What the expected-points record, the coverage data and the market say he is worth at 113.4 overall.
Isaiah Likely scored 61.7 fantasy points in 2025. The volume he earned was worth 65.4. That gap of 3.7 points is the single most important thing to understand before drafting him at 113.4 overall.
Rather than reading a season average, it is worth finding the point the season actually turned. Our shift detector flags in-season changes large enough to clear a statistical threshold, then asks what moved around them.
The largest single move was Week 9: WOPR went up from 0.1 to 0.3, a 137.6% change, at 4.07 standard deviations. The cause was structural — the offense around him got sharply better. He also missed Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 15.
Year over year the engine classifies 2025 as a genuine decline in play. That is the label to carry into the projection, because it separates a player who lost snaps from one who kept them and converted worse.
He finished 5.14 points per game on 36 targets — down 41.5% from his 2024 rate with BAL. Every part of that is real and none of it is in dispute.
What is worth separating is how much of it he earned. Expected points strip out the finishing and ask a narrower question: given the targets he drew, where they came from on the field, and how far downfield they traveled, what was that usage worth? For 2025 the answer was 65.4 points — 5.5 per game. He scored 3.7 FEWER than that, a 5.7% shortfall.
The expected line underneath the season was 26 catches for 270 yards and 2.1 touchdowns — and he came in under it.
Not one of his 12 games cleared 25 points. His best was 12.5 in Week 13. He wins with volume rather than with weeks that swing a matchup.
A steady floor has its own value in a lineup that needs one. 10 games came in under 10 points, including Week 5 against HOU (2.2) and Week 6 against LA (2.6).
The three largest overshoots — Week 9 (+1.7), Week 13 (+1.6), Week 14 (+1.6) — are the same games. The spikes were not extra volume. They were finishing.
Not one of his 4 seasons is flagged as running hot. 1 came in below what the usage justified: 2022 (-13%). Across all 4 he has scored 49.8 points more than his usage was worth.
The reflexive read is regression. Finishing above expectation is unstable, and a player who does it repeatedly is usually one whose luck has not run out yet.
But an expected-points model has a specific blind spot, and it is worth naming: it converts usage at league-average rates. A target twenty yards downfield is worth what the average receiver does with a target twenty yards downfield. If a player is reliably better than average at winning a particular kind of target, he will beat the model every single year, and calling that luck is just mislabelling a skill.
So the question is not whether he beat the number. It is whether there is a mechanism.
Across 210 targets and four seasons, he has been a fundamentally different receiver depending on what the defense played. Against man he has caught 67.1% for 8.32 yards per target and 0.28 expected points added per target. Against zone: 71.2%, 8.3 yards, 0.348 EPA.
That is a gap of -0.068 EPA per target on a sample of 85 man targets against 125 zone. The catch rate goes the other way — he catches more against zone — which is exactly what you would expect from a receiver whose value is in winning contested downfield throws rather than in finding soft spots underneath.
The shell detail sharpens it. Cover 1, single-high man is the look he has faced most: 65 targets, 8.89 yards per target, 0.335 EPA. His best is Cover 4 quarters at 0.51 on 21 targets.
The weakness is specific. Against Cover 0, all-out pressure with no safety help he has caught 47.4% for 4.21 yards a target and -0.188 EPA across 19 looks — a gap of 0.7 expected points a target between his best coverage and his worst.
This does not prove the overshoot repeats. It does mean the pattern has a stated cause rather than being a coin that keeps landing heads.
Across 48 graded prop lines, he has gone over 39.6% of the time. On receiving yards specifically the number is 37.5% across 24 lines, missing the posted number by an average of 35.8%.
That cuts against him. A book that has him beaten 63% of the time on his primary market is not a market being slow — it is a market that has him priced correctly and a player who keeps falling short of it.
Touchdowns are the control. His anytime-TD market implied a 24.1% rate and he converted at 20.8% — a gap of -3.2 points, which is worth noting.
the Giants returns 2 of 6 continuity slots — wr1, rb1 — with Jaxson Dart at quarterback, Jim Harbaugh as head coach and Matt Nagy calling it. The offense projects to 30.25 pass attempts a game at low confidence.
The pie is stable. His slice is the question. Our share model has him at 6% against the 13.1% he ran, with a range of 3.3% to 8.8%. The biggest competing claim on that pie is Malik Nabers at 25.9%, 19.9 points ahead of him.
That number is built from 25 comparable players — same age band, same prior share, same team, same coordinator — not from a depth chart. The closest three went Dan Arnold 12.8% to 3.8%, Christopher Herndon 13.8% to 3.7%, Foster Moreau 11% to 6.8%. Every one of them lost share.
Across 4,488 player-seasons we swept every stat for whether it predicts NEXT year's points, and kept only the ones that replicated in all five. target share (r 0.247), WOPR (r 0.218), air-yards share (r 0.142) carry. receiving EPA per game (r -0.127) and yards per target (r -0.114) and week-to-week volatility (r -0.075) run negative — a player who was hyper-efficient on low volume tends to come back down, so a gaudy per-touch number is a warning rather than a selling point.
So the figures worth weighing for him: a 13.1% target share, 13.1% of the air yards, a WOPR of 0.29, a 57.3% snap share. He averaged 4.68 yards of separation, with -0.47 YAC over expected.
Vegas sets an implied total for every team every week, and some offenses beat theirs systematically. Over 103 games, NYG has come in -0.98 points against its own implied total, clearing it in 47% of weeks.
That is close to neutral — the offense performs about where the market expects, so there is no environment bonus or penalty to apply to him either way.
One related finding worth carrying: across 1,280 cases we measured what happens after a team's implied total slides, and the correlation is -0.37 — negative, meaning the market over-corrects. A falling team total is more often a buying window than a warning.
Our board has him at 137.3 points, 9 per game across 15.2 expected games — 53.3 catches, 618 yards, 3.7 touchdowns. That is TE4, 115 overall, and -17 points of value over a replacement starter.
It is a step down from 2025, and the reason is volume rather than efficiency. The projection assumes he keeps doing what he does on slightly fewer looks.
signed a real, meaningfully guaranteed contract with a new team specifically as a receiving-focused player (not a blocking specialist — the contract size itself signals that), landing in an offense with a genuinely uncertain recovery timeline for its presumptive #1 receiving weapon. A real, non-hypothetical path to being the clear top target on his team for a meaningful chunk of the season, not just a theoretical one.
The books do not agree on him. . That 31.9-pick gap between CBS and ESPN is the practical thing to act on: in a ESPN-priced room he is available later than his consensus number suggests.
He goes at 113.4 overall on consensus, and the books are far apart — 31.9 picks between cheapest and priciest, which is a real value window. He is latest on espn and earliest on cbs: sleeper 116.5, espn 130.1, yahoo 108.7, underdog 125.7, cbs 98.2.
He goes at 113.4 and our board has him 115. Those agree, so there is no market disagreement to exploit here — the question is whether you want the TE4 profile, not whether it is mispriced.
The case for: a 58% boom rate.
The case against: a 30% bust rate; 49.8 career points scored above expectation — real, and not something to underwrite twice; 6 games missed in the anchor season.
The call: fair value — draft him because you want this tight end, not because you are getting a deal.
Ask the Coach about Isaiah Likely Every number in this piece, plus your league's roster and scoring, in one answer.Expected points are computed from realized usage — targets, air yards and field position — against league-average conversion, not from projections. Prop records cover 48 graded lines. Projections are anchored to consensus with our engine applied as a capped tilt; the raw engine figure is stated where it differs. Nothing here is betting advice.