NFL Receiving Yards Leader Odds: Four Names, One Bad Knee

Nobody is the favorite. As of September 2, a week before the opener, Kalshi's NFL receiving-yards-leader board had four names within a few cents of each other at the top, and the one injury that could separate them had not been priced at all.

The Quick Answer

No favorite. As of September 2, Kalshi has four names within 3 cents at the top: Jaxon Smith-Njigba (13-14¢), Ja'Marr Chase (12-14¢), Puka Nacua (12-13¢) and Justin Jefferson (10-14¢), with A.J. Brown (8-10¢) closing after his bid doubled overnight. Our eight-model panel, generated August 3 and left untouched, had the same top three but liked Jefferson and Brown less than the market now does, and the market has since caught up to the panel's fades. Chase's left knee is the one open question at the top, and the market has shrugged at it so far.

The Board

Prices are Kalshi's best bid and ask on the board (KXLEADERNFLRYDS-27) at 15:21 UTC on September 2, 2026, and the panel column is unchanged from August 3, 2026. Twenty-six players are listed and there is no field contract, so an unlisted leader resolves every row No; the panel's single largest number, a 12.2% blend, is exactly that outcome. The book is still thin at the tails and the midpoints sum to about 108 cents, so compare prices to each other rather than to 100. The venue lists a close of February 8, 2027.

The top of the board by best bid, September 2, 2026. Full table below.

More live boards from the same panel: NFL rushing yards leader 2026 · Taylor, Henry and Robinson 12¢ · Fantasy WR1 2026 · Nacua 16¢ · NFL MVP 2027 · Allen 10¢

In August the panel's blend sat under the market on all five top names, with its narrowest gaps on Jefferson and Brown. The market has since moved toward the panel on the favorites and straight through it on the two risers. That is what a price-blind number is for: it was generated without the price history, and now the price history gets to argue with it in public.

Is Chase's Knee Priced?

Market 12-14¢ · panel 10.8%. Chase fell to the turf reaching for a Joe Burrow deep ball on August 25 and grabbed his left knee. He called it "just a little tweak" and "like a hyperextension," and sat out the next day's practice. On September 1, Zac Taylor said Chase "will be limited at practice this week" and that he expects both Chase and Tee Higgins "will be good at the end of week." Cincinnati opens Sunday, September 13, at home against Tampa Bay, four days after the league opener, so the knee gets a slightly longer runway.

A title bettor should care more than a Week 1 bettor does. The panel's whole case for Chase is volume, 185 targets last season, the largest funnel in football, and the 2024 title was won on exactly that load. Volume needs snaps, and the last five receiving champions all cleared 1,700 yards.

A hyperextension that costs zero games is nothing. One that costs two games concedes roughly 175 yards of pace to a defending champion who averaged 105 a game over a full season. The 12-cent bid against a 14-cent ask is that uncertainty expressed as a spread, and every Chase print of note since August 30 has been a buyer, so the market has priced the knee as a non-event. The next marker was the Friday, September 4, practice report, which these prices do not yet reflect: full participation makes the dip look like the knee never happened, and a second limited week would be the first real crack at the top of the board.

Why Did A.J. Brown Double?

Market 8-10¢ · panel 3.0%. In August Brown was a 3.5-cent afterthought, and the panel's blend agreed with that price while two seats argued for more. Then buyers took roughly 3,000 contracts at a nickel, the offer was exhausted, and the sellers who replaced it wanted 10 cents. Brown is now the board's second-most-active name, behind only George Pickens.

What the buyers are paying for is a room, not a stat line. Brown came to New England in a June 1 trade, and the depth chart behind him is Romeo Doubs, Mack Hollins, second-year third-rounder Kyle Williams and a part-time slot in DeMario Douglas. That is the clearest number-one target situation on this board, on a 14-3 offense with Drake Maye, and he opens Wednesday night, September 9, in Seattle against Smith-Njigba's team. The panel's blend was generated before Patriots camp opened and priced his 1,003-yard 2025 baseline; the market is pricing a 150-target season. Both numbers stay on the page, because the ledger grades them both.

Is Jefferson's Rebound Real?

Market 10-14¢ · panel 6.1%. In August several seats flagged Jefferson as the name the public would underrate, on the argument that 1,048 yards from a former 1,809-yard champion was quarterback drag, not decline. The quarterback question has since been answered: Kevin O'Connell named Kyler Murray the starter on August 11 after a camp competition with J.J. McCarthy. The money arrived in stages, and it started as selling before it turned. The bid has climbed to 10 cents while the ask sits out at 14, the widest spread at the top of the board, which is the market believing the rebound without agreeing on how big it is. Jefferson is the name this market has argued about longest, with the most lifetime volume on the board.

