A.J. Brown has finally been traded to the Patriots: Here's what it means for fantasy and reality
The trade that has been, in my view, pretty obvious to see coming has finally taken place as the Philadelphia Eagles shipped A.J. Brown to the New England Patriots. Brown will reunite with his former Titans head coach, Mike Vrabel, who made no secret of his displeasure with the star wideout being traded from Tennessee to Philadelphia way back in 2022.
Now, the pair will get to chase a Super Bowl as the runner-up Patriots attempt to stave off any regression.
As I’ll outline here, I’m a little hesitant to give up a Round 1 selection for Brown. He’s an aging receiver showing signs of decline, making top-seven-per-year money at the position, and will turn 29 later this month. The fact that it’s a 2028 first-rounder (and a 2027 fifth-rounder) offsets some of my concerns, although there’s a real risk that by the time we arrive to April of that year, there’s a chance Brown isn’t even on the Patriots roster.
Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2026 NFL season
What it means for the Patriots’ WR room
Yet, at the present moment, there’s no doubt that the Patriots needed another playmaker added to the mix. If we assume that Brown is coming in here to take 2025 starter Kayshon Boutte’s X-receiver gig, and he won’t be on the roster much longer — as has been the rumor for months — a receiver room of Romeo Doubs, Mack Hollins, Kyle Williams and DeMario Douglas is not quite up to snuff without another move. Doubs can be a good No. 2 and may even be maximized further as a Z who moves across the formation. He’s developed some good route-running chops in the intermediate area and will likely replace Stefon Diggs’ role as the chain-mover. I really liked Williams as a developmental receiver but he desperately needs a role change after essentially serving as a sacrificial X-receiver and Boutte’s backup as a rookie.
Williams is an ideal separation-based slot and Z receiver who can make plays with the ball in his hands. He can’t be tethered on-ball and running go routes at his size. Guys like Hollins and Douglas aren’t or shouldn’t be full-time options but they are credible role players.
The wide receiver room certainly isn’t hopeless, especially since the team feels very likely to be one of the clear contenders to play more heavy personnel packages in 2026. However, it just needed a high-caliber X-receiver to tie the room together.
What Brown brings to the table
In theory, that is exactly who Brown is. His rate of snaps outside and on the ball — true X-receiver work — have gone up in each of the last two seasons with the Eagles. On paper, he was still quite productive last season, clearing 1,000 yards on 78 receptions with seven touchdowns in 15 games. He averaged 2.09 yards per route run, 15th-best among qualified receivers. It is the lowest mark of his career, as he averaged 2.66 in his previous six seasons and 2.74 from 2022 to 2024 with the Eagles, but still an obviously good mark. His first downs per route run (9.79%) was also a career-low but still ranked 22nd among wideouts with 200-plus routes on the season. This was all done while playing in a poorly-designed passing offense with a route tree that leaned heavily into the static and frankly, somewhat archaic variety.
All that said, I’m a little more concerned about Brown's trajectory than the numbers suggest. In my view, there was a noticeable drop-off in Brown’s ability to separate as a route runner and he wasn’t as impactful as a tackle-breaker in the open field. Brown was the No. 1 performer in success rate vs. man coverage among all players I charted for Reception Perception in 2024. He will not come anywhere near that finish in 2025. It’s worth noting that Brown dealt with injuries throughout the season, and even before it, which may have affected his play in certain sections of the season.
That being said, the lower-body injuries are beginning to add up for Brown at this point in his career. He said prior to the season that he had to get his knee drained twice before each game in 2024 on the way to a Super Bowl win. I think you would be burying your head deep in the sand to not at least raise an eyebrow at the fact that he had the least inspiring output of his career from an efficiency and eye-test standpoint, right after all of that, given his history of maladies. As my colleague Scott Pianowski says, once the cheese starts to go bad, it doesn’t suddenly just get good again. I’m not completely sure we are there yet with Brown but it’s on my radar based on the tape from last season.
Play 2026 Soccer Pick 'Em with FOX One and make your picks for the world's biggest soccer tournament
So, can Brown still produce at an elite level?
Let me be transparent about a few things here. For one, Brown is one of my favorite wide receivers of the last era; I would love for my concern to be misplaced.
I say this often, even with all my detailed work at Reception Perception, forecasting wide receiver aging curves and cliffs is the most challenging part of analyzing this position. We don’t often have clear rules for what comes next when players are in decline — and I’m very confident in saying that Brown is in some level of decline. We just don’t know what will come next: a smooth and graceful dip in the decline phase where a guy can still be productive into his 30s like a Stefon Diggs type, a complete drop off the cliff like Dez Bryant or something in between.
I’m usually a “somewhere in between” type of guy.
