Live 10-team decision status — 2026-08-02
10-team decision data: ADP 47.5, projection 221.0 points, risk med. No promoted current-status finding changes role or health; retain uncertainty rather than treating legacy depth-chart language as current.
Source: promoted Data/players.csv and Data/current-status.csv. This section supersedes every older July ADP, projection-source date, risk flag, pick-band/turn, and current-role assertion below. Older explanatory prose remains only as context.
Reading rule: material below this block is historical/model context unless it repeats the promoted values and 10-team baseline above; it is not live draft instruction.
The role
Detroit uses him to run downfield. That is the field-stretching Z: fewer targets than a possession receiver (a target is a throw in his direction, counted whether or not he catches it — see Fantasy football glossary), but far more yards on each one, and a score that swings hard week to week — quiet one Sunday, enormous the next. He is the third option in that offense behind an alpha X, the clear first read, and a three-down bell cow who catches out of the backfield.
The number
1,088 receiving yards. From the projected stat line behind proj_points in Data/players.csv — a projection dated 2026-07-23, not an observation. At 0.1 a yard that is about 109 points from yardage alone, more than half his projected total, which is the signature of the archetype: the yards do the work, not the reception count that carries a big slot.
The risk
The CSV lists his risk as med, and the driver is variance rather than role loss. A receiver whose points come from long plays and touchdowns has a wide range of weekly outcomes, and the same profile that produces a 30-point Sunday produces three-point Sundays in between. Third in line for one team's throws sharpens that. The availability read, though, is better than his games-played line suggests — six of the seven games he has missed since 2023 are not weeks the official report listed him Out, and the projection is close to a repeat of a full 17-game season he has actually played.
The context
He is 25 on the September 9 opener, and Detroit took him twelfth overall in 2022 — first-round capital on the team that still employs him. His games-played line looks alarming at first: 12, 15 and 17 across the last three seasons, 44 of a possible 51. But the official injury report lists him Out only once and names an ankle twice, and one entry on it records a return from suspension rather than an injury. Most of what he has missed was not medical. In 2025 he was on the field for 90.2% of Detroit's snaps and drew 102 targets — 18.5% of the team's throws, second on the roster — for 65 catches and 1,117 yards. He is paid, at about $27 million a year, on a deal that voids in 2030.
Observed, from Data/player_context.csv, retrieved 2026-07-25.
Earlier candidate note — superseded
DET WR — ADP 47.5; 221.0 points; medium-risk field-stretching-Z model. No accepted gated status record changes role or health.
Provenance: Data/research/candidates/2026-08-02/players.candidate.csv and Data/current-status.csv. Current-status evidence is narrower than the candidate model.
Open questions
- Given the first-half prize structure rewards a high mean and the playoff bracket rewards ceiling, is a boom-bust receiver better used as a flex than as a weekly starter? See How the league is won.
- His bye is week 6, the second-worst bye week of 2026, and shared with Detroit's other options if you draft more than one.