Tez Johnson

Where He's Expected to Land

Nova's median outcome for Johnson is about 98 points, 6.48 PPR per game, fringe WR6/7 flex production if everything breaks average, with a 36-point floor and a 166-point ceiling. The range is enormous relative to the median, which is standard for a small slot receiver whose role depends entirely on target distribution that hasn't been set yet. Nova gives him just a 2% shot at a tier-1 season and 6% at tier-2-or-better, this is a bench stash, not a draft-day target, in every format Nova tracks (PPR, Half PPR, Standard, Superflex all land him in the WR200s). His bye is Week 10; playoff schedule (Weeks 15-17) grades out average.

One data note: Nova's live "season pace" widget on his page currently shows a stale in-season tracker (games banked, pace vs. budget) left over from a prior cycle, that's noise before Week 1 has been played and shouldn't be read as real signal. The floor/median/ceiling numbers above are the ones that matter here.

His Nova Season (one year, not three)

Johnson has exactly one NFL season on record, 2025, his rookie year, so there's no three-year trend to chart. Tampa Bay took him 235th overall (seventh round) in the 2025 draft out of Oregon, where he'd transferred after two seasons at Troy. As a rookie he caught 28 passes for 322 yards and 5 touchdowns (11.5 yards/catch) in Todd Bowles' offense. Buried in that modest final line is a real hot streak: from Weeks 5 through 12, Johnson posted 22 catches for 274 yards and all 5 of his touchdowns over a seven-game stretch, per FantasyData, meaning his usage clearly spiked mid-season before cooling off again. That's a real signal for a seventh-round rookie: the team found a package that worked for a few months. Whether it survives a coaching change is this whole profile's swing question.

What Changed for Him This Offseason

Nothing changed about Johnson's own situation, no injury, no contract news, no depth-chart demotion. At 5-foot-10, 165 pounds, he's entering year two in the same slot/gadget role he carved out as a rookie. Buccaneers.com's July 2026 training camp preview called his 2025 debut "one of the better rookie seasons ever for a Buccaneers' seventh-round draft pick," which is a low bar cleared with real juice, 5 touchdowns on 28 catches is a 17.9% TD rate, well above what usage alone would predict.

What Changed Around Him

This is where the profile actually lives. Two changes reshape his target math:

Mike Evans left Tampa Bay. After 12 seasons and every receiving record in franchise history, Evans hit free agency and signed with San Francisco this offseason (Buccaneers.com, Mar. 9, 2026; NFL.com, Feb. 17, 2026). That's the team's leading target-earner for over a decade, gone. Someone inherits those looks, Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan are the obvious first answers, but a receiver room that also includes Johnson and rookie Ted Hurst III has more available volume in it than it did a year ago.

New offensive coordinator. Tampa Bay fired Josh Grizzard after a single season as OC and hired Zac Robinson away from Atlanta's staff (NFL.com, Jan. 8, 2026; Field Level Media, Jan. 2026). Robinson inherits Baker Mayfield and a receiver corps mid-transition; SI's Bucs beat called the hire more about scheme continuity than a fresh system, which cuts both ways for Johnson, a similar shell means his existing usage patterns (the slot/motion role that produced his Week 5-12 stretch) are more likely to carry over than get scrapped.

What They're Saying

Pewter Report's July 2026 training-camp checklist framed Johnson's job simply: "Master the playbook," noting he "hit the ground running last year as a rookie receiver" with five touchdown catches on limited volume. Bucs Nation's post-draft depth chart piece (Apr. 29, 2026) described him as "tiny but useful as someone who can separate from man coverage and make some splash plays", usage language, not hype language, which tracks with a player whose role is real but still unproven at scale.

The Buzz

Coverage here is thin, which is normal for a WR ranked outside the top 200, there isn't a wave of social sentiment to report on Johnson specifically. The relevant crowd conversation is happening one level up, around who absorbs Mike Evans' vacated targets. Johnson isn't part of that conversation yet. That's not necessarily bad news for value; it means whatever role he wins in camp will be underpriced on redraft boards that haven't caught up.

Swing Factors

• Target-tree math after Evans (+30 pts): even a modest share of Evans' departed volume moves Johnson materially off his 98-point median.
• Robinson's scheme carryover (±20 pts): if the new staff keeps the packages that produced his Weeks 5-12 stretch, his floor rises; if it's scrapped for a more traditional route tree that favors bigger bodies, his ceiling shrinks.
• Camp/roster crunch (−15 pts): a 165-pound slot receiver with one non-elite season is exactly the profile that loses reps to a healthy Godwin or a fast-developing rookie.

If Everything Goes Right / If Everything Goes Wrong

If everything goes right: Robinson's offense keeps funneling movement-based targets to the slot, Godwin and McMillan soak up the outside work Evans leaves behind, and Johnson settles into a real 60-70 target season built on the same red-zone knack he flashed as a rookie. Nova's simulation already sees this outcome at the 90th percentile, roughly 166 points, a real bench-flex payoff. That tier-1 season is still just a 2% bet, but the ceiling case isn't fantasy.

If everything goes wrong: the new staff leans on Godwin, McMillan and the rookie class, Johnson's snaps shrink back toward gadget-package-only, and he settles near his 36-point floor, replacement-level production that never sniffs a starting lineup. Given his one-year sample and a −63.9 VORP, this is the higher-probability outcome; Nova's median (98 points, WR59-115) already prices in more downside than upside.

Nova's Edge

The edge here isn't a divergence call, there's no market price to diverge from yet. The edge is that Nova already has a number on a player who currently has none, and that number (WR59-115, 2% tier-1) is a useful anchor before the fantasy industry's consensus rankings catch up to the post-Evans target reshuffle in Tampa Bay. When FantasyPros and ADP data populate for Johnson later this summer, the interesting comparison will be whether the room prices in the vacated volume faster than Nova already has.

The Bottom Line

Johnson is a late-round dart or waiver-priority stash, not a draft-day plan, Nova's own range (WR59-115, −63.9 VORP) makes that explicit. He's droppable in shallow leagues and a watch-only in medium ones until training camp clarifies who actually absorbs Mike Evans' targets. In deeper PPR/best-ball formats where a 5-touchdown, 17.9%-TD-rate rookie season with a real mid-year usage spike is worth banking cheaply, he's a fine last-round or free-agent-pool add. The gradeable claim: if Tampa Bay's slot usage from Weeks 5-12 of 2025 survives the coaching change, Johnson clears his 98-point median: if it doesn't, he lands closer to his 36-point floor than his ceiling.