• Kellen Moore’s offense could benefit Chris Olave: Moore’s offense has put an emphasis on slot receivers, which translates to fantasy points. Olave could be the primary slot receiver for the New Orleans Saints this season.
• Olave’s concussion history makes him a significant risk: Olave’s 2024 season ended after he suffered two concussions over a short period of time. He suffered three others previously in his career, putting him at risk of missing significant time or potentially retiring if he suffers another concussion.
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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

PFF’s Fantasy Football Player Profile series delivers the most in-depth fantasy football analysis available for the 2025 season.

Using PFF’s exclusive data, we evaluate player performance, competition for touches and how teammates and coaching staffs

Last updated: 7:15 a.m. Sunday, May 25

Player performance

Olave was the 11th overall pick of the 2022 NFL Draft for a Saints team with Michael Thomas returning from injury and free agent addition Jarvis Landry as starters. Olave started in Week 2, Thomas was out by Week 4, and Landry missed a lot of the season due to injury. This made Olave the clear top receiving option on the team, finishing with 1,042 receiving yards while catching passes from Andy Dalton, which was double the next closest receiver on the team. He accomplished this despite missing two games, and one miss was due to having the second concussion of his career, which followed one when he was at Ohio State.

Olave’s numbers were remarkably similar in 2023 despite a change in quarterbacks to Derek Carr. His routes per game increased, but his target rate decreased. This left his efficiency down a little bit, but the increase in routes per game led to more total targets, more receptions, more receiving yards, one more touchdown and a move up to 19th in fantasy points per game. Olave missed one game due to an ankle injury, but he also suffered the third concussion of his career and was able to return the following game.

The Saints won the first two games of 2024 with a combined score of 91-29. In Week 1, five other players scored touchdowns while Olave played the role of a decoy. In Week 2, he caught four passes for 81 yards, but his playing time and routes run were relatively low due to the blowout. Olave was fine over the next three weeks with 16 receptions for 183 yards and a touchdown. He suffered a concussion after two snaps in Week 6, forcing him to miss Week 7. He returned in Week 8, totaling eight receptions for 107 yards. He suffered another concussion after eight snaps in 2024, and the Saints shut Olave down for the rest of the season.

All Olave per-game stats should be taken with a grain of salt, considering he left with a concussion after one reception in 25% of his games, and another 25% were blowouts in the Saints’ favor. In his four normal games, he averaged 14.7 PPR points per game, which would have been a career-high. One big concern is if he suffers another concussion. That would be his sixth documented case, which could be a season-ender or career-ender.

His 25.4% target rate over the last three seasons is eighth-best among all wide receivers, while his 2.21 yards per route run is ninth-best.

Projected role

Olave’s role was consistent in the first two seasons as the Saints’ Z receiver. In 2024, without Michael Thomas on the roster, the Saints shifted Olave more to the X receiver role, while Rashid Shaheed played the Z and Cedrick Wilson Jr. was in the slot. The change left Olave as the first read on targets much less, and he had a much lower target rate.

The Saints had five other wide receivers who earned significant playing time, and the only one who left the team was Marquez Valdes-Scantling, who is now with the Seattle Seahawks. In his place, the Saints brought back veteran Brandin Cooks, who started his career with the Saints and played with them from 2014-2016.

The Saints’ tight end and running back rooms remained largely the same as the last few seasons. This means Olave should be the clear top option in the passing game. Even if Rashid Shaheed recovers from his injury from last season and takes his level of play to another level, there should be plenty of targets for Olave and Shaheed.

Impact of teammates

The Saints brought in Kellen Moore as their new head coach. His offenses tend to throw to wide receivers at high rates, despite having some great receiving running backs, so that’s also good news for the wide receivers and bad news for Alvin Kamara.

Over the last three seasons, Moore’s primary slot receiver has averaged between 15.3 and 21.5 PPR points per game. His six primary outside receivers in three receiver sets have largely been unrosterable in fantasy, but the major exception was A.J. Brown last season. Shaheed is a better second option than his other options with the Los Angeles Chargers or Dallas Cowboys in 2022, so ideally, both will be valuable. The question is who will play in the slot. 

Both Olave and Shaheed have similar measurables to each other. The Saints’ wide receivers are generally shorter, smaller and faster than the wide receivers Moore is used to, outside of DeVonta Smith last season. Both receivers have plenty of experience in the slot in recent seasons. Shaheed has 2.27 yards per route run when lined up out wide compared to 1.49 in the slot, while Olave has 2.23 in the slot compared to 2.16 out wide. This could make Olave the favorite for slot work.

While Olave’s concussion history is the biggest concern, the quarterback situation is the next biggest. Derek Carr announced his retirement, although he technically remains on the Saints roster. New Orleans drafted Tyler Shough in the second round, and he will compete with Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener for the starting job. On paper, this is the worst quarterback situation in the NFL. All three quarterbacks have an average to bad targeted attempts per dropback rate, which isn’t great for the wide receivers. However, if Olave takes the slot role, he could see a lot of low average depth of target passes, where the quality of the quarterback doesn’t matter as much.

Bottom line

Olave has the talent to be a top-15 fantasy option, as new head coach Kellen Moore could help him thrive. However, the quarterback situation is far from ideal, and Olave’s concussion history is a serious concern, making him more likely to suffer a season-ending injury than most players.

Footnotes

• Statistics in tables and charts were chosen based on their ability to predict future fantasy performance on a per-game or per-opportunity basis or to describe the player relative to others at the same position.
• “Opportunities” are defined as passing dropbacks, rushing attempts and routes run as a receiver.
• Numbers are provided either by season or based on the past three years. For rookies, only college statistics are included. For non-rookies, only NFL statistics are considered, regardless of whether they played in college within the previous three years.
• As college competition is easier than NFL competition, most rookies are likely to see a decline from their historical numbers.
• Only FBS data is considered for college players and comparisons.
• Kneel-downs are removed from rushing data to provide cleaner quarterback rushing rate statistics.
• The table colors in this article range from blue (indicating good/high) to red (indicating bad/low).
• All percentiles and color codings compare the given player to others with a high sample of opportunities. Generally, the cutoff is one-third of the possible opportunities in the sample. If a player does not meet the threshold, they are still included in the comparison, though their results may appear better or worse than expected due to the smaller, less predictive sample size.
• Information on utilization classifications and their importance can be found here for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.