Philadelphia Eagles star A.J. Brown made headlines last season when he was spotted on the sidelines of a game reading a self-help book. After a dismal showing to open the 2025 campaign, it seems the wideout — and fantasy football managers — might need to find some new reading material.
Brown put forth just 1.8 fantasy points in PPR formats during Week 1. Is it time for fantasy managers to panic, or will the star return to his WR1 ways in the near future?
Time to panic about A.J. Brown?
The Eagles opened the 2025 season with a 24-20 win over the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday Night Football, but fantasy managers with their wideouts in starting lineups didn’t see the same success. Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley put forth great performances, but DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown were nearly both blanked — the former saw just three targets on the night while the latter didn’t see the ball thrown his way until late in the fourth quarter. Brown finished the contest with just one catch for eight yards, totaling 1.8 PPR fantasy points.
That tally felt nearly more insulting than an outright goose-egg would’ve been in fantasy lineups, but there’s important context to consider on both sides before going into panic mode.
Game script
While the showing from Brown was an utter disappointment, the Eagles play a run-heavy style to begin with. Hurts threw just 24 passes for 152 yards on the night, and the Cowboys also played a zone on all 33 of Hurts’ dropbacks and protected against the deep ball Brown excels at. That allowed Hurts to take what the defense gave him on short routes underneath, especially out in the flats as he targeted tight ends eight times and running backs five times. The quarterback also ran the ball himself on 14 occasions, and the ground attack totaled 38 carries on the day.
Brown has shown some slight boom-or-bust tendencies at times, especially once this offense shifted to such a run-heavy approach with Barkley in the backfield last season. The Eagles just need to throw the ball all that much in Week 1, which doesn’t set the wideouts up for success.
Potential injury
Philadelphia’s top wideout also wasn’t completely healthy through most of training camp and the preseason slate. Brown spent the majority of camp on the sidelines with a hamstring issue, and while he was healthy enough to play, those kinds of soft-tissue strains are notorious for sticking around and causing some problems even once a player gets back on the field. While he was cleared to play and taken off the injury report prior to Thursday’s game, there’s a chance that the wideout still felt lingering effects of that issue which affected his performance.
Brown played 54 of 62 possible snaps in Week 1. He ran 22 routes and was, of course, only targeted on one of those (see the attached route chart below). As the team’s alpha receiver, it’s concerning that he wasn’t a schemed-in part of the game plan, but it’s even more troubling that Brown didn’t win a single route this past week for the first time in his entire career. That 0.0% success rate feels like it can only be explained by lingering pain from his prior hamstring injury factoring in with excellent coverage.
The verdict
Week 1 served as a brutal beginning to the season for an established name such as Brown, and while there’s reason for concern regarding his involvement and health moving forward, it’s not significant enough to deserve panic yet. After all, he just averaged 16.7 FPPG in PPR formats in a run-heavy Eagles offense last season while garnering 67 catches for 1,079 yards and seven touchdowns in just 13 games. Brown also saw 97 targets in those regular-season contests, an average of 7.46 opportunities per outing.
Not only does he remain the best receiver in Philadelphia, but Brown still deserves love as one of the top players at his position in the entire NFL. Since the trade which sent him to the Eagles three seasons ago, his 92.7 PFF grade ranks second-best among all wideouts behind only Tyreek Hill. He also ranked in the 97th percentile at beating man coverage in 2024, as well as 96th percentile against press and 72nd percentile against zone. As a true X receiver who nearly always lines up outside, Brown does his job in excellent fashion.
With that in mind, Week 1 felt like more of an aberration than the norm moving forward. His poor performance may see attribution to a combination of factors, but it’s tough to see him putting forth another outing of that lowly caliber again anytime soon. Brown posted double-digit fantasy points in all but two of his 13 regular-season games last season while playing in a ground-and-pound offense, and those two contests were the only ones in which he saw fewer than five targets.
At the end of the day, Brown is still an elite wide receiver talent who can win a fantasy week almost singlehandedly when at his best. While not the most reliable WR1 compared to the consistency of Amon-Ra St. Brown, for example, now is the time to capitalize and buy low on Brown via trade while you can.
