Our read
The usage never left. He ran routes on 94% of the snaps and pulled in a 30% target share last season, both top-7 among all qualifying receivers, on a team O'Connell still calls plays for. That's the whole argument for drafting a guy coming off the strangest season of his career: the role that produced WR2 in 2024 didn't shrink, the points just stopped landing.
And that's the real downside you have to weigh. He went from 18.68 points a game in 2024 to 11.85 in 2025, finished WR19, and cleared 15 points only four times in 17 weeks. His best week was 22.6. Part of the missing production was the red zone: just 12.6% of his touches came there, WR95 among receivers, even though he was WR9 in red-zone touches and WR5 inside the ten. The chances were there. The efficiency cratered.
Our number has him at 271 points, WR7 overall, which is about 29 points better than the historical outcome for receivers taken around pick 9. He sits inside a tier of 8 players before a 16.8-point drop, so the gap behind him is real. There's a Q tag as of October 11 and nothing on file beyond that, and remember 2023 is the season where he missed seven weeks. The books posted nothing on him individually. I'd take him at pick 9. A year of WR19 production on that target share just means you get a shot at the old version one round later than you should, and pick 9 is exactly where I'm drafting him.