Lemon has 25 catches for 194 yards and a touchdown through seven games, and he is on the field for about three of every four offensive snaps by one estimate. Among the first-round receivers in his class who have played, he is last in yards per game, per catch and per target.
Game numbers are from ESPN's game logs, checked against NFL.com for Lemon. ESPN's totals row lists 37 targets, but its seven game rows and nflverse play-by-play data both add up to 36, which is the figure we use. Snap shares are Over the Cap's estimates. Target depth is Next Gen Stats, which lists only players with five or more targets in a week. Every comparison and rate marked as ours is Negadelphia arithmetic. Seven games is a small sample, and we did not separate the data by quarterback.*
Lemon won the Biletnikoff Award at USC last season, the Eagles reported, and the club traded up for him. According to Eagles.com, Philadelphia sent picks No. 23, 114 and 137 to Dallas for No. 20 and a 2027 seventh-round pick. Over the Cap lists his contract at $20,810,386 over four years, all of it guaranteed, an average of $5,202,597 a year.
ESPN's game log has him at 25 catches on 36 targets for 194 yards and one touchdown. That is a catch rate of 69.4 percent by our math. His best game was the most recent one. Against Dallas on Monday night, Oct. 26, he caught seven of eight targets for 67 yards and his first NFL touchdown. Eagles Wire reported that DeVonta Smith and Dontayvion Wicks were both kept out of that game by injuries.
The trend is up, to be fair. Our math from the game log: in September he had 7 catches for 38 yards on 9 targets, or 4.2 yards per target. In October he has 18 catches for 156 yards on 27 targets, or 5.8. His targets have run 6, 7, 6 and 8 in the last four games.
Over the Cap's snap table estimates that Lemon has played 325 offensive snaps, 74.9 percent of the Eagles' total. NFL.com lists him with two starts in seven games. So playing time doesn't explain the yardage.
The same table puts the other first-round receivers at 82.5 percent for Carnell Tate of Tennessee (329 snaps), 69.6 percent for KC Concepcion of Cleveland (309) and 21.9 percent for Omar Cooper Jr. of the Jets (94). It lists no 2026 figure for Jordyn Tyson of New Orleans.
ESPN's draft record shows five receivers among the 32 first-round picks: Tate at No. 4, Tyson at No. 8, Lemon at No. 20, Concepcion at No. 24 and Cooper at No. 30. ESPN's game log has no 2026 games for Tyson, and ESPN's Saints roster lists him on injured reserve as of Oct. 21, so he is out of the comparison.
The other three have the following lines in ESPN's game logs. Tate has 34 catches on 51 targets for 413 yards and a touchdown in seven games. Concepcion has 30 on 45 for 315 and no touchdowns in seven. Cooper has 12 on 13 for 248 and two touchdowns in three games.
Our math puts Lemon at 27.7 yards per game, against 45.0 for Concepcion, 59.0 for Tate and 82.7 for Cooper. His 7.8 yards per catch compares with 10.5, 12.1 and 20.7. His 5.4 yards per target compares with 7.0, 8.1 and 19.1. His longest catch of the year is 21 yards. Concepcion's is 32, Tate's is 33 and Cooper's is 60.
One number runs the other way. Lemon catches 69.4 percent of his targets, ahead of Tate and Concepcion at 66.7 percent each. Cooper has caught 12 of 13.
The comparison has limits. Cooper has played three games and has 13 targets. Tate went 16 picks earlier. The four players have different roles and different quarterbacks, and the sample is seven games.
Lemon is last of the four in every yardage rate we computed, and the catch rate says it's not about hands. So what is it? The depth data points the same way. Next Gen Stats lists his average intended air yards at 6.3 in week 4, 3.5 in week 5, 5.3 in week 6 and 4.6 in week 7. Weighted by targets, that is 4.9 over 27 targets. Next Gen Stats does not list his nine targets from weeks 1 to 3 because he had fewer than five in each.
Weighted the same way, our math has Tate at 11.8 over 51 targets, Concepcion at 7.5 over 44 and Cooper at 11.1 over 12. Across every wide receiver row Next Gen Stats lists for weeks 1 to 7, 364 rows and 2,864 targets, the weighted figure is 11.1. That league figure is ours, and it leans toward high-volume receivers because of the five-target cutoff. Next Gen Stats tags Lemon as a slot receiver in weeks 4, 6 and 7 and as a wide receiver in week 5.
Opinion: Lemon is catching the ball he's thrown. The ball just isn't going very far. Is that the player, the plan or the quarterback? Seven games can't separate them, and the data we pulled doesn't show routes, coverage or which quarterback threw each target. Tanner McKee is set to make his third straight start Sunday, Eagles Wire reported. The Eagles are 2-5 after five straight losses.
Dallas is the case for the other side. His 67 yards and his touchdown came in the game Smith and Wicks missed, and Next Gen Stats measured his average separation at 3.6 yards that night, the highest of his four listed weeks (2.7, 1.6 and 2.7 before it).
The Eagles play at Washington on Sunday at 8:20 p.m. ET. The Eagles' official injury report, published on philadelphiaeagles.com on Friday, Oct. 30, at 3:51 p.m. ET, lists Smith (hamstring) and Wicks (ankle) as Out for the game, with no participation in practice on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. With both listed as Out, Sunday shows whether Dallas was a one-game result.
The benchmarks are ours. Over his next three games, an average intended air yards above his current 4.9 and yards per target above his season 5.4 would show the depth is changing. Staying at 3 to 5 air yards with the same yield would say the depth has not changed. Either result would say more than seven games can.
As of 10:30 a.m. ET, Jordan Mailata is still an Eagle, and no major insider has reported talks. You're refreshing Schefter anyway, because yesterday Howie Roseman traded Jordan Davis, eight months after a $78 million extension. The number still holding Mailata is not a promise. It is about $45.3 million in dead cap, per Spotrac.
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Jordan Davis went yesterday. By 4pm, Howie decides how much further this goes.
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