Player
Garrett Wilson
WR · NYJ Jets
Receiver production is supposed to require quarterback continuity: timing, trust, and target habits build over years. Wilson has produced at a WR1 volume level with none of that, which makes his floor unusually credible and his ceiling genuinely untested. He is the rare receiver whose four-year sample tells you almost nothing about what he looks like with stable quarterback play.
Quarterback roulette
Nine different quarterbacks have thrown him passes in four seasons. Geno Smith will be number ten.
RareEvery passer who has targeted Garrett Wilson (career, regular season)
| QB | Targets | Span |
|---|---|---|
| Zach Wilson | 164 | 2022-2023 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 150 | 2024 |
| Joe Flacco | 50 | 2022 |
| Justin Fields | 43 | 2025 |
| Mike White | 41 | 2022 |
| Trevor Siemian | 35 | 2023 |
| Tyrod Taylor | 22 | 2024-2025 |
| Tim Boyle | 20 | 2023 |
| Chris Streveler | 5 | 2022 |
Four seasons in the NFL, nine different men throwing him the ball, from a late-career Flacco to a practice-squad Streveler. No passer has fed him for even two full seasons. Through all of it he has never posted a losing stat line: three 1,000-yard years and a 14-points-per-game 2025 before injury. In 2026 the roulette wheel finally stops on a proven veteran.
Why it matters. Receiver production is supposed to require quarterback continuity: timing, trust, and target habits build over years. Wilson has produced at a WR1 volume level with none of that, which makes his floor unusually credible and his ceiling genuinely untested. He is the rare receiver whose four-year sample tells you almost nothing about what he looks like with stable quarterback play.
Eight receivers this century have opened their career with three straight 1,000-yard seasons. Only one did it catching passes from eight different QBs.
MilestoneWRs with 1,000+ receiving yards in each of their first three seasons (debuts since 2000)
| WR | Debut |
|---|---|
| A.J. Green | 2011 |
| Odell Beckham Jr. | 2014 |
| Mike Evans | 2014 |
| Michael Thomas | 2016 |
| Justin Jefferson | 2020 |
| Jaylen Waddle | 2021 |
| Ja'Marr Chase | 2021 |
| Garrett Wilson | 2022 |
The list is eight names long across 26 draft classes: Green, Beckham, Evans, Thomas, Jefferson, Waddle, Chase, Wilson. His three qualifying seasons (1,103, 1,042 and 1,104 yards) were assembled from the arms of eight different quarterbacks, from Zach Wilson to Tim Boyle to a 40-year-old Rodgers. Nobody else on the list built their membership out of pieces like that.
Why it matters. Opening a career with three straight 1,000-yard seasons selects for a specific profile: high-end talent plus immediate, durable target dominance. Every prior member of this club went on to multiple elite seasons. Wilson matching them under materially worse conditions is the core of the argument that his best statistical seasons have not happened yet.
From 2022 to 2024 he was third in the NFL in targets. Among the ten most-targeted receivers, only one scored less often.
ComparisonMost-targeted WRs 2022-2024 (regular season)
| WR | Targets | TDs per 100 targets | Yards per catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Davante Adams | 496 | 6.0 | 12.9 |
| CeeDee Lamb | 489 | 5.5 | 12.5 |
| Garrett Wilson | 469 | 3.0 | 11.7 |
| Tyreek Hill | 464 | 5.6 | 14.0 |
| Ja'Marr Chase | 454 | 7.3 | 12.6 |
| Amon-Ra St. Brown | 451 | 6.2 | 11.6 |
Only Adams and Lamb saw more passes from 2022 through 2024 than Wilson's 469 targets. But he converted them to touchdowns at 3.0 per 100 targets, less than half of Chase's rate, with only Michael Pittman lower among the top ten. The volume said franchise receiver; the scoring said possession guy. Which one was the real signal is the question 2025 started to answer.
Why it matters. In PPR scoring, target volume is the most stable and valuable input, so Wilson's floor was never in doubt. The touchdown rate is what separated him from the elite fantasy class of receivers at the same volume: roughly 15 touchdowns of production over three years went missing versus a Chase-like rate. Whether that rate was his trait or his environment is worth several draft rounds of value.
The seven-game tease
In his seven 2025 games, nearly half the Jets' air yards went to one man.
Split2025 target and air-yards share, computed within each WR's own games (min 5 games)
| WR | Games | Target share | Air-yards share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jaxon Smith-Njigba | 17 | 35.8% | 50.0% |
| Garrett Wilson | 7 | 33.7% | 48.5% |
| Ja'Marr Chase | 16 | 32.2% | 37.1% |
| Tetairoa McMillan | 17 | 25.4% | 43.3% |
While he was on the field in 2025, Wilson absorbed 33.7 percent of the Jets' targets and 48.5 percent of their air yards, both second in the NFL behind only Jaxon Smith-Njigba's historic season. Half of everything the Jets threw downfield was thrown at him. There is target-hog usage, and then there is being the entire passing identity of a franchise.
