• Inconsistent target rate emerged: Michael Wilson‘s first two seasons with the Arizona Cardinals showcased his ability as a starter, but he consistently struggled to command a high target share, remaining around 14% each year.
• Third season potential remains: In 2025, Wilson’s fantasy relevance will depend on both his personal growth and the overall improvement of the Cardinals‘ offense.
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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. Saturday, June 21

Player performance

Michael Wilson was a third-round pick by the Arizona Cardinals in 2023, where he instantly became the starter opposite Hollywood Brown, while Rondale Moore and Greg Dortch shared time in the slot. After a quiet Week 1 where he played over 90% of the Cardinals’ offensive snaps, they started to reduce his playing time. He responded with several big plays, leading to three receptions for 56 yards in Week 2, two receptions for 86 yards in Week 3 and seven receptions for 76 yards and two touchdowns in Week 4. From that point on, he played at least 75% of Arizona’s offensive snaps in every game he was healthy the rest of the season.

Unfortunately, his target rate remained low, leading to inconsistent fantasy results. A shoulder injury cost him four games, and he didn’t earn a reception in his first two games back. He at least ended the season on a positive note, catching a touchdown in Week 17 and hauling in six receptions for 95 yards in Week 18.

The Cardinals didn’t re-sign Brown but drafted Marvin Harrison Jr. as their new top receiver. This left Wilson’s role unchanged at the start of the season. As the season progressed, they stopped relying on Dortch as much in the slot and gave free-agent addition Zay Jones more playing time. This moved Wilson to the slot more often, but this didn’t necessarily help his production. He only had one game in the season with more than five receptions and was held to two receptions or fewer in over half of his games.

The move to more slot snaps lowered his average depth of target. His routes per game and target rate were nearly identical to last season. His catch rate increased slightly, but his yards per reception notably decreased. This led to fewer yards per route run and, ultimately, less fantasy production.

Projected role

The Cardinals made minimal changes to their offense, focusing nearly all of their offseason on defense. The top four wide receivers on the depth chart remain identical to last season, which is the same for the top of the running back and wide receiver room. This means we will likely still see Wilson in a full-time capacity.

He will likely remain third on the priority order in the passing game. Trey McBride is among the top tier of tight ends and will maintain a high target rate. Marvin Harrison Jr. will ideally take a step forward this season. It is difficult for a team to keep three fantasy-relevant receivers. A team like the San Francisco 49ers has been an exception with Brandon Aiyuk, Deebo Samuel and George Kittle, but that has only worked when the 49ers are among the top offenses in the league. In order for the Cardinals to be similar, both the team has to improve, as does Wilson.

Impact of teammates

Wilson will be in Drew Petzing’s offense for a third-straight season and again will be catching passes from Kyler Murray. This has been more negative than positive, as the Cardinals have more of a run-first offense. They haven’t thrown to wide receivers as much as most teams, which is understandable with McBride. Their low rate of three wide receiver sets hasn’t mattered much for Wilson because he also plays in two-receiver sets.

Murray has a decent rate of scrambling and has both a low deep target rate and a low deep accuracy rate, which are all working against Wilson, who would need to become more of a full-time slot receiver and improve his slot success to be a better fit for fantasy success with Murray.

Bottom line

Wilson hasn’t been a fantasy-relevant receiver in most leagues to this point. On the bright side, he is very likely to be a full-time starting receiver again. However, he and the offense need to improve, in general, for Wilson to be someone worth starting in fantasy leagues.

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.