Brian Thomas Jr. is finally explaining why his second NFL season looked nothing like his first.
The Jaguars receiver, who exploded as a rookie before fading badly in 2025, opened up about the cluster of injuries he was hiding all year. “It doesn’t hurt to run, first off,” Thomas said when asked about persistent rumors that his speed was compromised. “It’s a lot of little things that I had going on. I’ve been able to get them cleaned up and get my body back healthy and as close to 100 percent as possible.”
The decline last year was no small thing. Thomas had nearly 600 fewer receiving yards and seven fewer touchdowns than his standout rookie campaign. For a young receiver who was supposed to be the centerpiece of Jacksonville’s offensive future, that is the kind of regression that triggers panic in a fan base.
Now we know more about why.
Thomas suffered a high ankle sprain in Week 9 against the Raiders and missed the next three games. The ankle clearly didn’t fully heal during the season, and he tried to gut through it on a Jacksonville team that was already a mess. Add in the “little things” he is now publicly acknowledging, and you have a recipe for the regression we all saw.
This is the part where Jaguars fans should feel cautiously optimistic. Thomas’s 2024 rookie season wasn’t a fluke. The talent is real. The downhill speed, the contested-catch ability, the ability to win matchups in space, none of that disappears. What disappeared was his health.
Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars offense desperately need Thomas to be that 2024 version of himself again. The whole offense was designed around his ability to stretch the field. When he was diminished last year, defenses sat on Lawrence’s other options and the offense suffocated.
The confession also matters for how Jacksonville plans this season. If you are new head coach Liam Coen, you build the receiver rotation differently when you know your alpha was playing through ankle issues last year. You manage his reps in camp. You don’t run him into the ground in August.
Thomas is saying all the right things about being close to 100 percent. We will see in training camp whether the explosion is back. Receivers who lose a step rarely get it back. Receivers who simply heal usually do.
If BTJ is right, Jacksonville’s offense gets its identity back in 2026. That is the most important storyline of the Jaguars summer.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
