RP Clips: Will Brian Thomas Jr. Figure It Out Again?

**Matt Harmon** (0:00)
This is Reception Perception The Show. James Koh and Matt Harmon.

**James Koh** (0:06)
The Jacksonville Jaguars, I think, will also be contenders this year. And a lot of that, too, will be based on the fact that what is BTJ going to do here in year number three? Huge, massive step back in nearly every route run statistically, whether you're talking about Reception Perception metrics, whether you're talking about counting stats, everything in regards to BTJ's 2025 was a little bit of a disaster, man.
And I'm curious to get your thoughts on what you think we might see from BTJ in 2026

**Matt Harmon** (0:40)
I think you're being kind by saying a little bit of a disaster. I think this was one of the most mystifying developments in wide receiver world last season, is the way I opened up the profile here. Brian Thomas Jr had 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns in his rookie season, charted out with a really strong overall profile in Reception Perception.
And man, anybody could see last year that he was obviously struggling mightily with drops.
He had 707 yards and 14 games last year in the regular season. It just, it was a crazy drop. And that was with Liam Cohen coming in, who everybody was excited about. He was like my favorite play designer and offensive coordinator in the 2024 season. So, and I think Liam Cohen was a massive hit, a massive hit for the Jacksonville Jaguars. And then still we get this fall off from Brian Thomas Jr. So there's a lot to get into here with BTJ. And let me start off by saying that I think from a fantasy perspective, I think the bigger concern for BTJ is almost exclusively about his role with the team and role in the offense.
I do kind of think you can almost throw out a lot of what we saw on film last year from BTJ, which was not good. Like there, it wasn't, it was not good, but it was also kind of just not atrocious. We'll unpack it here, obviously a little bit. But I do think we can say that he was really banged up throughout the course of last season. As I mentioned at the top of all of these guys in their second seasons, Brian Thomas Jr dealt with a ton of injuries last year. He came in with like a wrist injury that they talked about. He was clearly dealing with a shoulder injury throughout the course of the year. He had an ankle injury at one point of the season. So I do think that's obviously, that's part of it. He was banged up, he was almost likely just banged up at the course of his second season. And that probably impacted a lot of the drop that we're gonna discuss here from a reception perception standpoint. The key will be uncovering, can he get back to 2024 form? Can he actually get better from 2024 form? Because that profile wasn't perfect. And then accordingly, like what will his role look like within the context of the current receiver room?

**James Koh** (3:11)
Yeah, you talk about some of the routes individually here. And part of the reason why I was so excited about BTJ and Liam Cohen's offense was that in 2024, he ran a great dig route, man. 78% success rate on dig routes in 2024 I thought that was going to mesh perfectly and fit perfectly into what Liam Cohen would design as a plate designer here. And yet it was a massive drop off in 2025 Again, 78% success rate on dig routes in 2024 fell 15 points to 63% in 2025
I just, and by the way, this is not a small sample size here. That was his most run route in 2024 at nearly 19%.
So we had a lot of evidence, Matt, that this guy can go out there and just dominate the intermediate and deep parts of the field. And in particular, that in breaking route, I thought was going to be a huge, massive hit in this offense. And it just wasn't.

**Matt Harmon** (4:14)
So did I. I thought it would be as well based on what we saw in that rookie year profile.
I would say that if you break down Brian Thomas Jr's struggles, like there are the loud ways in which he struggled, like that is very obvious to everybody. And then there are the quieter ways in which he struggled. Yes, correct. The loud ways, obviously the drops. And that's backed up in his charting profile. 11.7% of the sample targets he dropped. He caught just 53% of his contested catch attempts at a 25% contested target rate. As a rookie, he dropped just 1.4% of his sample targets with a 75% contested catch rate. You go back to his prospect profile, 2.9% drop rate, 73% contested catch rate with a lower contested target rate in both the rookie and prospect profiles. So, was this a fluke, right? Like, I think we can say that. Sometimes this shit happens when it comes to drops. You just get, it gets in your head, it becomes a part of it, you start thinking about it, and it just starts to like be a waterfall effect. I think that was certainly the case here with not just BTJ. You can say it for a couple of these guys that played in their second seasons last year, but he was definitely, I would say like from a drops perspective, probably the worst offender. It was just all throughout the course of the season. It was, it was just, it was littered over the course of his second season film. So that was like the loud way in which he struggled. The quieter ways I would say that he struggled in something that you were alluding to there, there were actually ways that kind of what I would say. And I wrote in his rookie year profile were like small concerns or areas where he needed to get better. And that was beating zone coverage and working over the middle of the field. Because if you go back and look at his second year profile or first year, it was to be rookie year profile, 77% success rate versus zone coverage. That's a 38th percentile mark. And his success rate on slant routes was a 74% success rate, which is below the NFL average. Well, sure enough, not only do those things not get better, they were massive, massive, I think season ruining issues for BTJ last year. His success rate versus zone coverage is 69.8%.