{"id":139384,"date":"2025-06-18T10:35:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T10:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/139384\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T10:35:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T10:35:17","slug":"fox-sports-picks-theo-johnson-as-2025-breakout-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/139384\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox Sports picks Theo Johnson as 2025 breakout candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fox Sports picks Theo Johnson as 2025 breakout candidate<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to the Giants&#8217; offense, it&#8217;s no secret that Malik Nabers is the No. 1 option in the passing game.<\/p>\n<p>But who might step up this season as the next top option?<\/p>\n<p>According to <a class=\"nfl-o-cta--link nfl-o-cta--underline\" style=\"word-break: break-word\" href=\"https:\/\/www.foxsports.com\/stories\/nfl\/nfl-breakout-candidates-one-player-from-each-nfc-team-primed-make-leap-2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Fox Sports&#8217; David Helman<\/a>, it could be tight end Theo Johnson.<\/p>\n<p>Helman recently chose a breakout candidate from each team across the league, and when it came to the Giants, he went with the second-year tight end.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Fun as he might be, you can&#8217;t build the entire plane out of Malik Nabers,&#8221; wrote Helman. &#8220;He&#8217;s a bona fide star and he&#8217;s going to catch 100 balls this year, but Russell Wilson will need to find at least one or two other reliable targets. Johnson just might fit the bill after a promising rookie season. This is a dude with far better speed and athleticism than his 264-pound frame might suggest, and he&#8217;s shown the ability to stretch the field down the seam. Pat Freiermuth led the Steelers in receptions last season, so I don&#8217;t think Wilson will struggle to get him the ball if he lives up to his rookie potential.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Johnson finished his rookie season with 29 receptions for 331 yards and a touchdown across just 12 games. The yards ranked third among rookie tight ends, while his 29 receptions ranked fourth.<\/p>\n<p>The young tight end was starting to pick things up before suffering his season-ending foot injury on Thanksgiving. Johnson registered 35+ receiving yards in each of his last five games, including a season-high five receptions for 54 yards in his final outing.<\/p>\n<p>The 6-foot-6 tight end had compiled 50+ receiving yards in two of his final four contests.<\/p>\n<p>As the article states, Pittsburgh&#8217;s Pat Freiermuth put together the best season of his NFL career last year with Wilson under center for most of it. The Steelers tight end finished with a team-high 65 receptions, which was also a new personal high mark for Freiermuth, for 653 yards and seven touchdowns. Of those stats, 43 receptions for 459 yards and five touchdowns came from Wilson in his 11 starts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fox Sports picks Theo Johnson as 2025 breakout candidate When it comes to the Giants&#8217; offense, it&#8217;s no&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2067],"tags":[7,519,8008,347,1917,56,2321,2469,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-139384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-giants","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-giants-now","11":"tag-homepage","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-giants","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkgiants","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114703926930121325","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}