Juwan Johnson caught eight passes on eight targets for 53 yards and two touchdowns against the Raiders in Week 3, a performance that tied a positional NFL record for combined tight end touchdowns in that game. It is the kind of box score that gets a player added off waivers within an hour of the final whistle. It is also the kind of box score that tells you almost nothing about whether the underlying role can repeat it.
Through three games, Johnson has 15 catches for 173 yards and three touchdowns on 19 targets. Strip out the scoring and what is left is a tight end who is heavily used but not yet proven to be a target-share monster. Three touchdowns on 19 targets is a scoring rate that outstrips what almost any tight end sustains across a full season, and the surrounding personnel picture explains why New Orleans does not need him to keep hitting at that clip for the passing game to function.
The Touchdown Rate Behind the Week 3 Headline
Before the Raiders game, fantasy outlets were already treating Johnson as a low-end TE1 off his first two weeks: 7 catches for 120 yards and 1 touchdown on 11 targets. That is a solid, unspectacular role. The Week 3 explosion is what pushed him into weekly must-start conversation, and it did so almost entirely on touchdown production rather than a leap in target volume — he saw eight targets in that game, not a dramatically higher number than his early-season pace. When touchdowns drive a spike more than targets do, the spike is the part of the profile least likely to hold week to week.
None of this means Johnson is a bad player. He set a career high with 889 receiving yards in 2025, and he has clearly carried real trust into 2026 as the Saints' primary tight end. But last year's role was built with a different quarterback throwing him the ball. Tyler Shough is now the starter, in his first season running this offense, and whatever chemistry the two have shown in practice and in games so far is still a small sample being read as a trend.
What Made Him a TE1 Last Year No Longer Applies Cleanly
Johnson's case for being a locked-in fantasy option rested on two things: being the unquestioned top target at his position in the offense, and doing it without competition strong enough to siphon snaps or red-zone looks. The first condition still holds on paper — he is the Saints' TE1 on the depth chart. The second condition changed materially this offseason, and it is the piece most fantasy managers riding the Week 3 buzz are underweighting.
The Crowded Room Around Him
New Orleans added Noah Fant in free agency in March 2026 and used a third-round pick on Oscar Delp in the April draft, giving Johnson two direct competitors for snaps and targets at his own position where he previously had comparatively light competition. Jack Stoll and Foster Moreau are gone, which opened the room, but Fant and Delp are the players who filled that space back up — not with Johnson's ceiling removed, but with more mouths at the position than he faced during his 2025 career-high season. Johnson's contract was restructured in March 2026 for cap purposes, and reporting through late summer still had him atop the depth chart over Fant and Delp, so the job has not been lost. But a tight end who has to share snaps and red-zone opportunities with two newly added bodies does not carry the same target-share ceiling he did a year ago, even if his name at the top of the depth chart looks unchanged.
The rest of the offense matters just as much. Chris Olave is the clear WR1 in this passing game, and any quarterback building rhythm — which describes Shough, in his first season as the starter — tends to lean on his most established, highest-target-share wide receiver as the offense's primary read before it consistently funnels through a tight end in traffic. Travis Etienne Jr. is the depth chart's lead back, and a functioning rushing attack pulls defensive attention and red-zone touches away from a tight end who scored twice in a game largely because the Raiders' defense broke down near the goal line, not because the Saints are building game plans around him as the first read. Kellen Moore, running the offense as head coach with no separate coordinator clearly identified, has multiple weapons to distribute the ball to, and Johnson is one option among several rather than the singular focal point his touchdown total this week suggests.
The Case for Believing the Breakout, and Where It Falls Short
The strongest argument against selling is usage stability. Johnson has produced in three straight weeks, and the reporting describes him as a deliberate, designed piece of the red-zone and seam passing game rather than an accidental beneficiary of one big play. A tight end who is genuinely the first read near the goal line in a run of games is not a mirage — that is a real, repeatable role, and fantasy outlets already had him rated as a low-end top-12 tight end in points per game before the Raiders game even happened. If Shough continues to trust him specifically in scoring position, three straight weeks of production is not nothing.
The counter to that counter is simple: designed red-zone usage and target monopoly are two different things, and Johnson has the first without clearly having the second anymore. Fant and Delp were brought in for a reason, and that reason was not to sit as inactive depth pieces behind an entrenched starter. Every red-zone snap that goes to Fant or Delp instead of Johnson is a touchdown chance that does not come back to him, and a rookie-class third-rounder and a veteran free-agent addition both represent real competition for exactly the plays that produced his Week 3 line. A touchdown rate this high, sitting on top of a target share that is good but not dominant, is the profile of a player whose weekly floor is unpredictable even if his ceiling stays real.
The Call: Move Him While the Box Score Still Says TE1
Johnson is not a player to bench outright, but he is a player whose current fantasy price is built on a scoring rate that will not survive contact with a deeper tight end room, a new starter still establishing his full range of reads, and two teammates — Olave and Etienne — who represent the offense's more established priorities in the passing and rushing games. The honest projection is a streaky TE1/TE2 border piece who spikes in scripted red-zone weeks and goes quiet in games where the Saints lean on Olave through the air and Etienne on the ground. That is a solid TE2 with upside, not a locked-in top-12 fantasy tight end for the rest of the season.