Brian Thomas Jr. has been having himself a fantastic offseason so far.

So much so that it seems like everyone expects the Jacksonville Jaguars' star wide receiver to show that his disappointing 2025 season was merely an outlier, and he will regain the form he showed as a rookie in 2024, when he caught 87 passes for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns, while being named to the Pro Bowl.

Not so fast.

Analyst Ben Solak of ESPN recently released an article detailing five players who had breakout seasons in 2025, as well as five who suffered a "cliff fall." Solak writes about whether those players' performances last year were merely a "blip," not likely to continue, or a "trend," which he expects to see again in 2026.

Thomas Jr., of course, was listed in the "cliff fall" section. Despite his brilliant showing so far in OTAs and minicamp, Solak calls Thomas Jr.'s poor 2025 season a "trend" and believes his 2026 season will look more like last year than 2024.

Solak's reasoning does have a lot of logic to it. He notes that BTJ had drops in 2025 from his terrific 2024 campaign in his yards per route run (2.6 to 1.6), target rate (27% to 21%), and catch rate (65% to 52%)

The only metric where Thomas Jr. didn't see a drop in was...his drops. He had a 6.6% drop rate in 2025, twice the league average of 3.3%. Solak notes that most of his drops occurred on the in-breaking routes where a receiver like BTJ should be at his best.

"Thomas' drops were overwhelmingly on the in-breaking routes you'd expect a big-bodied X receiver to feast on in the Sean McVay-inspired Liam Coen offense. On throws between the numbers, Thomas had a catch rate of 48.4%, fifth worst among high-volume receivers and a huge plummet from his 79.4% as a rookie. Of his six drops, five came between the numbers for a drop rate of 16.1%, worst of all receivers."

Solak believes that Thomas' inability to be counted on while running those types of routes will lead to fellow WRs Jakobi Meyers and Parker Washington getting the majority of targets on those plays. 

He also thinks that the drafting of tight end Nate Boerkircher in the second round will have Jacksonville running more plays with multiple TEs, thus having one less WR on the field. Solak believes that will also cut into BTJ's opportunities in 2026.

Solak thinks that BTJ may be used in a "DK Metcalf-esque role," meaning lining up only outside and running a very limited route tree, with many of his targets coming in low-percentage downfield shots. He believes this will lessen Thomas Jr.'s ability to see (and catch) a lot of targets.

While Solak is able to back up his opinion with undeniable stats and sound reasoning, he is only focusing on half of BTJ's body of work in the NFL while completely dismissing the other half.

With one great season and one poor season, how is anyone able to determine which one was the real BTJ and which was the fluke? Only Thomas Jr.'s performance on the field going forward will show us what type of receiver he truly is.

As a former first-round pick, the Jaguars are going to give BTJ every opportunity to fix what was wrong last year. They resisted trading him, despite months of pressure, because they still believe in his ability.

Yes, the Jaguars have a deep and talented crop of WRs. But let's not forget that BTJ is a big part of that. Without him, Jacksonville's receivers might be viewed as only average.

I fully expect not only for BTJ to be given ample chances to excel in 2026, but that he will take advantage of his opportunities and show that he is much more the player we saw as a rookie than the one we saw last season.

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