fill the spot. I do think just the change of scheme will make the TE position look better.
So much of last year was focused on trying to get AJ the ball more (oops-dint help when he got hurt) and protecting David Carr that they whiffed on the overall offense working together--getting a non-predictable offense that can get the ball down the field and makes sense.