Big Names To Buy Back In On: Brian Thomas Jr.

One of the best ways to land major value impacts on Draft Day is to target huge names from the previous season who let their managers down. The sting of a high-cost bust lingers, and if enough people got burned, those players see their stock drop big time. Sometimes, the drop is a true decline in status and those players just aren’t what they used to be. Other times, it was a perfect storm that led to a bad season, but these players should still be treated like stars. I have identified several such players, and the first one I’ll talk about is Jaguars WR Brian Thomas Jr..

Thomas was a revelation as a rookie, catching 87 passes for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns with a large chunk of that production coming without star QB Trevor Lawrence. Entering 2025, Thomas had a healthy Lawrence under center and the world ready to welcome him into the superstar WR1 realm…and he delivered 48 catches, 707 yards and two touchdowns in 14 games. His yards per reception were exactly the same (14.7), but his reception total was halved, he scored eight fewer touchdowns, and he compiled nearly 600 fewer yards. It was an unmitigated disaster of a campaign that was marred not only by injury, but a decline in his on-field play. That kind of drop off is bananas. For context, this is the complete list of WRs who put up 1,200+ yards as rookies: Randy Moss, Ja’Marr Chase, Bill Groman, Odell Beckham Jr., Billy Howton, Thomas, Puka Nacua, Justin Jefferson, Anquan Boldin and Malik Nabers. Howton and Groman’s seasons happened in 1952 and 1960, respectively, so I cant give you much on them. The rest of this list has some incredible fantasy stalwarts on it, and Nabers who looked every bit like a stud before his sophomore season was ruined by a knee injury. So pardon me if I’m not just throwing Brian Thomas Jr. in the trash following a first year like his.

So now we have to ask, what happened? For starters, he moved around the formation more as a rookie, and in 2025 he was treated as a near-exclusive X receiver. As a pure outside guy, his nine route rate shot up to 21.7%, and while he was a plus on those routes (61.1% success rate) they are still low-percentage routes. If you had Thomas on your teams – guilty! – you felt this. Analytics back up what you felt, as his average depth of target (ADOT) rose by three full yards. He would often have next to no production for long stretches before salvaging an effort with one or two long grabs. Another issue is that 28.2% of his routes were digs and slants, and he was in the red on those in terms of success rate. The move outside also caused a lot of his layup touches on flats and screens to basically disappear, robbing him of the opportunity to get the ball in space with blockers and make defenses feel pain. Lastly, in-breaking routes were always weaker than other parts of his game, as was his performance against zone, but those parts of him cratered in 2025. It’s normal for full-time X receivers to be below the ideal marks vs. zone, but Thomas fell from a 38th percentile mark (77.3%) vs. zone as a rookie to a 7th percentile mark (69.8%) last season. If he is going to be a zero vs. zone, then that means it’s harder to justify moving him around, especially when this team has a deep WR corps with Jakobi Meyers, Travis Hunter and Parker Washington in the mix. If he’s healthier in 2026 though, and the zone rates resemble more of his rookie and college performances, we’re cooking with gas.

And let’s be clear about this, while we’ve focused on what went wrong for Thomas in 2025 he was still a demon on deep routes. We mentioned his 61.1% success rate on nines, but he also was at 72.2% on posts and 71.4% on corners. He ran a healthy amount of outs as well, to a 71.9% success rate. Lastly, Thomas posted an 11% drop rate which is horrendous, but way out of step with his 5.3% mark as a rookie. This hasn’t ever been a notable issue for him, and drops aren’t a sticky number.

Early ADP shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but Thomas at the time of this writing is at No. 67 overall (WR30) in half-PPR formats per FantasyPros. That’s a hell of a drop from when I wrote the Jaguars team preview last year on July 18, when he was at No. 14 overall and the WR8. Last season was bad enough that a dip needed to happen, but re-read that list of rookie WRs who put up 1,200 yards. They are special, special players and Thomas Jr. was on that list. He’s in an offense with a strong offensive mind designing it (Liam Coen), a QB who broke out last season in Lawrence, and with talented skill players all over the place preventing defenses from loading everything up to stop him. If Thomas’ ADP is around this area on Draft Day, I’d be happy to take him with the knowledge that he absolutely has proven WR1 ability.