Terrance Ferguson Camp Update — August 16: A Fantastic Offseason, and a Rookie Just Led the Targets
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 17
Albert Breer says Ferguson looks like a force after the catch, the strongest buzz of his young career. Then rookie Max Klare led the Rams in targets in the preseason opener, and the five-man room we warned about got real.
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The full episode, in writing
Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated watched Rams camp in late July and wrote that Terrance Ferguson "has had a fantastic offseason" and "looks like he could be a force after the catch," per Breer via Yahoo Sports. That is the best national buzz of Ferguson's young career. And then Saturday's preseason opener arrived, and the Ram who led the team in targets was a tight end, just not this one: rookie Max Klare drew eight targets and caught seven for 37 yards, per Stu Jackson of therams.com.
Both halves of that are the June episode playing out at once. Our preview's core claim was that Ferguson's promotion had to be won, not inherited. His rookie season was 11 catches on 2.3 targets a game, and tight-end target volume is the stickiest stat we track, meaning it tends to stay near where it was rather than leaping. On top of that sat one of football's deepest tight-end rooms: Tyler Higbee re-signed, Colby Parkinson coming off a career year, and the Rams spending a second-round pick on Klare. We said the talent had flashed and the depth chart got deeper the same spring, and that the camp pecking order was the whole thesis.
So this week is genuinely two-directional. The talent half strengthened; Breer's after-the-catch note echoes exactly what Sean McVay said back in February, when he called Ferguson "a total stud" with an "incredibly high ceiling, particularly as a receiver." The competition half strengthened too, because a fourth-name rookie taking the largest target share in the first game script is precisely what a crowded, unsettled room looks like. One preseason opener with the starters resting decides nothing, but it is the first hard usage data of August, and it did not go to Ferguson.
Does the June read hold? COMPLICATED — the buzz says the player is coming, the first game script says the room is as contested as we feared, and those two facts now race each other.
Next week, watch the tight-end snap and target split against Klare, Higbee and Parkinson in the next preseason action, and whether Ferguson gets first-team work. We'll check next Sunday.
_Data via nflverse._
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