PHI · WR
DeVonta Smith Fantasy Outlook 2026: WR13 Now That Brown Is Gone
Smith finished WR20 with 77 catches and four touchdowns while splitting targets with A.J. Brown. The projection assumes he absorbs some but not all of the 138 targets Brown leaves behind.
Why the consensus lands at the same receiver range
Our sportsbook-derived board ranks DeVonta Smith 26 overall and WR13 at his position with 222.0 implied PPR points. ESPN has him 34 and the draft room takes him at 50.7. That clustering happens because all three sources are pricing the same question: how much of A.J. Brown's target share does he capture.
Smith finished WR20 last season with 77 receptions, 1,008 yards, and four touchdowns across 17 games. That was 201.8 PPR points at 11.9 per week, with ten games under 10 points and only two clearing 20. He beat his posted receiving yardage line by 157.5 yards and his catch projection by roughly 11, but came in 1.5 touchdowns short.
Brown left 138 targets on the table when he was traded to New England. Smith held a 24% target share last season while playing alongside him. The market is now pricing him at 79.5 receptions and 1,050 receiving yards with 5.5 touchdowns, which assumes he picks up roughly 30 to 35 of those vacated targets but not the full load.
The projection assumes Smith absorbs 30 to 35 of A.J. Brown's 138 vacated targets, but does not specify where the other 100-plus go.
The consistency is real but the ceiling is not
Smith has finished inside the top 30 receivers in per-game scoring in every season since entering the league, and his career 9.1 yards per target is above the positional average. He has played all 17 games in each of the past two years and has never held a target share below 24%, which means the volume floor is real even when the efficiency disappoints.
But the weekly variance last season was severe. He posted only two games above 20 PPR points and ten below 10, with a 33.3-point ceiling in Week 7 and a 1.8-point floor in Week 11. That is the profile of a high-volume receiver on an offense that does not feed him in the red zone consistently, and it is the opposite of what you want in the third or fourth round of a draft.