Jaylen Wright — Week 1: Seventy-Nine Yards on a Kick Return
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Monday, Sep 14
Wright's biggest play Sunday was not a carry: a seventy-nine-yard kickoff return to the Las Vegas eighteen with two thirty-four left in the third quarter, worth plus three point eight expected points, the largest expected-points gain on any play in the game by either team. Miami missed a field goal from there. He also returned a kick twenty-seven yards and carried once, for minus one, in a 27–13 loss to the Raiders.
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The most valuable play in the game by expected points belonged to Jaylen Wright, and it was a kickoff return. Two 34 left in the third quarter, Las Vegas up 27 to 13 after a field goal: the kick went 62 yards to the Miami three, and Wright brought it back 79 yards before Cody White pushed him out of bounds at the Las Vegas 18. The return was worth +3.8 expected points added — expected points added is what a play was worth given down, distance and field position — more than any pass, run or kick by either team all afternoon, and +5.9 points of win probability, the chance of winning after the play against before it, the fourth-largest gain on any Dolphins play. What Miami did with the 18 is the rest of it: De'Von Achane for three, Achane for two, Malik Willis sacked for 10 on third and five, and a 41-yard field goal wide left with 11 seconds left in the quarter. No points.
The line, all of it: two kickoff returns for a hundred six yards and one carry for −1. The first return came with one oh seven left in the half, from the Miami three to the 30, 27 yards. The carry was first and 10 at the Miami 27 with five 54 left in the fourth quarter, down 27 to 13, up the middle, stopped at the 26, worth −0.9 expected points. He was not thrown to. That drive went on without him and ended on downs at the Las Vegas 46 with four oh four left.
What the backfield did is the football. Miami ran 13 designed runs all day against 32 pass plays, nine before halftime and four after, for 74 team rushing yards. Achane took 11 of the 13 for 36 yards and did not carry in the fourth quarter; Wright's one carry was the only handoff to a running back after the third. Willis carried six times for 39 yards and the only Miami touchdown, five of the six scrambles, so the designed runs split Achane 11, Wright one, Willis one. Eight targets went to Washington, seven to Caleb Douglas, five to Achane, and none to Wright. Miami trailed 17 to six at halftime and had 18 pass plays in the second half against four designed runs; that script leaves little for a second back.
Back in June the preview called Wright a watchlist — running back 71 at pick two 27, a handcuff whose per-game number leaned on one feature game, behind a starter who had just signed long-term — and said the road to a real workload runs through someone else's body. Sunday Achane took 11 of 13 designed runs and Wright got one, and his play that mattered came on a kickoff, which is not the workload the preview was pricing. One game with one carry confirms the handcuff price. Miami is at the 49ers on Sunday the twentieth.
_Data via nflverse._
When Jaylen Wright's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
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