finished WR22 per game on sticky alpha volume in year one with Pittsburgh, priced WR35. The market is over-charging for the Aaron Rodgers chemistry risk.
DK Metcalf 2026 Season Preview — a WR22 rate at a WR35 price
Show notes & transcript▾
DK Metcalf finished as a top-twenty-two receiver per game last season in his first year with a new quarterback who admitted they weren't always on the same page. He's the thirty-fifth receiver off the board. Fix the chemistry and the price looks low. The Muffed 2026 preview.
The 2025 season was quietly fine, not the disaster the price implies: fifty-nine catches on ninety-nine targets for eight hundred fifty yards and six touchdowns, twelve-five a game, WR22 per game and WR26 in total, in his first season in Pittsburgh. The signature was a five-catch, a hundred twenty-six-yard, one-score day against Minnesota in Week 4. A productive number-one receiver's line, finished a tier-plus above where he's now being drafted.
The arc is a model of consistency: a seventeen-a-game peak in 2020, then a half-decade in the eleven-to-fourteen range. He doesn't have boom years or bust years; he gives you a steady WR2-with-upside floor, and 2025 was right in that band.
What the data says: his target volume, just under a hundred, is the sticky alpha-adjacent kind, which is the foundation of the value. The one flag is his touchdown share, twenty-two percent — into the top quartile, so the six scores carry a little give-back. But that's a small drag on a player priced this far below his finish.
The situation, per the reports, is the swing and the caveat: Pittsburgh re-signed forty-two-year-old Aaron Rodgers, whose chemistry with Metcalf was hit-and-miss in 2025 — and improving it is openly the offseason project, with added weapons in Pittman and a rookie. A better-connected Rodgers means more of the hundred-yard games; an aging quarterback who can't carries real risk.
The price: pick seventy-two and a half, the thirty-fifth receiver. Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. He finished WR22-to-26 on sticky alpha volume, and he's priced WR35; the market is charging full freight for the Rodgers risk and the touchdown give-back. Both are fair charges, but they over-discount a proven number one. The counter: a forty-two-year-old quarterback is a genuine wild card, and if the chemistry never clicks, WR35 is merely fair. But the volume and the finish say the floor is higher than the price.
September watch: the Rodgers connection — the deep-ball chemistry is the whole ceiling; and the touchdown rate, where twenty-two percent has a little give. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.
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2025: 59 catches for 850 yards, 6 TDs on 99 targets; 12 rushing yards, 1 rushing TDs (15 games)
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2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026DK Metcalf 2025 Season in Review
WR26 on the season — 15 games, 12.5 PPR/game
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DK Metcalf 2025 Season in Review
WR26 on the season — 15 games, 12.5 PPR/game
Show notes & transcript
DK Metcalf finished 2025 as the number 26 wide receiver in total PPR scoring and the number 23 in PPR points per game. That's the headline, and it's a quietly disappointing one for a player who arrived in Pittsburgh as the clear alpha and finished the year exactly that — the verified number one receiver on the team, with no real challenger to his target throne. The Steelers won the AFC North as the four seed at ten and seven, so this wasn't a lost season around him. Being the unquestioned top option in this passing game just came with a lower ceiling than managers banked on in August. Fifteen games, fifty-nine catches, eight hundred and fifty yards, six touchdowns — the per-game math tells you why he landed where he did.
Now let's dig into the numbers. Metcalf averaged twelve and a half PPR points per game on ninety-nine targets across fifteen appearances — roughly six and a half targets a game from Aaron Rodgers. That's volume, but not elite-tier volume for a clear number one. The bigger drag was the passing offense around him: Rodgers finished with a completion percentage one and a half points below expected and ranked eighteenth among qualified starters in adjusted net yards per attempt, and the team's passing expected points added landed right at league average, sixteenth of thirty-two. And this was a boom-or-bust profile dressed up as a steady one. Metcalf cracked twenty PPR points exactly three times — one-twenty-six and a score against the Vikings, ninety-five and a score against the Browns, and a seven-catch, one-forty-eight line at Baltimore. He also posted single-digit PPR in six of his fifteen games, bottoming out at two-point-six against the Colts and six-point-two against the Bills. Six touchdowns is a respectable scoring floor, but when the non-touchdown weeks crater that hard, the weekly outcome swings violently.
The play that captures the season best came in Week Four against Minnesota. Second quarter, first and ten from the Pittsburgh twenty, Rodgers in shotgun, short pass over the middle — and Metcalf took it eighty yards to the house. Fourteen air yards, sixty-six after the catch, on a routine middle-of-the-field throw. That's the Metcalf bet in one snap: when the volume and the matchup line up, he can drop twenty-plus on the board by himself on a single play. The problem in 2025? The bet only cashed three times in fifteen games.
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