Marvin Harrison Jr. Fantasy Football Week 1 Takeaways

One of the strangest prospect disappointments in recent memory is Marvin Harrison Jr. It’s such a strange case because Harrison hasn’t necessarily been awful, but because of the massive expectations, he’s undoubtedly become a bust, especially in fantasy football, to this point.

Taking a look at this from a fantasy football perspective, the question is: what do you do with Harrison at this point? For two straight seasons, Harrison has underperformed, failing to pass 12 PPG, and while there has been some buzz around a bounce-back in 2026, that’s not off to a great start. 

Harrison had just 4.3 PPG in his debut, making managers question if you can even start him until proven otherwise. 

Marvin Harrison Jr. Week 1 Snap Counts & Targets

Now, just the raw fantasy production is very poor, but we need to pull back the curtain a little bit. Harrison had one catch for 33 yards on three targets.

That said, there are parts of this game that give me hope he can at least be viable FLEX or WR2 going forward. For starters, Harrison had the same number of routes run at 34 (per PFF) as Trey McBride, but he had three fewer routes run than Michael Wilson.

In terms of snaps, Harrison (59) was just one behind McBride at 60 and two behind Wilson with 64. That said, despite having more snaps and more routes, Kendrick Bourne had eight targets, which is something that I believe can easily go to Harrison going forward.

Then you have the Cardinals’ offense looking solid in Week 1 with Jacoby Brissett playing fairly well. Heading into the year, I was very pessimistic about this offense, but if that’s not going to be as big of a problem, that really helps Harrison.

Overall, if you’re able to trade for Marvin Harrison Jr. at the point where he’s being treated as a backup, that move makes sense. If you have Harrison on your fantasy football team, the best bet is to ride it out at this point.