Chris Olave

More episodes

• Camp · Aug 23, 2026Aug 23, 2026

  Chris Olave Camp Update — August 23: The Target Tree Is His Into October

  Chris Olave was a listed rest day at Thursday's joint practice with the Rams and sat Saturday's game with the other starters, so his week was managed rather than newsworthy. The news happened around him: Jordyn Tyson's timeline came back at two months.

• Camp · Aug 16, 2026Aug 17, 2026

  Chris Olave Camp Update — August 16: The Alpha Role Just Got Less Crowded

  Chris Olave made the big sideline catch from Tyler Shough in the joint practice with Jacksonville, and the rookie drafted to share his target load is now hurt. The June bet on his volume repeating looks stronger, not weaker.

• 2026 PreviewJun 13, 2026

  Chris Olave 2026 Season Preview — a hundred catches at a WR11 price

  Olave finished as the WR6 in 2025, averaging 13.6 half-PPR points across all 16 games — a season built on sustained target volume as the clear top option in New Orleans' passing game. Availability has been the recurring question around him, and an 80.9% games-played rate over 2021–25 means the role has been real but the presence has not always been. The 2025 production rests on both a full season of health and genuine alpha usage, and those two things have rarely arrived together for him.

  ▾

  0:003:09

  1x

  1515

  Your episode · 3:09

  Show notes & transcript

  Chris Olave caught a hundred passes last season and finished as the number nine receiver per game — and he's the eleventh receiver off the board. A hundred-catch alpha at a discount, with one honest asterisk: he plays for a rebuilding team with a young quarterback. The Muffed 2026 preview.

  The season was a career year on a bad team: a hundred catches on a hundred 56 targets for 11 63 nine touchdowns, on the league's 20-seventh-ranked offense at six-and-11. 13-six a game, WR9 per game, on a 29 percent target share and 41 percent of the air yards — and notably, he played all 16 games he suited up for after an injury-shortened 2024. The signature was a 62-yard touchdown at Carolina, the most valuable play of his year. A chain-mover and a deep threat at once.

  The arc reads like a bounce: 10-eight, 11-seven, then an injury-wrecked eight-game 2024, and now the WR9 career year. The talent was never the question — availability was, and he just answered it with a full, productive season.

  What repeats: a hundred-56 targets is elite, sticky volume — the foundation of his floor. His touchdown share, at 20 percent, sits right at the fade boundary but not over it, so no pattern fires. The profile is a high-volume alpha who finally stayed healthy. There's nothing in the data arguing his price is too high.

  The situation carries a medical layer the earlier read didn't have, per the reports: Olave is recovering from a blood clot in his lung, first found in late January, and he was on a no-contact limit through OTAs and June's mandatory minicamp while working off blood thinners — the team calls it "no issues," a managed recovery, not a setback, and he's reportedly on track to be full-go once thinners clear at the end of June. On the football side, New Orleans is building around young quarterback Tyler Shough under coordinator Kellen Moore, and the Olave-Shough connection is already the focal point of the offense. A second-year leap from the quarterback is upside; a rebuilding team's growing pains are the risk. The Saints also spent an early first-round pick on receiver Jordyn Tyson, which could nibble at that 28 percent share — though a hundred-56-target alpha doesn't usually cede much to a rookie.

  The price: pick 28, the eleventh receiver. Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. He finished WR9 on volume that repeats, and he's priced WR11; the discount is the market charging for the team context, his injury history, and now a health situation that reads as managed rather than alarming. Both are fair charges, but they over-discount a hundred-catch alpha who's expected to be ready for camp. The counter: if Shough struggles, the new weapons split the targets, or the recovery runs long, WR11 is merely fair — the floor is real, the ceiling depends on variables we can't project.

  September watch: his clearance to full contact work as camp opens — that's the health thesis resolving one way or the other; then the target share with a rookie in the room, and Shough's development, which caps or lifts the ceiling. He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.

• 2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026

  Chris Olave 2025 Season in Review

  ▾

  0:002:42

  1x

  1515

  Your episode · 2:42

  Show notes & transcript

  Chris Olave finished 2025 as the number 6 wide receiver in total PPR scoring and the number 8 wide receiver in PPR per game. And here's the kicker — he did it on a six-and-11 Saints team that finished 27th in offensive expected points added, with a Tyler Shough and Spencer Rattler quarterback rotation combining for 18 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. Olave was the unambiguous number-one option, the centerpiece of the passing game — and he played all 16 games he suited up for, which itself was a story given his injury history. This ranking isn't built on splash plays. It's built on relentless, every-week usage on a team with no other reliable receiving threat.

  Now let's dig into the numbers. Olave caught 100 balls on 156 targets for 1,163 yards and 9 touchdowns, averaging 16.7 PPR points per game. The usage was elite: a 29 percent target share and a 41 percent share of the team's air yards — when the Saints threw it deep, it was going Olave's way. His total receiving expected points added landed at plus 35.6, a strong mark on an offense sitting at minus 93.7 overall. Average separation of 2.95 yards says he was winning on his own merit, not scheme. And the consistency backs the alpha profile — Olave cleared double-digit PPR in 14 of 16 games, with only Week 9 versus the Rams and Week 14 at Tampa Bay dipping below 10. He topped 20 PPR five times and smashed the Jets for 36.8 in Week 16. Steady floor, real ceiling spikes — closer to true alpha than boom-or-bust.

  The play that captures Olave's season came in Week 10 at Carolina — second quarter, third-and-eight, Saints down 7-3. Shough dropped back and hit him deep right for a 62-yard touchdown, the single most valuable play of his year at plus 6.6 expected points added, with 42 air yards and 20 more after the catch. That's the whole season in one snap: third-and-long, defenses keying on him, Olave winning anyway down the field. Five of his nine touchdowns came on third-down conversions. He wasn't just the volume guy — he was the move-the-chains guy.