Evan Engram — Week 1: Four Catches, and the Only Touchdown
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Tuesday, Sep 15
Engram caught four of five targets for 43 yards and three first downs, including the 19-yard touchdown on first and ten with 3:53 left in the first quarter, worth 6.1 points of win probability, the biggest swing on any Denver pass or run. The throws to him were worth plus 4.1 expected points, the most on the team, in a 31–10 loss to the Chiefs.
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Seven to nothing, Chiefs, three 53 left in the first quarter, first and 10 at the Kansas City 19. Bo Nix threw deep left to Evan Engram for the touchdown. +2.4 expected points added — expected points added is what a play was worth given down, distance and field position — and 6.1 points of win probability, the chance of winning the game after the play against before it, the largest swing on any Denver pass or run all night. It was Denver's only touchdown, and its longest completion.
The line: five targets, four catches, 43 yards, one touchdown, three first downs, +4.1 expected points on the targets, the most of any Denver receiver. The other catches were nine yards on second and 10 with two 38 left in the first quarter, nine on second and eight with two 27 left in the third, and six on second and five with six 27 left in the game. The fifth target was the strange one: with five 18 left in the game, Nix was ruled sacked and stripped at the Denver 12, the replay official reversed it, and it went into the book as an incomplete pass to Engram. Two targets before halftime, three after. No third-down target; one target inside the 20, and it was the touchdown.
The split: Pat Bryant six targets, Courtland Sutton five, Engram five, RJ Harvey four, Adam Trautman three, Jaylen Waddle three, Troy Franklin one. 28 throws on the night against 12 designed runs. Trautman, the other tight end, had three targets and the throws to him were worth −0.7; Engram's five were worth +4.1, and the two wide receivers Denver spent the most on, Sutton and Waddle, combined for −9.1.
Back in June the preview leaned watchlist on Engram — the 30-second tight end at pick two 23, a real buy-low on volume plus touchdown regression, with a roster cut as the thing that would end the thesis — and named two things to watch: the roster through camp, and whether the touchdown rate came off its floor and Davis Webb's offense fed the move tight end rather than the rookies. Monday: on the roster, one touchdown on five targets against one on 76 all of last year, and the most valuable receiving line on the team. One game does not lift a touchdown rate off a floor; it takes a season. The share of the targets, five of 28, is the more durable number, and it held. The Broncos are home to the Jaguars on Sunday the twentieth.
_Data via nflverse._
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