What could Dyami Brown do for Washington in 2026?

April 6, 2026

by Steve Thomas

In case you didn’t notice, Washington re-signed wide receiver Dyami Brown two weeks ago.  It seemed to me as though this signing went a little under the radar amongst the fanbase, so it therefore might be a perfect topic in which to dive this week.  Can Brown make a difference to Washington’s offense, in particular for Jayden Daniels?  I suspect that Brown will have a bigger impact than it might seem at first given his contract.  My colleague on The Hog Sty Podcast, Dave Earl, mentioned this possibility on the show back when Brown was drafted.  So, let’s get into it.

Brown was drafted by Washington in the third round of the 2021 draft, under the Ron Rivera administration.  He spent 4 years with Washington before signing a 1 year, $10M contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars.  Brown has now returned to Washington on a 1 year, $1.75M deal with $250K guaranteed.

I’ll start with some basic numbers: Brown is 6’0” and approximately 195 pounds.  At his Pro Day during the 2021 draft process, he ran the 40 yard dash in 4.44 seconds, jumped 35.5 inches in the vertical leap and 10’8” in the standing broad jump.  Those numbers are good, but not “off the charts” impressive by NFL receiver standards.  These numbers also tell me that, contrary to some initial belief, Brown isn’t actually a prototypical slot-based deep threat.  At 6’0”, he isn’t tiny, and his 4.44 second 40 yard dash time is good, but not great for that role.

In his five year career, he has posted the following numbers:

• 77 games, 16 starts, 139 targets, 79 receptions, 1011 yards, 5 touchdowns, 56.8% catch percentage, 12.8 yards per reception, 7.3 yards per target, 4.9 yards after catch per reception, 7.2% drop percentage, 13.9 yards average depth per target

Now, let’s compare these same stats for each year of Brown’s career:

• 2021: 15 games, 6 starts, 25 targets, 12 receptions, 165 yards, 0 touchdowns, 48.0% catch percentage, 13.8 yards per reception, 6.6 yards per target, 2.8 yards after catch per reception, 4.0% drop percentage, 15.2 yards average depth per target
• 2022: 15 games, 0 starts, 14 targets, 5 receptions, 143 yards, 2 touchdowns, 35.7% catch percentage, 28.6 yards per reception, 10.2 yards per target, 6.2 yards after catch per reception, 0.0% drop percentage, 25.8 yards average depth per target
• 2023: 17 games, 1 start, 23 targets, 12 receptions, 168 yards, 1 touchdown, 52.2% catch percentage, 14.0 yards per reception, 7.3 yards per target, 6.3 yards after catch per reception, 8.7% drop percentage, 16.8 yards average depth per target
• 2024: 16 games, 3 starts, 40 targets, 30 receptions, 308 yards, 1 touchdown, 75.0% catch percentage, 10.3 yards per reception, 7.7 yards per target, 7.3 yards after catch per reception, 5.0% drop percentage, 7.1 yards average depth per target
• 2025: 14 games, 6 starts, 37 targets, 20 receptions, 227 yards, 1 touchdown, 54.1% catch percentage, 11.4 yards per reception, 6.1 yards per target, 1.6 yards after catch per reception, 13.5% drop percentage, 14.0 yards average depth per target

First, as a whole, Brown’s career stats are not particularly impressive.  He’s been a backup receiver, and his number of targets and receptions are on par with that reality.  The one number that is out of the ordinary is average depth per target.  Brown’s 13.9 yards is tied for 12th highest in the NFL for receivers between 2021 and 2025 who had more than 100 targets.

Brown’s individual season results from 2021 through 2023 are not that useful given that the team was under a completely different coaching staff; furthermore, his usage levels were so low in those years that the data doesn’t mean much in terms of statistical relevance.  I think the most relevant comparisons are between 2024 and 2025 given that Jayden Daniels was drafted in 2024.

2024 was the first year in which Brown actually got a few more targets and receptions.  40 targets equates to a little less than 2.4 per game.  That isn’t a ton, but it’s a bit more regular than Brown saw in the previous 3 seasons.  More importantly, his catch percentage went way up, to 75%.  That’s certainly attributed in part to the fact that Washington had a successful quarterback, Jayden Daniels, for the first time since Brown was drafted.  However, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Brown’s average depth per target plummeted from 16.8 in 2023 to just 7.1 in 2024.  That is almost certainly tied to his higher catch percentage.

In other words, part of Brown’s improvement in 2024 appears to be that he was being targeted on much shorter throws from Daniels, thereby making him more effective.  As a point of comparison, NFL legend Desean Jackson – who is certainly one of the most dangerous downfield threats in modern NFL history – averaged 18.3 yards in average depth per target from 2018 – 2022, which is as far back as this stat was tracked.  I suspect that if average depth per target was available for the earlier portion of Jackson’s career, then it would have also been at least that high, if not higher.

The truth is that Brown may be more of a traditional receiver than anyone realized, and when Daniels started using him in this fashion, his stats improved.  What appears to have happened as a result is that Brown showed enough possibilities in 2024 that Jacksonville was willing to give him a 1 year deal of fairly significant size in the hopes that he could build on 2024’s results.

Unfortunately for Brown, things simply didn’t work for him with the Jaguars in 2025.  He suffered injuries, including both a shoulder injury in week 3 and a concussion in week 9.  He was cleared to play in week 10, but only had 1 target the rest of the year, that coming in the last week of the season.

The point here is that Jayden Daniels has been able to get more out of Brown than any other quarterback, in part because Daniels was just better than his predecessors in Washington.  However, certainly the Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence is at Daniels’ level, or maybe even better, but it didn’t work for Brown in that situation.  Therefore, it isn’t surprising that Brown chose to return to Washington on a much smaller contract in order to play with the one quarterback who was able to make Brown more productive.  Brown clearly hopes to revive his NFL career by returning to the one player who got the most out of him.

What can we expect from Brown next year?  Hopefully more of what we saw two seasons ago, meaning that Brown becomes an integral part of the offense and is able to post reasonably high stats, as he did in 2024.  Brown clearly is more than just a downfield threat – in fact, given his physical attributes and statistical history, I don’t think that is even the best part of his game.  Considering the depths to which Washington’s receiver group plummeted last season – with Terry McLaurin out much of the year and then not particularly effective for other stretches, it was Deebo Samuel and a bunch of mostly unknown street free agents – Brown could possibly play a big role for the offense.  Assuming the team doesn’t draft a receiver in round 1, then Brown, along with someone like Treylon Burks, and a good receiving threat at tight end in Chigozeim Okonkwo, might be able to stabilize this receiving group and give Daniels a solid group of targets.

What are your thoughts?  Feel free to discuss this in the comment section.