Romeo Doubs — Week 1: Three Targets, Zero Catches, One Pick
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Thursday, Sep 10
Doubs was not thrown to until the fourth quarter and finished with no catches on three targets: a deep ball from the Seattle forty-five that Nehemiah Pritchett intercepted, an incompletion deep right, and an incompletion on third and two on the final drive. All three came after A.J. Brown left the game injured, and the three throws his way were worth minus six point zero expected points.
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Romeo Doubs's first three targets as a Patriot all came in the fourth quarter, and none of them was caught. The first was the play that turned the game: second play of the quarter, New England up 10 to three at the Seattle 45, second and nine, Drake Maye deep left for Doubs, 42 yards in the air, intercepted by Nehemiah Pritchett at the three and returned 30 yards. Seattle scored on the fifth play of the next drive. The second was an incompletion deep right on second and 14 from the New England 22, the play before Maye's second interception. The third was third and two at the New England 35 with three 55 left, incomplete short left; Maye scrambled for the first down on fourth and two on the next snap.
Three targets, no catches, no yards. The three throws were worth −6.0 expected points added in total — expected points added is what a play was worth given the situation, and most of that number is the interception, which cost New England 3.9 on its own. Through three quarters, while New England led and the passing game was working, Doubs was not thrown to at all: the throws went to DeMario Douglas, Rhamondre Stevenson, Mack Hollins, A.J. Brown, Hunter Henry, Lan Larison and Eli Raridon — everyone but him.
The June read on Doubs was that he had the most repeatable profile in the room and asked one structural question — whether A.J. Brown's arrival squeezes his volume. Cut day moved that question in his favor by subtraction, a competitor traded out of a six-man room, and the August episodes were careful to call that a roster fact rather than a target fact. Wednesday produced the first target fact, and it is a strange one: zero targets with Brown healthy, three after Brown left with an ankle injury early in the third quarter, per Mike Moraitis at The Sporting News, and all three were the kind of throw — two of them 20-plus yards in the air — that Brown's absence might have moved to him. That is not a role yet. It is one quarter, in a game where the whole passing offense produced −9.3 expected points in the fourth. Next up is Pittsburgh at home; the number to watch is targets before the fourth quarter.
_Data via nflverse._
When Romeo Doubs's week moves the numbers, you'll know — every episode, in one weekly email.
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