Brian Thomas Jr. was named 2025's fantasy bust, but Jacksonville's offense thrived in sharing touches, proving team success trumps individual stats.
Brian Thomas Jr. the Bust of the Year for 2025?
The Jacksonville Jaguars receiver was tagged the season's biggest disappointment by RotoWire as the fantasy site released its annual awards rundown on Tuesday.
Jaguars receiver Brian Thomas Jr. finished this past season with 48 catches for 707 yards and two touchdowns, a big drop-off from the 87 receptions, 1,282 yards and 10 TDs in 2024, his rookie season in Jacksonville. (Travis Register/Imagn Images)Thomas, in his second year in the NFL, didn't rack up the kind of stats he managed in his rookie season.
A first-round pick (23rd overall) in 2024 out of LSU, Thomas appeared in 17 games, started 16, in Doug Pederson's final season coaching the Jaguars. As a reminder of why 2024 was Pederson's last season in Jacksonville, the team finished 4-13, never stringing two wins together in its futile efforts in the AFC South; the Jaguars ranked 25th in the league in total offense and only mustered on average 204. 5 passing yards per game.
Thomas sure looked like a ray of sunshine amid such gloom. In 133 targets that season, Thomas caught 87 passes for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns. He was named to the 2024 Pro Bowl and was selected to the Pro Football Writers Association's All-Rookie Team.
Pretty good for a rookie.
But when it comes to fantasy hype, it's all downhill from there, amirite?
It's hard to square RotoWire's trolling of Thomas now, after the Jags just finished one of their best offensive seasons in franchise history. First-year head coach Liam Coen's "offensive system," as general manager James Gladstone describes it, is focused on wins and losses -- not on individual player stats.
"We had three receivers go over 700 yards," Gladstone said in the team's season post mortem on Jan. 14. "To be able to spread the wealth, so to speak, is a really positive thing."
As a sophomore, the 6-foot-2, 209-pound Louisiana native again averaged 14.7 yards per catch, but had significantly fewer targets. This past season, in Coen's offense, Thomas saw an almost 32-percent drop in the number of times the ball was thrown his way. With 91 targets in 2025, he made 48 catches.
It's true his reception percentage fell off in 2025. As a rookie, he caught 65.4 percent of passes targeting him, while this year his reception percentage dropped to 52.7.
Thomas' targets dropped off this season for a few legitimate reasons, even beyond the overhaul of the team's offensive approach. For starters, Thomas was sidelined with an ankle injury for Weeks 10, 11 and 12.
Also, just as Thomas was going out, Jakobi Meyers was coming in. The Jags acquired the veteran wideout from the Las Vegas Raiders for two picks in the upcoming NFL draft -- and Meyers was an immediate contributor in Coen's spread-the-wealth offense, with 37 catches for 439 yards and five TDs in eight games.
Parker Washington, who wasn't ready to step into the team's WR1 shoes while Thomas sat out, did see more targets beginning midway through the season -- and made the most of them. In Weeks 1-9, the third-year pro had 25 receptions, then 33 down the stretch of the regular season, even after sitting out against the Colts in Week 14.
"The 'wide receiver one' (position) doesn't necessarily exist in the system" as Coen and his offensive staff have designed it, Gladstone said.
Tight end Brenton Strange finished with 46 receptions for 540 yards and three TDs. Receiver Dyami Brown totaled 20 catches, 227 yards and one TD. And so on among tight-end and receiver backups.
Beyond the who's-who among Jacksonville's receivers, quarterback Trevor Lawrence also has other passing options that regularly get their hands dirty, including dual-threat tailback Travis Etienne Jr., who had 36 receptions for 292 yards and six touchdowns.
The Jags' 2021 first-round pick (25th overall) from the same draft class and college team, Clemson, as No. 1 pick Lawrence seems like a hand-in-glove fit for what Coen's working on in Jacksonville.
And so is Thomas. What might look like a bust to guys whose livelihoods and bragging rights depend on me-first players is really just one mate in the ranks of the new-look Jaguars.
"When you're part of a team that wins, typically that wealth is shared, so it's never truly going to be about one player," Coen said. "(We) try to get the most out of them to help our team win as many games as humanly possible -- and B.T. will 100-percent be a part of that."
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