Malik Washington

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• 2026 PreviewJul 3, 2026

  Malik Washington 2026 Season Preview — what repeats, what doesn't

  WATCHLIST — WR71 paying him as if nothing changed, in a room that just deleted 129 wideout targets above him. Can't underwrite a share nobody's been handed with a six-start QB; won't fade the one returning receiver who's earned targets in the building.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Every wideout who out-targeted Malik Washington in Miami last season is gone. Tyreek Hill was released in February. Jaylen Waddle was traded in March. What's left is a second-year sixth-rounder, the biggest target vacancy in football, and a coaching staff that spent June carefully not naming anyone the number one. Receiver 71, pick one-84, is the market refusing to price the vacancy until somebody claims it.

  The season: all 17 games, 46 catches on 65 targets — a 71 percent catch rate — for 317 yards and three receiving scores, +17 carries for a hundred 10 yards and a fourth touchdown on the ground. 5.5 Half-PPR points a game, 60-eighth among receivers per game, 50-sixth in total. 14 percent of Miami's targets in his games, a slot-and-gadget role with return work stapled on. Useful, real, and nothing about it screamed number-one receiver — because nothing about it was asked to.

  The career is two seasons pointing the same direction: 26 catches as a rookie, 46 last year, the rate up from 3.1 a game to 5.5. Small role, honest growth. And only one Miami wideout drew more targets than him last season — Waddle, a hundred to 65 — which is the quiet fact this whole episode turns on.

  The pattern beat: volume is identity — targets per game replicate at point-seven-nine across 954 receiver seasons — and his identity so far is 3.8 a game. Stickiness argues the baseline holds; it has nothing to say about a depth chart that just deleted a hundred 29 targets of wideout volume above him. No pattern in our library conditions on opportunity this open. We price what happened; the vacancy is what hasn't.

  The situation is a room stripped to the studs and restocked with maybes. Hill, released off the knee in February; Waddle, traded to Denver in March for a package built around the thirtieth pick; the veteran adds are Jalen Tolbert and Tutu Atwell, +3 drafted rookies. The June reporting out of the beat says Washington was the standout of OTAs — the head coach praised his catch-and-run game by name — and the same beat's depth-chart pieces say nobody emerged as the number one all spring. The quarterback is Malik Willis, signed in March on a deal ESPN's report said makes him the starter, and the seven-on-seven chemistry notes from camp coverage pair the two Maliks repeatedly. Bobby Slowik coordinates, on a seven-and-10 team whose offseason was a controlled demolition.

  The price: WR71 at pick one-84. The slot paid 5.1 last season; he produced 5.5 in the old, small role. The market is paying him as if nothing changed — and everything changed. Our verdict: watchlist. We can't underwrite a target share nobody has been given, in an offense with a new play-caller and a quarterback with six career starts before this one — and we won't fade the one returning receiver who's actually earned targets in this building either. The caveat cuts both ways by construction: if he claims the vacancy, the 14 percent becomes 20-something and WR71 was robbery — and if Miami's answer is Tolbert, Atwell, and a rookie by committee, then five-and-a-half a game at WR71 is simply the going rate.

  Watch the first camp depth chart and the preseason snap chart — specifically who runs with the ones when Willis does — and then September's target share against the 14 percent baseline. The vacancy is the story; somebody has to claim it on tape. He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.