Why it matters. Air-yards share measures intent: it counts every yard the offense tried to send a player's way, catchable or not. A near-50 percent share means the offense has no second idea, which caps efficiency (defenses bracket him) but guarantees volume, the currency that pays in PPR. If a competent quarterback converts even an average portion of that intent, the production jumps without his role changing at all.
Myth test: Garrett Wilson cannot find the end zone. For three years it was true. Then 2025 happened.
Wilson touchdown production by season (regular season)
| Season | Games | TDs | TDs per 100 targets |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 17 | 4 | 2.7 |
| 2023 | 17 | 3 | 1.8 |
| 2024 | 17 | 7 | 4.5 |
| 2025 | 7 | 4 | 6.8 |
The drought was real: 7 touchdowns across his first two seasons combined, a scoring rate near the bottom of every high-volume receiver in football. But the trend line has pointed one direction ever since: 4.5 touchdowns per 100 targets in 2024, then 4 scores in just 7 games in 2025 (a knee injury ended the season) at the highest per-target rate of his career. The perception was earned in 2022 and 2023 and has been out of date since.
Why it matters. Touchdown rate is the noisiest major stat a receiver has, driven by red-zone scheme and quarterback trust more than by the receiver's own skill. That means neither the two-year drought nor the seven-game surge should be extrapolated naively, but the drought is the older and staler of the two samples, and the market still prices him off it. When perception lags a noisy stat, the lag is the opportunity.
Every year the Jets got weirder at quarterback, and every year his per-game production climbed anyway.
TrendWilson by season (regular season)
| Season | PPR pts/game | Targets/game | Catches |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 12.7 | 8.6 | 83 |
| 2023 | 12.5 | 9.9 | 95 |
| 2024 | 14.8 | 9.1 | 101 |
| 2025 | 14.2 | 8.4 | 36 (7 games) |
The four-year trajectory: 12.7, 12.5, 14.8, 14.2 PPR points per game, with 101 catches in 2024 (fifth among all receivers) and a target diet that has never dipped below 8 a game. The 2025 number came with a backup quarterback room and ended early with a knee injury, and it was still the second-best rate of his career. The production has climbed a staircase while the situation fell down one.
Why it matters. A rising per-game trend against a deteriorating environment is the pattern that most reliably precedes a breakout, because it means the player's own inputs (targets, catches, usage) are improving while the noise around him subtracts. The inverse pattern, stats propped up by a great situation, is the one that collapses on a team change. Wilson's arrow has been up under the worst conditions in the league.
The round-3 call
The market lets him fall to the back of round 3. His volume resume reads like a first-rounder's.
ComparisonThe price vs the resume
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| 2026 PPR draft position | 26.6 overall (round 3) |
| Targets, 2022-2024 | 3rd among all WRs |
| Catches, 2024 | 5th among all WRs (101) |
| Target share while playing, 2025 | 2nd among all WRs (33.7%) |
| Air-yards share while playing, 2025 | 2nd among all WRs (48.5%) |
Drafters pay first-round prices for exactly two things: proven target dominance and youth. Wilson has both, third in the NFL in targets over three years, second in target share when healthy in 2025, still just 26, and yet his average draft position sits at 26.6, the back half of round 3. The discount is the touchdown history and the quarterback trauma. The volume, the thing that actually predicts, was never the problem.
Why it matters. Within rounds 3 through 8, draft order barely predicts finish order, so the goal in that band is to find the player whose underlying volume belongs to an earlier round. Wilson is the cleanest version of that mismatch in 2026: the market is pricing his efficiency history, which is noisy and situation-driven, rather than his target dominance, which is stable and elite. Receivers with his usage profile at this price are how round-3 picks return round-1 seasons.
What happens next: Wilson returns from the knee and posts his fourth 1,000-yard season in 2026.
WRs 27 or younger, 3+ prior 1,000-yard seasons, then a season cut to 10 games or fewer (2000-2024)
| WR | Short season | Next season yards |
|---|---|---|
| Darrell Jackson | 2005 (6 gm) | 956 |
| Dez Bryant | 2015 (9 gm) | 796 |
| Odell Beckham Jr. | 2017 (4 gm) | 1,052 |
| Justin Jefferson | 2023 (10 gm) | 1,533 |
Young receivers with an established 1,000-yard pedigree have historically shrugged off a lost season: the four prior cases this century averaged 1,084 yards the following year, and none fell below 796. Wilson brings the same pedigree (three 1,000-yard seasons), the league's second-highest target share when active, and, for the first time, a proven quarterback. The gradeable call: 1,000 or more receiving yards in 2026.
Why it matters. Injury-discounted receivers are where drafts are won, but only when the discount is for the injury rather than the talent. The cohort splits exactly on age and pedigree: older receivers coming off lost seasons often never return to form, while established young ones almost always do. Wilson sits on the right side of both filters, and his 2026 price already contains the injury fear.
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