AJ Barner Camp Update — August 23: A Quiet Week as Arroyo Makes Noise
2026 NFL Season · Sunday, Aug 23
Barner generated no individual notes in the accessed coverage of Nashville week, while Elijah Arroyo caught a red-zone touchdown in the joint practice. The tight end news of the week belonged to the other man in the room, and the snap split between them is still the open question.
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AJ Barner's week in the accessed coverage is an empty column — no catches logged, no absence listed, nothing in either direction from the joint practice with the Titans in Nashville or the sessions around it. The tight end who did make the reports was Elijah Arroyo, who caught multiple passes including a red-zone touchdown in Friday's joint practice, per Ari Horton and John Boyle at the team's website. One loud Arroyo day doesn't reorder a room, but it's the only tight end data the week produced, and it lands directly on the June file's one unresolved question.
The steadier facts sit behind the quiet. Barner caught 52 passes last season, second-most on the Super Bowl champions, and his two offseason surgeries have produced no reported setback in any window, this one included — cleared for camp in July, participating since. What August hasn't sorted is how the snaps divide when he and Arroyo share the field, and a rookie-contract tight end scoring in joint-practice red-zone work is the kind of entry that keeps that unsorted.
Seattle plays the Titans today in Nashville, after this episode is filed, and the finale follows before Sunday's cutdown — neither of which threatens Barner's roster spot, but either of which could finally show the Barner-Arroyo snap split in a live setting. That split is what to watch, along with any first game usage for Barner this preseason — the June preview's bet was the catches, and the split is what sizes them. We'll check after cut day.
_Data via nflverse._
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