Elijah Higgins

Drafted as a WR by Miami, converted to TE by Arizona — Higgins never wore a Dolphins jersey.

The Dolphins used the 197th pick on a Stanford wide receiver — and then he was gone before a single snap. Arizona claimed Higgins and immediately converted him to tight end, assigning him jersey #84 from day one.

Three years later, he's ARI's #2 TE by targets (37 in 2025, dwarfing the 42 split across all other Cardinals TEs not named McBride). The Stanford WR who Miami drafted has caught 64 of 80 career targets as a tight end — an 80.0% career catch rate.

One of just 5 TEs to catch 80%+ of career targets since 2023 — among 69 who qualified.

Of 69 tight ends with 50 or more career targets from 2023-2025, only 5 cleared 80% catch rate — and Higgins is one of them. His career line: 64 receptions on 80 targets = 80.0%.

The catch rate holds across all three seasons: 73.7% in 2023, 83.3% in 2024, 81.1% in 2025. Short, schemed routes near the line of scrimmage — 7.0 yards-after-catch per reception in 2025, top-5 among qualifying TEs.

Career-best game Week 16 vs Atlanta: 7 catches, 91 yards on 8 targets.

Higgins's Week 16 vs Atlanta was a career-defining afternoon: 7 catches, 91 yards, 8 targets — all career highs in a single game. Before that week, in 42 career appearances, he had never topped 45 yards in a game.

He entered Week 16 with 182 receiving yards on the 2025 season. The Atlanta game added 91, pushing him to 273 in one afternoon — meaning 30% of his full-season total (301 yards) arrived in a single game.

3 career TDs in 43 games — but 0 in 2025 despite his highest target volume.

Higgins caught 30 passes in 2025 — and zero touched the end zone. In the same season, Trey McBride received 34 red-zone targets (inside the opponent's 20-yard line) and scored 11 TDs from that group.

Higgins received just 5 red-zone targets all season, converting 2 into catches and 0 into touchdowns. The Cardinals route red-zone sets overwhelmingly through McBride — Higgins is a third-down chain-mover deployed in space, averaging just 3.1 air yards per target in 2025. His role is efficient but positioned far from the goal line.

Routes getting shorter, YAC getting longer: Higgins averaged 7.0 yards after catch in 2025 — up from 4.5 in 2024.

Each year, Higgins's routes have moved closer to the line of scrimmage: average air yards fell from 6.7 to 4.5 to 3.1. But his yards after catch has surged in the opposite direction: 4.8 to 4.5 to 7.0.

His 7.0 avg YAC in 2025 ranked 4th among TEs with 20+ catches — behind Tucker Kraft (10.8), Greg Dulcich (7.7), and Darnell Washington (7.4). Three seasons of TE reps have turned a former Stanford WR into one of the most explosive after-catch options at the position.

The ARI scheme lines him up within five yards of the line of scrimmage and lets him work in space — the result is a TE who creates more than twice the yards his routes earn on their own.