Tee Higgins Fantasy Outlook 2026: 21 Touchdowns In Two Years, Drafted Like A Risk

What the missed games obscure

Tee Higgins played 15 games in 2025 and finished as the 15th receiver in fantasy with 211.6 PPR points and 14.1 per game. The year before he played 12 games and finished 18th. Both finishes sound middling until you account for the games he did not play.

On a per-game basis he ranked 14th this season and 16th the year prior. The production when healthy has been stable WR1 territory for two straight years, and the reason his overall finish looks worse is just that he was not on the field for roughly a third of each season.

The sportsbooks posted him at 7.5 receiving touchdowns, 975.5 receiving yards, and 81.27 receptions going into 2025. He beat the touchdown line by 3.5, posting 11 scores in 15 games. He fell short on the yardage line by 129 yards with 846, and he missed the receptions projection by 22 with 59 catches. The profile is clear: he is scoring at an elite rate and not delivering the volume elsewhere.

He has scored 21 touchdowns in 27 games played across two seasons, yet drafters wait until pick 58 to claim him.

The two-year touchdown rate is not variance

Across the past two seasons Higgins has scored 21 touchdowns in 27 games played. That is a touchdown every 1.29 games, which projects to 13 touchdowns over a full 17-game season. Only three receivers in the league saw more end-zone targets than he did over that span, and he converted them at a rate that suggests the efficiency is repeatable.

The mechanism is Cincinnati's red-zone scheme. The Bengals feed their outside receivers in scoring position, and when Higgins is healthy he commands the plurality of those looks. That is not a game-script accident and it is not a small-sample fluke—it is two full seasons of evidence that he is the primary end-zone option in an offense that passes near the goal line.