Michael Wilson (WR, Arizona Cardinals) — 2026 fantasy outlook, updated Jun 15, 2026. In 2025, Michael Wilson finished WR13 at 10.7 Half-PPR points per game (181.6 total) across 17 games. Muffed's 2026 take: finished WR20 per game on 126 targets with a clean touchdown rate, priced WR38, behind the teammate he outfinished by a tier and a half. The Brissett downgrade is the only real caveat. Based on verified 2025 play-by-play data (nflverse); Half-PPR scoring.
finished WR20 per game on 126 targets with a clean touchdown rate, priced WR38, behind the teammate he outfinished by a tier and a half. The Brissett downgrade is the only real caveat.
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Michael Wilson 2026 Season Preview — a WR20 finish at a WR38 price
Show notes & transcript▾
Michael Wilson finished as the number-twenty receiver per game last season. He's the thirty-eighth receiver off the board — priced behind his own teammate, whom he outfinished by more than a tier. The market is buying the name; the data is buying the production. The Muffed 2026 preview.
The 2025 season was a genuine breakout: seventy-eight catches on a hundred twenty-six targets for a thousand six yards and seven touchdowns, ten-seven a game, WR20 per game, all seventeen games. The signature was an eleven-catch, a hundred forty-two-yard, two-touchdown explosion against the Rams in Week 14. He stepped up when Marvin Harrison Junior struggled and was the Cardinals' most productive receiver.
The arc is an ascending role: seven-three a game, six-three, and now ten-seven — a third-year jump into genuine alpha volume, a hundred twenty-six targets.
What the data says: that target volume is the sticky, foundational kind, and his touchdown share — nineteen percent — is clean, no luck to give back. By production, this is a top-twenty receiver per game, priced like a backup. There's no fade pattern anywhere near him.
The situation, per the reports, is the honest caveat — plus two June positives: Arizona released Kyler Murray, who's now in Minnesota, and the Cardinals named Jacoby Brissett the starter in the new Mike LaFleur offense — though Brissett spent June holding in over his contract, with the sides far apart. That's the quarterback risk, unchanged. The positives: LaFleur says Wilson plays the Z in this scheme — the Puka Nacua role from his Rams playbook — and the team is in active extension talks Wilson describes as "going great," possibly done by Week One. A hundred-twenty-six-target role is worth less with weaker quarterback play; it's worth more when the new staff is designing for you and negotiating to keep you.
The price: pick eighty-nine, the thirty-eighth receiver. Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. He finished WR20 per game on alpha volume with a clean touchdown rate, and he's priced WR38, behind a teammate he outfinished by a tier and a half. The market is paying for pedigree over production. The counter: the Brissett-led offense is a real downgrade from a healthy Kyler, and the target competition with a healthy Harrison is genuine. But the discount more than covers both.
September watch: the target share with a healthy Harrison in the room — does Wilson stay the alpha; and the quarterback play, the tide that lifts or sinks the whole passing game. He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.
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2025: 78 catches for 1,006 yards, 7 TDs on 126 targets (17 games)
Where he ranks — 2025
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2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026Michael Wilson 2025 Season in Review
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Michael Wilson 2025 Season in Review
Show notes & transcript
Michael Wilson finished 2025 as the number 10 wide receiver in total PPR scoring — but only the number 19 wide receiver in PPR per game among players with at least six games played. Read those ranks together and you've got the headline: Wilson played all 17 games for a three-and-fourteen Cardinals team, and the volume he soaked up over a full season pushed him into the top ten by total points even though his per-game average tells a much more modest story. This was the year Wilson went from rotational option to a featured piece of a broken offense — the guy Jacoby Brissett kept looking for when the script went sideways, which in Arizona was most weeks. He cleared a thousand receiving yards, found the end zone seven times, and quietly became the team's clear number two target behind Trey McBride. The question isn't whether Wilson produced. It's what kind of producer he was.
Now let's dig into the numbers. Wilson turned 126 targets into 78 catches for 1,006 yards and 7 touchdowns — a 19 percent average target share, a legitimate every-down role, and a 31 percent average air yards share that pegs him as Arizona's downfield guy, not a possession piece. He averaged 13.0 PPR points per game, but that average lies. This was boom-or-bust, cleanly split. Through the first nine weeks Wilson cleared 10 PPR points exactly once. Then starting Week 11 he posted 33.5, 21.8, 6.6, 37.2, 16.4, 13.2, 19.9, and 20.9 — seven double-digit weeks in his last eight, including two genuinely massive games. The back half carried the entire fantasy value. The 7 touchdowns clustered late too, and McBride's 169 targets and 11 scores were always going to cap Wilson's ceiling in this offense.
The play that sums up the season came in Week 14 against the Rams. Arizona down sixteen in the third quarter, first and ten from the Rams' 43 — Brissett drops back and finds Wilson deep left for a 43-yard touchdown. One of two scores in that game, a 37-point fantasy explosion in a 17-to-45 blowout loss. That's the Wilson season in one snapshot: huge plays, real downfield juice, piling up targets and yards in games his team was losing badly. The fantasy points were real. The football context was bleak.
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