Braxton Berrios: Career Stats, Teams, Personal Life & Net Worth (2025)

Braxton Berrios — NFL Wide Receiver, All-Pro Return Specialist, and One of the More Interesting Stories in the League

He was the 210th pick in the 2018 draft. He never played a game for the team that drafted him. And then, somehow, he became a first-team All-Pro. That’s the short version of Braxton Berrios’s career — a sixth-round pick who found a lane that most NFL rosters don’t even think to fill until they need it filled urgently.

Born October 6, 1995, in Raleigh, North Carolina, Berrios stands 5-foot-9 and weighs around 185 pounds. By NFL wide receiver standards, he’s undersized. By any reasonable measure of a career, he’s overachieved. Seven seasons in, he’s played for four franchises, earned a Super Bowl ring he didn’t play for, signed a $12 million contract, appeared on HBO, and dated two of the most photographed women in American celebrity culture. The football is only part of it.

Before the NFL — Leesville Road, Miami, and a 3.96 GPA

Berrios grew up in Raleigh playing quarterback and wide receiver at Leesville Road High School. He’s of Puerto Rican descent through his paternal grandfather — a detail that rarely makes it into his coverage but is part of who he is. Coming out of high school, he was rated a four-star recruit and chose the Miami Hurricanes over Ohio State, Clemson, and Oregon, among others.

He wasn’t a project at Miami. He played as a true freshman and finished that year with 21 catches for 232 yards and three touchdowns. By his senior season in 2017, he’d become the team’s best receiver: 55 receptions, 679 yards, nine touchdowns, and a punt return average of 15.9 yards that led the entire ACC. The game people remember most is against Florida State — he caught two touchdown passes in a win that ended Miami’s seven-game losing streak to the Seminoles.

He also carried a 3.96 GPA in Finance and Entrepreneurship, won the Jim Tatum Award as the ACC’s top senior student-athlete, and was named to the National Football Foundation’s Scholar-Athlete class. At Miami, across four seasons, he finished with 100 receptions for 1,175 yards and 14 touchdowns. He wasn’t just good at football — he was building something parallel to it the whole time.

New England Drafted Him, Then Immediately Put Him on Injured Reserve

The Patriots took Berrios in the sixth round of the 2018 NFL Draft with the 210th overall pick. He was placed on injured reserve on September 1, 2018, before the season began. He never played a single regular-season snap for New England.

What he did get, though, was a Super Bowl ring. The Patriots beat the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII, and the organization awarded rings to the full roster — Berrios included. It’s one of those footnotes that sounds unbelievable: a player earns a championship ring for a team he never actually played for. The Patriots waived him on August 30, 2019, and the Jets claimed him off waivers the next day.

New York Jets (2019–2022) — Four Years, One Breakout, and a $12 Million Re-Signing

His first season in New York was quiet. He dressed for all 16 games, played 85 offensive snaps, and finished with six catches for 115 yards. His clearer role was as the punt returner, and even that was still developing. In 2020, he scored his first career touchdown — a 30-yard pass from Sam Darnold against San Francisco — and added a trick-play score late in the season when fellow receiver Jamison Crowder threw him a 43-yard touchdown against Cleveland.

Then came 2021, which was a genuinely different season for him. He finished second on the team with 46 catches for 431 yards and two touchdowns. He rushed seven times for 40 yards and two more scores. He became the first Jets receiver to score a receiving and rushing touchdown in the same game. But the number that made him famous in special teams circles: he led the NFL in kickoff return average at 30.4 yards per return and finished third in kickoff return yards (852) and third in yards per punt return (13.4). In Week 16 against Jacksonville, he returned a kickoff 102 yards for a touchdown — the first kickoff return score of his career — and won AFC Special Teams Player of the Week. The Associated Press named him first-team All-Pro as a kick returner.

The Jets re-signed him in March 2022 on a two-year, $12 million contract. That spring, in Week 4 against the Steelers, he threw a two-yard touchdown pass to quarterback Zach Wilson on a trick play — Wilson became the first Jets QB to record a receiving touchdown. The 2022 season was less productive. In March 2023, the Jets released him rather than restructure his deal.

