11 TDs on 59 catches as the #2 next to Chase; the most TD-dependent priced WR in the range.
Tee Higgins 2026 Season Preview — strip the touchdowns and what's left
Show notes & transcript▾
Tee Higgins scored eleven touchdowns on fifty-nine catches last year — a touchdown on nearly every fifth reception. That rate is why he finished WR15, and it's exactly why we'd let someone else draft him at WR18. Strip the touchdowns and he was a fifty-six-yard-a-game receiver. The Muffed 2026 preview.
The season: fourteen-one a game, WR14 per game, fifteen games — but the shape is everything. Eleven touchdowns on fifty-nine catches, a roughly nineteen percent receiving-touchdown rate, much of it on deep balls in a season where Cincinnati cycled from Joe Burrow to Joe Flacco. His big plays were forty-four-yard and forty-two-yard scores — boom-or-bust touchdown variance, not steady volume. Three games over twenty points, five under ten.
The arc is a touchdown roller coaster: eleven-five, then eighteen-five in a twelve-game 2024, then fourteen-one. The common thread in his good years is an elevated touchdown rate, and touchdown rate is the least repeatable stat we track.
Here's the core of the call. His touchdown share is thirty-one-point-two percent — deep into the quartile where our WR fade rule fires, the most touchdown-dependent priced receiver in this range. He's the number two option next to Ja'Marr Chase, on an eighteen percent target share — solid, but not the volume that sustains a high finish without the scores. And he's a career-year-six receiver. The receiving line underneath the touchdowns is a complementary one.
The situation cuts both ways, per the reports: Burrow is healthy in OTAs after his injury-marred 2025, which is genuinely good for Higgins — a full season of Burrow raises the floor. But it also means Higgins competes with a healthy Chase for the same targets, and his own recurring obstacle is injury; he's missed games in back-to-back years. A healthy Burrow doesn't fix a touchdown rate that has to come back to earth.
The price: pick thirty-seven, the eighteenth receiver. Verdict: CALL — overpriced. You're paying for eleven touchdowns from the second option on his own team, and that's the stat that regresses hardest. The counter, fairly: a full Burrow season is a real tailwind, and elite quarterback play can sustain a higher touchdown rate than average. But the base rate is brutal for this profile, and the volume underneath doesn't catch him if the scores dip.
September watch: the touchdown rate, the whole call; and his target share next to a healthy Chase, plus his own availability. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.
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2025: 59 catches for 846 yards, 11 TDs on 98 targets (15 games)
More episodes
2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026Tee Higgins 2025 Season in Review
WR16 on the season — 15 games, 14.1 PPR/game
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Tee Higgins 2025 Season in Review
WR16 on the season — 15 games, 14.1 PPR/game
Show notes & transcript
Tee Higgins finished 2025 as the number 16 wide receiver in total PPR scoring and the number 15 wide receiver in PPR per game. That line tells the whole story: starter-caliber per-game production riding on a wild volume profile underneath. He played 15 games on a 6 and 11 Bengals team that cycled through Joe Burrow and Joe Flacco, and he turned 98 targets into 11 touchdowns — a touchdown rate that did the heavy lifting. With Ja'Marr Chase soaking up the alpha target share next door, Higgins's path to fantasy points ran through the end zone and the explosive play, not chain-moving volume.
Now let's dig into the numbers, because they explain everything. Higgins averaged 14.1 PPR points per game on just 59 catches for 846 yards — efficiency over usage, and a boom-or-bust ride week to week. His average target share sat at 18 percent while his air yards share hit 33 percent — when the Bengals threw to him, they threw it deep and into scoring territory. That's a downfield finisher, not a possession piece, and 166 total yards after the catch on the season confirms it. Almost everything came in the air. He cleared 20 PPR points three times, including a 33.1 monster against the Bears and a 27.2 against the Bills — but he also turned in five games under 10, including a 2.5-point dud at Minnesota and a 6.3 in Week 1 at Cleveland. Eleven touchdowns on 59 catches is nearly a 19 percent touchdown rate on receptions — the kind of number that props up a fantasy season but is hard to count on repeating. Strip the touchdowns and you've got a 56-yards-per-game receiver. Keep them and you've got a top-16 finisher.
The defining moment of Higgins's year wasn't a single play — it was the pattern of how he scored. Look at the touchdown chart and you see deep ball after deep ball: a 44-yard score from Flacco against the Bears, a 44-yarder against the Jets, a 42-yard third-and-five conversion against the Jaguars, a 25-yard third-and-six touchdown from Burrow against the Bills. Higgins lived on shot plays and red-zone targets, and with the Bengals' offense ranking 1st in red-zone touchdown rate at 75.8 percent, he was the primary beneficiary. That's the season in one sentence: low-volume, high-leverage, touchdown-dependent — exactly the profile that finished as the number 15 wide receiver per game.
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