Should We Start Taking AJ Barner More Seriously?

What They're Saying

QB Sam Darnold, ahead of Sunday's game: "He's just a good player. I think flat out he's a really good player."

HC Mike Macdonald: "He's a spark plug for our whole football team. This guy's got a great mentality. he's got swag to him. He's got an edge. He's got toughness. ... He has done a lot of unselfish work on our offense a lot of the time. ... As we like to say, the ball finds energy. And when you do things right and do it consistently, you tend to get rewarded for that type of stuff. I think that's what we're seeing with him. When we find him the ball, good things have been happening."

2025 Fantasy Football Impact

Macdonald's quote also predated Sunday's action, but it might be more noteworthy after Barner played his second-largest route rate of the season.

Here's the portion of Seattle dropbacks on which he has run a route by week so far:

• Week 1: 72%
• Week 2: 66%
• Week 3: 43%
• Week 4: 60%
• Week 5: 59%
• Week 6: 69%

Barner entered Sunday ranked just 24th among TEs in route rate. But he'll climb if the Week 6 usage starts a trend rather than proving to be a blip.

We obviously can't assume that yet, and Barner has topped three targets in just one of his six games. But he has also caught 17 of 19 targets for the season and proved valuable near the end zone.

Barner will need to get more looks to approach the top 12 at the position in fantasy. But he's an intriguing boom/bust candidate in TE2 territory right now, especially for non-PPR formats.

It seems noteworthy that Sunday's usage came in a game his team led most of the way rather than in a trailing game script.