Carolina PanthersOur read
Written Oct 17, from his facts through last season
Jimmy Horn Jr. has played one game this season and scored nothing in it, then sat for weeks 2, 3 and 4 of 2026 with his bye following in week 5 of 2026. No injury designation has appeared since before week 1 of 2026, so those absences look like a healthy scratch situation, which for a fifth receiver is worse news than a strain. One catch on one target is his entire season total.
The case for him never really existed on our board. We put 35 points on him for 2026, 2.9 a game across the 12 games we expected, and he graded WR148 for us before the season. Last year delivered 29 points over 10 games, and he beat the position's weekly median in just 2 of those 10 weeks. He never once cleared 15 points, and 6.7 in week 6 of 2025 was the high-water mark. The role is the problem: 18.9% of snaps and a 4.5% target share in 2025, an average depth of target of just 6.0 yards, and zero touches inside the ten.
And the room only got fuller before it got better. Tetairoa McMillan and Xavier Legette took 41% of Carolina's targets between them in 2025, and the staff behind that split, Dave Canales and Brad Idzik, both stayed on. Among receivers in his spot, points a game fell 0.9 on average from one season to the next. Same coaching staff, same pecking order, no headline suggesting a change. This was also a coach's decision before, seven healthy weeks in 2025 he did not play. Hold him nowhere near a starting lineup and spend the roster spot on a weekly dart with actual usage.