Brenton Strange

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• 2026 PreviewJul 3, 2026

  Brenton Strange 2026 Season Preview — what repeats, what doesn't

  Strange played all 12 games in 2025 and averaged 7.9 half-PPR points per game, finishing as TE23 on 95 total points. A career availability rate of 64.7% across 2021–25 means staying on the field has been the harder ask, so the durability shown this season matters as much as the production itself.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Jacksonville watched Brenton Strange play 12 games last season and concluded it had seen enough: three more years, up to 48 million, 25 guaranteed, signed June 20-fourth. The market watched the same 12 games and concluded: tight end 21, pick one-46. 25 million guaranteed says starter; the price says maybe. The tape says the truth is in the target column.

  The season: 12 games, 46 catches on 60 targets for 540 yards and three touchdowns — then five games lost to an October injury: hip and quad, a ligament tear in there, injured reserve, no surgery required, per the reporting at the time. 7.9 Half-PPR points a game, eighteenth among tight ends per game, 20-third in total. The rate stats are the argument: a 77 percent catch rate, five targets a game, 15.8 percent of the targets in his games — on a 13-four division winner with a loaded receiver room. When he played, he was a top-18 tight end in an offense that didn't need him to be.

  The career is three ascending steps: one-seven a game in a seven-game rookie cameo behind Evan Engram, five-one in year two — 40 catches on 53 targets once the room opened — seven-nine in year three. The target trajectory underneath: 1.3 a game, then 3.8, then five even. A second-round pick in 20-23 finally given the room, climbing exactly the way the draft capital predicted.

  What repeats? The stat his game is built on: tight end targets replicate at point-eight year over year in the current era — 238 player-seasons — and his five a game is real, recent, and growing. Efficiency barely repeats at the position — point-one-five — but he isn't an efficiency spike; nine yards a target is solid, not gaudy. No touchdown inflation either: three scores, share of point-one-five, under every line we track. The profile our library likes most: volume-built, luck-free, ascending.

  The situation, dated. The extension: June 20-fourth, three years, up to 48 million with 25 guaranteed, per NFL Network — the structure back-loaded team-friendly, per SI's cap breakdown. The context: Liam Coen's 13-win offense returns nearly intact — coordinator Grant Udinski retained in January, Coen still calling plays, per the team site — with Trevor Lawrence coming off a fifth-place MVP finish. The target competition is the honest ceiling: Brian Thomas Junior chasing his rookie form, Jakobi Meyers paid in December, Travis Hunter's snap count tilting toward defense, per the general manager in January. Johnny Mundt was released; Quintin Morris and Hunter Long sit behind him — the room is his.

  The price: TE21 at pick one-46 for the eighteenth tight end by rate — a small discount for a 12-game sample, in a market that just watched the team remove the sample-size doubt with its checkbook. Our verdict: no call — the friendly kind. The price is fair for the games played, the ascent is real, and the gap between TE18-by-rate and TE21-by-price isn't a tier — it's a rounding error with upside attached. Caveat, spoken: this receiver room caps the target math no matter how good he is; five a game might be the ceiling and the floor at once.

  Watch September targets against the five-a-game baseline, and the red-zone rotation — a tight end this offense just paid tends to start seeing the fade routes that turn seven-nine a game into 10. Availability is the only unanswered question the contract couldn't buy: he's played 12 14 games in his two real seasons, and a first 16-game year would settle the last doubt the price is holding onto. He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.