Troy Franklin

Troy Franklin was the second-most-targeted receiver on a fourteen-and-three offense last season — a hundred and four targets, sixty-five catches, seven hundred nine yards — and he is being drafted like a fifth wideout. Receiver eighty-eight, pick two-twenty-seven. On paper that gap is the loudest value in this whole range. This episode is about the one transaction that quietly closed it.

The season: seventeen games, sixty-five catches on a hundred four targets for seven hundred nine yards and six touchdowns. On Half-PPR scoring that is eight-and-a-half points a game — forty-first among receivers per game, thirty-third in total, WR-two-slash-three production out of a player priced at the back of the draft. Seventeen-point-eight percent of Denver's targets in his games, second on the team behind only Courtland Sutton. And the part that matters most for what comes next: his touchdown share was point-two-oh-three, just under our fade line. This was not a touchdown mirage; the volume was real and the scoring was earned.

The career says year two was a genuine leap. As a rookie he caught twenty-eight balls for two hundred sixty-three yards; last year he more than doubled the yards and tripled the role. That is the trajectory of an ascending player — a second-year receiver who won a real job on a very good team and produced like it.

The pattern beat gives the case its legs, then the depth chart takes them away. Our what-sticks research says targets are the identity stat — they replicate at point-seven-nine year to year across nine hundred fifty-four receiver seasons — while touchdowns are the weather. Franklin's profile is the good kind: high, sticky target volume, a touchdown rate that was not inflated. Stickiness says the hundred-target role repeats. There is one problem, and it is not in the data.

The situation is a trade that reshaped his ceiling. Denver acquired Jaylen Waddle this offseason, per the reporting, and Waddle slots in as the number-two receiver opposite Sutton — which pushes Franklin from the ascending WR2 he was into a fight for the third role. Sean Payton runs the offense, with Davis Webb now calling the plays and Bo Nix at quarterback; the machine is good, and Denver's receiver room may now be the deepest in football. That depth is the whole problem. The hundred-target volume that made Franklin look underpriced was earned before Waddle arrived to claim a chunk of it, and Pat Bryant and Marvin Mims are in the same rotation. The talent did not change; the number of mouths did.

The price: receiver eighty-eight at pick two-twenty-seven. The slot pays four-point-three a game; he produced eight-and-a-half. Our verdict: watchlist — and the gap between those two numbers is the trap, not the tell. We cannot call a receiver underpriced on a target share that a Jaylen Waddle trade just carved into, even though the tape and the stickiness math both loved him a month ago. The market moved for a reason. The caveat runs hard both ways: if Waddle misses time or Payton simply feeds three receivers, eighty-eight is still a bargain for a proven producer — and if the targets split three ways all season, the WR-two-slash-three line does not come back, and this price is about right.

Watch the camp pecking order behind Sutton first — Franklin against Waddle for the perimeter snaps — then his September target share against last year's seventeen-point-eight percent, then whether Nix trusts him near the goal line. The player is good. The room got crowded the same offseason the price started to look like a steal. If he's one of your guys, this show exists for your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.