RELATED: See all of our 2026 Player Spotlights here
The Case in Brief
A year after injuries cost him nine games and dropped him to WR93, Chris Olave bounced back with the finest season of his career: 100 receptions, 1,163 yards, and nine touchdowns, earning his first All-Pro nod and a WR6 fantasy finish. In doing so, he became only the second player in Saints history to cross the 100-catch threshold in a single season, finishing just one touchdown shy of the franchise's first-ever 100-1,000-10 campaign. He enters 2026 playing on his $15.5 million fifth-year option with active extension talks underway. Following Drake London’s massive extension, a long-term contract north of $35 million annually has become the realistic baseline.
DON'T MISS OUT: Sign up for our free, daily newsletter here.
And yet the market hasn't fully bought in. His ADP sits at 29th overall and WR12. That's a half-tier too low. Olave profiles as a safe WR1 with top-eight upside firmly within reach, thanks to the massive target volume the New Orleans passing attack funnels his way. While touchdown regression and his underlying medical history remain genuine risks, they are already fully priced into his draft capital, making them poor reasons to fade a true alpha.
The Tyler Shough Effect
Olave's production splits sharply by quarterback. He spent his first two-plus seasons catching passes from Derek Carr and a rotating cast. The connection that changed his trajectory was with last year's rookie Tyler Shough, who took over midway through 2025. In the nine games Shough started, Olave averaged 5.6 catches and 73.6 receiving yards per game (a 95-catch, 1,250-yard pace over a full season) and caught five touchdowns. It had taken 21 games with Carr to accumulate those same five scores.
| Split | Rec/G | Rec Yds/G | Rec TD | Full-season (17-game) pace |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| With Tyler Shough (9 G) | 5.6 | 73.6 | 5 | ~95 rec / 1,251 yds / ~9 TD |
This is not a case of a receiver getting lucky while being carried by a game-manager. Shough was the real deal as a rookie: he led the NFL in third-down passer rating (103.3) and third-down completion percentage (67.6%), paced the league on intermediate throws in the 10-to-19-yard range (67.9% completion, 118.5 rating), and averaged 7.6 yards per attempt against a 7.0 league average en route to finishing as the runner-up for Offensive Rookie of the Year.
The two spent a chunk of the offseason working together, and Shough opened OTAs raving that Olave's speed and change of direction were the best he had ever seen from him. For a player whose value is so quarterback-dependent, the setup could positions. Now, Shough is the unquestioned starter with a full offseason as the established No. 1 for the first time, and both the coordinator and quarterbacks coach who developed him are returning. Continuity is exactly what this pairing wanted.