Hayden Large

This is a stashed-name situation, not a player. He has carried the IR tag since before week 3 of 2026, missed all five weeks so far, and there are no headlines suggesting a return is near. While he sits on that list, the board ranks him below every available tight end and he cannot score a point for anyone.

The preseason view never held much either. Our number gave him 1 point for 2026, with the middle range running -1 to 3, and we expected about 1 game out of him after injury risk. Our preseason pace came to 1.0 points a game. He is a 24.5-year-old rookie on opening day who went undrafted out of the 2026 class. The depth chart tells you why: fifth among CHI tight ends, behind Colston Loveland, Cole Kmet, Sam Roush and Nikola Kalinic, on a team where Loveland took 17% of the 2025 targets and Rome Odunze took 24%. Even the healthy path to touches runs through four names first, and Ben Johnson calls the plays himself for a team that threw on 53% of situation-neutral snaps and won 11 games last year while playing at 32.4 seconds a play. There is no urgency to find him a landing spot either, because his bye does not arrive until week 10 of 2026 and the schedule still has 9 home games left on it, 2 of them indoors.

If he somehow surfaces from IR, watch whether he is even active on game days before anything else. For a manager carrying him now, the roster spot is worth more than the player. Let him go.