Did Smith-Njigba And Nacua Slip?

Smith-Njigba is bid at 13 cents, down from a 15-cent midpoint in August, and is still the panel's first name. Nothing on his record has changed: 1,793 yards on a full season for a 14-3 offense, with no target rival in reach.

What changed is the shape around him. When Jefferson and Brown were cheap, the defending champion carried a clear-favorite premium, and with two more names inside 5 cents the market has stopped paying it. His tape is still all buyers, so the drift is the rest of the board rising, not him falling.

Nacua is bid at 12 with a 13-cent ask, unchanged in a month, and has the steadiest tape on the board with no seller of size. His two caps are unchanged too: no full season yet, and Davante Adams in the same room. Adams's own contract has gone from 5 cents to a zero bid, which tells you whom the market thinks the Rams' receiving yards belong to.

Which August Prices Collapsed?

The August page's loudest disagreements were fades, and a month later the market has closed almost every one of them.

Marvin Harrison Jr., Arizona Cardinals (0-1¢, blend 1.0%) was a 5.5-cent contract in August and is now bid at zero with no trades in a day. Nothing bad happened to him; a late-July limp was waved off by head coach Mike LaFleur as cramping. The name premium simply drained out.

Davante Adams, Los Angeles Rams (0-1¢, blend 0.6%) followed the same path from 5 cents to a zero bid. Ladd McConkey, Los Angeles Chargers (1-2¢, blend 1.5%) and Emeka Egbuka, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-3¢, blend 2.4%) now sit on the panel's numbers rather than above them, and Brian Thomas Jr., Jacksonville Jaguars (0-1¢, blend 1.5%) lost his bid entirely.

George Pickens, Dallas Cowboys (1-4¢, blend 3.9%) is the fade that overshot. He was 6.5 cents in August and is now the most-traded name on the board, with buyers and sellers fighting over every cent. There is no injury on the record; he had what camp reports called an elite summer and is playing 2026 on the $27.3 million franchise tag. The panel's cannibalization read, Pickens sharing a tree with CeeDee Lamb, was a ceiling argument, not a case for a penny, and against the 1-cent bid he is now the widest panel-over-price gap on the board.

Who Is Still Underpriced?

• Tetairoa McMillan, Carolina Panthers (1-2¢, blend 2.9%): still the cheapest name the panel refuses to write off, on a 1,014-yard rookie season as Carolina's clear number one, and still roughly double the price.
• Malik Nabers, New York Giants (3-4¢, blend 3.9%): the panel's seventh name, priced on the profile rather than a four-game 2025, and the market has drifted half a cent lower rather than higher.
• Nico Collins, Houston Texans (4-6¢, blend 3.3%): the quiet drop at the top of the second tier, from 6.5 cents in August, with buyers pushing back at 6.
• Jaylen Waddle, Denver Broncos (2-3¢, blend 1.4%): the board's biggest day-over-day quote move, his ask collapsing from 8 cents to 3 in a day. The panel's Denver read, Waddle and Courtland Sutton splitting one tree, is unchanged.

The Bottom Line

Four checks decide whether these prices survive September. First, whether Chase was a full participant on the Friday, September 4, report, because the 12-14 spread is the market's open question. Second, Brown's target count on Wednesday night in Seattle, measured against the 160-plus loads Smith-Njigba and Chase carried last season, and Smith-Njigba's own count in the same game. Third, Murray's first real snaps to Jefferson on September 13, and whether Chase is on the field at all. Then Week 4: which of the four cluster names is still on a 100-yards-a-game pace once the sample is real, because the ledger's recent winners all cleared 1,700 and none got there on a committee share. The panel's August numbers stay on this page through all of it and get graded in public on the same scoreboard as the rest of the verdict lane.

Model estimates generated August 3, 2026, price-blind from live fetched data. Models are frequently wrong; the market price reflects real traders' money.

Every number in this piece lands in our backtest ledger the day it is generated and gets graded against the real season-ending leaderboard on the public model verdict scoreboard.

Verdicts generated August 3, 2026, price-blind. Prices and trade tape as of September 2, 2026, 15:21 UTC. Panel: ChatGPT, Claude Fable, Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, Gemini 3.1 Pro, GLM 5.2, Kimi K3, and DeepSeek V4, all eight revised in an anonymized cross-read; the blend is the simple mean of the eight revised estimates.

Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style. Ja'Marr Chase photo by All-Pro Reels, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0; photos cropped, toned, and composited.

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