Mike Gesicki — Week 1: Seven Targets, a Touchdown, the Third and Ten
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Monday, Sep 14
Gesicki led the Bengals with seven targets, caught five for seventy-eight yards, scored the two-yard touchdown on third and one in the first quarter, and made the twenty-four-yard catch on third and ten from the Cincinnati twenty-two that answered Tampa Bay's pick-six. His seven targets were worth plus six point nine expected points, the most of any receiver on either team, in a 33–27 win over the Buccaneers.
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The most valuable play any Cincinnati receiver made Sunday was Mike Gesicki's seventh target. Third and 10 at the Cincinnati 22, one 37 left in the third quarter, the lead just cut to 27 to 20 by Josiah Trotter's interception return: Joe Burrow deep left to Gesicki, 24 yards to the 46, first down. +3.1 expected points added — expected points added is what a play was worth given down, distance and field position — and +7.1 win probability, the biggest gain on any offensive play the Bengals ran. The drive ended in a 58-yard field goal and the lead was 10 again.
The first target was the touchdown. Third and one at the Tampa Bay two, one 51 left in the first quarter, Bengals up seven to three, short left, two yards, 14 to three. The five in between all came on one drive, the possession that started at the Cincinnati 28 with one 45 left in the half, nine snaps before the field goal: incomplete short left on first down, 16 yards on second and 10, 11 yards on second and 10 again, 25 yards on first down from the Tampa Bay 45 to the 20, and then, from the two with 24 seconds left, an incomplete on second and two. Cincinnati settled for a 20-yard field goal. Three catches, 52 yards, in under a minute and a half of clock.
Seven targets, five catches, 78 yards, one touchdown, +6.9 on the targets, the highest figure for any receiver on either side. Both third-down targets were catches and both moved the chains. He led the Bengals in targets — seven to six each for Tee Higgins and Chase Brown, four for Ja'Marr Chase — and in receiving yards. Six of the seven came before halftime, when Cincinnati threw 20 times counting sacks; the seventh was the one that mattered most.
Back in June the preview had Gesicki as a TE40, a tertiary option whose ceiling was set by Chase and Higgins. Sunday inverted that — more targets than either, more yards than either, and the touchdown and the third-and-10 that answered the pick-six — and it is the first game, in which Chase was thrown to four times, which is not the kind of week the preview was pricing. One Sunday cannot make a tertiary option a primary one. It can say the June ceiling was not the ceiling on this particular day. Cincinnati is at the Texans on Sunday the twentieth. The number to watch is whether the targets survive a normal Chase week.
_Data via nflverse._
When Mike Gesicki's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
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