Fantasy Football: Please Tell Me if Josh Downs is Going to Play on the Outside

Let’s grab the ‘fell for it again’ award by talking about Josh Downs. To kick things off, yes, Downs is 171 pounds. And he’s often landed on the injury report during his three years in the league. Have I convinced you to draft Downs yet? No? Alright, let’s turn to his talent, and maybe I’ll sway you.

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Player Talent

The single most important talent for our fantasy WRs is the ability to get open. If you’re not getting open, you’re not earning targets, and you’re not scoring fantasy points. Unless you’re in a point per route league where Andrei Iosivas would finally shine. The good news for Downs is that he’s been great at getting open in the NFL. He was tied for WR14 in ESPN’s open score last year, which was actually down from the prior year.

Downs lands in the ‘Luther Burden’ cluster of the graph below. He’s not in the elite tier because his catch and YAC scores were below average. But his open score pulls him up among names like Jameson Williams, Garrett Wilson, and Ladd McConkey.

And Reception Perception sees Downs in a similar light. His only route with a poor success rate was the comeback, which accounted for about 2% of his total routes. And Downs’ success rates were in the 82nd percentile against man, 76th against zone, and 96th against press (on a small sample of press routes).

Can Downs Play on the Outside?

I’m fully convinced that Downs is a talented player. But he’s operated as a slot-only, or at best, slot-mostly player since entering the league. The graph below shows the share of a WR’s routes from the outside on the x-axis and their aDoT on those outside routes on the y-axis. And it’s filtered for 350+ routes last year.

Downs had the 2nd-lowest share of outside routes among this sample last year. And he also had the 2nd-lowest aDoT on those routes. Oddly enough, that 15.4% outside route share represents a career high for Downs, up from 14.1% in the prior two years.

The league continues to shift to more TE-heavy sets that are relegating slot WRs to the sideline. In order for Downs to hit a ceiling in 2026, he’s going to have to play outside. Fortunately, that opportunity at least theoretically exists. It’s not like Michael Pittman was running the majority of his routes from the outside, but his route share and aDoT are much less of an outlier relative to Downs’. And Downs crushed on virtually every route in the intermediate and deep areas of the field last year.

With Pittman now in Pittsburgh and Adonai Mitchell on the Jets, Downs seems like the most logical choice to take the outside routes not occupied by Alec Pierce. Shane Steichen’s alternative options are the likes of Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, Ashton Dulin, and Deion Burks. It’s gotta be Downs, right? Right?!?

Here’s a quote from Steichen on Downs’ outside opportunity a few months back. “We will look into that (Josh Downs playing outside), we are going to look into that this offseason and see where that goes. But I do believe he (Josh Downs) can, so we will get those reps in OTAs and training camp and go from there.”

Downs is currently going off the board as the WR45 on 4for4’s Multi-Site ADP and WR43 on Underdog. He’s one of my most-drafted players at the moment. I prefer Downs straight-up over Pierce in this same offense, with Pierce drafted as the WR36. But again, we’ll need Downs to play on the outside to capture his ceiling outcome.

*Cut to my article in Week 2 where Pierce and Dulin easily paced the Colts in routes*

Bottom Line

• Josh Downs has been consistently fantastic at getting open in his career, hitting WR14 in ESPN’s open score and 76th-percentile or better in Reception Perception’s success rates against man, zone, and press in 2025.
• The issue is that he had the 2nd-lowest share of outside routes among similar WRs last year, and the 2nd-lowest aDoT on those routes.
• With both Michael Pittman and Adonai Mitchell shipped off to other teams, the opportunity to expand Downs’ role seems obvious.
• And so, Downs is one of my most-drafted players on Underdog with an ADP of WR43, and the same once managed leagues roll in with an ADP of WR45.
• The main question is what is Shane Steichen’s pain tolerance to watch Ashton Dulin fail continuously on the outside before giving Downs a proper shot?