Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown wants fantasy managers to know it’s okay if you don’t keep him in your starting lineup.
Appearing on a Twitch stream with Janky Rondo (h/t Eagles Nation), Brown actually said “get rid of me” if he is on your fantasy roster.
While that is an extreme measure because Brown’s name recognition makes him too valuable to simply drop, the idea of benching him is one that’s getting increasingly harder to ignore.
Brown is currently the No. 39 fantasy wide receiver in PPR leagues, but even that might be overstating how impactful he has been through 10 weeks.
Here are Brown’s week-to-week rankings in fantasy through his first eight starts:
This is about as close to all-or-nothing as a player can get, with a lot of games closer to “nothing” on that list. Even one of the games when he put up big numbers, Week 7 against the Minnesota Vikings, he was only targeted six times. There’s still big-play potential because he turned those six targets into four catches for 121 yards and two scores.
But the volume of looks Brown is getting right now is alarming. His 6.8 targets per game this season is on pace to be his fewest since he was a rookie in 2019 (5.3). He got at least 7.5 targets per game in every season from 2020 to ’24.
Brown is also on pace to average career-lows in catch percentage (51.0), yards per reception (13.2) success rate (48.1 percent) and yards per target (7.6).
Despite all of those numbers, I would still say it’s not yet time to bench Brown. The Eagles’ next three games are against the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bears.
The Cowboys and Bears, in particular, are measuring stick games for how bad this season could get for Brown. They are two of the bottom seven defenses in the NFL in passing yards allowed per game and passing touchdowns allowed.
If Brown is unable to do anything against either of those defenses, then you can listen to him and put him on your fantasy bench without thinking twice.
After the Bears game, there is just one more week before the fantasy playoffs start in Week 15. You can’t afford to risk having potential dud games in those late-season matchups as you chase glory in your league.
