ESPN published its annual wide receiver rankings Wednesday, compiled by Jeremy Fowler from ballots submitted by league executives, coaches and scouts, and Brian Thomas Jr.‘s name sits in the last place Jacksonville Jaguars fans want to find it: the “also receiving votes” line, below the top 10 and below six honorable mentions.
Twenty-four receivers earned at least one vote in the survey. Thomas made that cut and nothing more, grouped with names like Tee Higgins, DK Metcalf and Alec Pierce rather than the elite tier he seemed headed for after catching 87 passes for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns as a rookie.
The slide traces directly to 2025, and the numbers deserve an honest reading. Thomas caught 48 of 88 targets for 707 yards and two touchdowns, roughly half his rookie production. The efficiency behind the counting stats was worse: among receivers with at least 75 targets, only five posted a lower catch rate, and only Jerry Jeudy recorded more drops, as Heavy Sports detailed in its writeup of the omission. Injuries interrupted his season repeatedly, and Jacksonville’s offense spread targets to Jakobi Meyers, Parker Washington and Brenton Strange as the year wore on, as NBC Sports noted in its offseason review.
Now the rebound case, which is also real. Thomas enters his third season at 23 years old, younger than every player in ESPN’s top 10. His size and deep speed have not gone anywhere, and the ESPN writeup itself acknowledged that profile remains difficult to replace. Jacksonville’s plan to use Travis Hunter primarily at cornerback leaves the clear No. 1 receiver role for Thomas to reclaim, and training camp opens this month with that job his to lose.
A voter shutout in July decides nothing about December. But the honest measurement is that the league’s evaluators currently see a talented receiver coming off a bad year, not a star — and the burden of proof has shifted to Thomas.
For fantasy purposes, the market has corrected hard: Thomas has slid from a top-15 pick in receiver-first drafts to a mid-round flier, which is exactly where bounce-back value lives. The target competition from Meyers and Washington is real, so temper weekly expectations early, but a 23-year-old with a 1,282-yard season on his resume is one of the cleaner dynasty buy-low windows on the board.