Again, in the spirit of radical candor, I am absolutely still wearing the scars of getting what I feel like is a similar situation completely wrong a few years ago with another one of my long-time favorites in Allen Robinson. The former Pro Bowler showed noticeable signs of decline in his final season with the Bears and I didn’t emphasize them enough, even chalking some of it up to displeasure with his situation in Chicago. However, in his age-29 season, after a long history of lower-body injuries, Robinson hit the field for the Los Angeles Rams and was an absolute shell of the player he once was, right as his career intersected with a quality quarterback.
It’s hard not to see some parallels with Brown, who will turn 29 later this month, carrying a litany of knee and lower-body issues, going to play with Drake Maye, who led the NFL in EPA per dropback last season, coming off the first year Brown showed signs of decline on film.
You can certainly write off some of his dip in effectiveness as just a byproduct of his clear and obvious frustration with the Eagles offense, the coaching staff and/or his quarterback, Jalen Hurts. I’m totally open to that being the right answer and given my affinity for Brown, I would prefer it to be correct. Yet, I’m not going to blindly assume that was all that went into it. I’ve made that mistake before.
How to approach Brown in your fantasy drafts
From a bottom-line perspective, I do think that Brown makes the Patriots offense better. Even if he slides into the top boundary role and allows movement for their other players, he increases the potential potency of some of the other pass-catchers. I’d also like to see Brown’s snaps at X even decrease a bit, and since they have someone like Doubs, who credibly played that spot for the Packers the last two years, it should be able to happen. I just don’t know if I trust the pretty traditional Josh McDaniels to pull that off.
As for Brown individually, given the risk of decline, I’m probably going to be a little bearish on his fantasy ranking relative to consensus. I don’t think he’ll make my top-15 players at the position, given the risk that likely won't be priced into his ADP. There are just a few too many young receivers I’ll have ranked in a similar range to chase a 29-year-old with some red flags, going to an offense that was excellent last year but has some regression warning signs in the passing game. If I miss out on an explosive rebirth season from Brown, so be it, and I’ll be happy to have been wrong about one of my favorite receivers of the last decade.
What it means for the Eagles, DeVonta Smith, more
Back in Philadelphia, as I mentioned, this trade, or at least the reality that Brown was not going to be playing with the Eagles in 2026, has been well-known for months now. If any analyst has been discussing the Eagles and even lightly assuming Brown was going to impact the offense from a distribution or construction standpoint … I don’t know what to tell you.
With that, I’ve been higher on consensus or at least aiming to be on DeVonta Smith across all formats; dynasty, best ball, redraft, etc. Smith is currently going off the boards as the WR15 in FantasyPros consensus ADP. That should not move in reaction to Brown moving, assuming that we all already knew he was gone.
Smith is my WR11 at present and someone I would expect to be more productive than Brown this season. While almost everyone understood he would be the team’s No. 1 receiver this season, I don’t think the NFL world really understands just how good Smith can be in that role. As mentioned above, Brown was the No. 1 performer in success rate versus man coverage in 2024 via Reception Perception; the player who ranked second behind him in my charting was none other than Smith. Those skills have been present throughout the course of his football career, both college and pro. He is a high-tier technician who can win at all three receiver positions. Smith is ready to take over WR1 volume and usage.
The best part about Smith’s game is that he can thrive in both styles of offense the Eagles will likely blend in 2026. When they want to live in the spread-and-shred world they’ve operated under for most of the Hurts era, Smith can be a menace from the interior and win vertically when he’s aligned out wide.
However, when (as it's clear they want to do more of) they include more wrinkles from a Shanahan/McVay offshoot offense that Sean Mannion will bring with him from Green Bay, Smith separates extremely well as the X-receiver on big in-breakers off under-center, play-action concepts.
Smith is set up to be the load-bearing player in the Eagles' passing game. Even if Hurts has his flaws, he’s still more than good enough to push a talented player into top-level production when the offense is well-designed. He’s an unknown but I’m relatively confident Mannion will at least be an upgrade in that capacity over what we saw from the 2025 Eagles. Smith is the clear and obvious winner out of this trade.
Other Eagles players are appealing, most notably rookie Makai Lemon. He goes off the board 91st overall and as the WR38. That’s fair enough value for Lemon but there are a good handful of interesting targets in that area. He’s someone to sprinkle in, not hammer in that range. My guess is that he will rotate between the slot and Z-receiver spot with guys like Dontayvion Wicks, who was added to and extended by this team in the offseason. Lemon likely doesn’t project for a monster target share as the WR2 behind Smith, as this offense should still be rather run-oriented.
The Eagles have planned around Brown’s absence all through this offseason. We now know for sure he is gone. The rankings should already have been well adjusted by now.
