Green Bay PackersOur read
Written Oct 17, from his facts through last season
The touchdowns are the reason he is sitting at 9.5 a game instead of 12. Twenty catches, 212 yards, one score through five weeks of 2026. He is not disappearing. He cleared 11.6 points in two of the last three weeks, and the underlying signs are fine: he averages 3.3 yards of separation when targeted, top ten among tight ends with enough tracked targets, and he is gaining about a yard more after the catch than expected, fourth among his group. That is a tight end winning his routes while the box score waits on the scores.
What we want to see is the red-zone work return. In 2025 he turned 26.7% of his own touches into work near the goal line, TE19, and this season it is 12% of the team's red-zone carries and targets in his games, 6 of 52. The air yards tell the same shape story, 10% of Green Bay's air yards in his games, so his role runs short and shallow and it needs the scores to carry him. He still sits first among the GB tight ends, ahead of Jonnu Smith, so the path is there.
The other thing we cannot shake is that his 2025 ended after week 9 of 2025, and he missed the rest on a reserve list. He has played every week this season with no injury designation, which is good, but our preseason expectation was 14 games and any missed stretch pushes him toward the low end of the range. Our number was 142 points for the season, and the early pace is close to that. We would hold him in week 6 of 2026 and expect the scoring to catch up to the catches.