Jaylen Waddle — Week 3: Seven Targets, Ten Yards
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Monday, Sep 28
Waddle was targeted 7 times, tied for the team lead, and caught 2 for 10 yards on 81 air yards; he converted one of his three third-down targets and ran once for 14 yards. He also caught a two-point try and was not targeted in the fourth quarter, a week after 138 yards, in a 30–26 win over the Rams.
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Seven to nothing, Rams, a minute 27 left in the first quarter, third and six at the Los Angeles 25. Bo Nix threw short left for Jaylen Waddle, incomplete, and on the next snap Wil Lutz's 43-yard field goal hit the left upright. −1.4 expected points added — expected points added is what a play was worth given down, distance and field position — and −4.0 points of win probability, the chance of winning the game after the play against before it. It set the pattern for his night: five of his seven targets fell incomplete.
The line: seven targets, two catches, 10 yards, one first down, −4.0 expected points on the targets, 81 air yards. The catch that moved the chains was nine yards on third and eight from the Denver 40 with three oh four left in the half, out of bounds at the Denver 49. The other was one yard on second and 10 at the Los Angeles 21 in the third quarter. The incompletions: first and 10 on Denver's second possession; the third and six before the missed kick; third and three in the second quarter, and a punt; second and eight, the snap before the conversion; and the deepest throw of Denver's night, 44 yards in the air down the right side on second and four in the third quarter. Five targets before halftime, two after, none in the fourth quarter. Three third-down targets, one caught and converted. He also ran once, 14 yards around left end on first and 10 at the Los Angeles 34 with three 52 left in the third, on the drive that ended in Nate Adkins's touchdown, and he caught the two-point try after Pat Bryant's touchdown that made it 16 to eight.
Seven targets tied RJ Harvey and Courtland Sutton for the team lead, each about a fifth of Nix's 34 throws. 10 yards was sixth among the Broncos, behind Sutton's 46, Bryant's 44 and Harvey's 41.
Back in June the preview put Waddle on the watchlist: a hundred targets in Miami that did not convert, a trade to Denver, and the split with Sutton and Troy Franklin as a thing to watch, behind Nix's health. Week One was three targets, all on third down, for two yards. Week Two was 10 targets, eight catches, a hundred 38 yards and three third-down conversions. Sunday the targets held at seven, and the output went back to Week One: two catches for 10. Three games: 20 targets, 11 catches, a hundred 50 yards. The volume is the kind the preview described, and so is the gap between the volume and what it produces. Denver is at the 49ers on Sunday the fourth.
_Data via nflverse._
When Jaylen Waddle's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
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