Career Stats — What the Numbers Actually Look Like

Through the 2025 season, Berrios has played 91 games in the NFL. His receiving line: 140 catches for 1,360 yards and six touchdowns, with a 9.7-yard average per reception. He’s also rushed 20 times for 171 yards and four touchdowns. On special teams — which is where he’s made most of his money — he has 88 kickoff returns for 2,184 yards (24.8 average) and one touchdown, plus 97 punt returns for 1,105 yards (11.4 average). His best receiving season was 2021 (46 catches, 431 yards). His best full special teams season was also 2021. Those two things happening at once is why the Jets paid him what they paid him.

A year-by-year breakdown of his receiving production:

Miami Dolphins (2023–2024) — Hard Knocks, Tua, and a Torn ACL

After the Jets released him, the Dolphins signed Berrios to a one-year deal in March 2023. He landed behind Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle — two of the fastest receivers in the league — which meant his role was always going to be complementary. He played all 16 games and finished with 27 catches for 238 yards and one touchdown. Tua Tagovailoa targeted him consistently in short areas, and Berrios handled both punt and kick return duties as expected.

Miami re-signed him in March 2024. That season is the one people remember partly for football and partly because of Hard Knocks: In Season with the Miami Dolphins, where Berrios and his then-girlfriend Alix Earle appeared decorating a Christmas tree. It was a three-minute segment that got more coverage than most of his on-field highlights that year. Then in Week 7, against Indianapolis, he tore his ACL. The season was over. Six games, one injury, a long winter.

Houston Texans (2025) — Depth Role, Limited Snaps, Free Agent Again

He signed with Houston on a one-year deal worth $1.8 million in March 2025. The role was always going to be narrow — the Texans had Nico Collins, Stefon Diggs (briefly), and Jayden Higgins ahead of him. He appeared in four games, totaled six receptions for 37 yards on eight targets, added 81 return yards on kickoffs and 25 on punts, and was a healthy scratch in multiple late-season weeks. Fox Sports noted he logged just 60 offensive snaps and 12 special teams snaps across the entire season — not a lot of football for a veteran in his contract year.

He enters the 2026 offseason as an unrestricted free agent. At 30 years old, coming off an ACL recovery and a quiet 2025, his next contract will likely look similar to the one he just finished — a one-year, low-base deal with a team that needs a reliable return man and a warm body in the slot. Whether he gets that offer is still an open question.

Alix Earle, Sophia Culpo, and a Personal Life That Got Very Public

From 2021 to 2023, Berrios dated Sophia Culpo, the sister of former Miss Universe Olivia Culpo. The relationship was relatively low-key by celebrity standards — they appeared together at events and on social media, but it didn’t generate the kind of coverage that followed.

In March 2023, he started dating Alix Earle, a TikTok personality and podcast host with tens of millions of followers. They walked the red carpet together at the 2023 ESPYs in July, were featured on Hard Knocks together that fall, and spent two years as one of the more photographed sports-adjacent couples in American media. In December 2025, sources confirmed a mutual breakup — PEOPLE reported it on December 6. What followed was weeks of coverage: Earle posted emotional TikToks about being alone for the first time, Berrios was photographed at a music festival in Aspen with Olivia Jade Giannulli, and the whole cycle played out the way these things play out.

He hasn’t made public statements about the split beyond a few cryptic social posts. She has. That asymmetry probably tells you something about both of them.

Net Worth, Contracts, and the Business Side

His estimated net worth sits around $7 million as of 2025, according to Surprise Sports. The bulk of it comes from NFL salaries — his most significant contract was the two-year, $12 million deal with the Jets in 2022, which included $8 million guaranteed. His 2023 Dolphins contract was worth $3.5 million with a $1.5 million signing bonus. The 2025 Texans deal was $1.8 million — significantly less, which reflects where he is in his career arc.

Off the field, his Instagram bio doubles as a portfolio statement: he’s affiliated with Long Drink (a Finnish-style canned cocktail brand), Palm Tree Crew (the entertainment and events company co-founded by Kygo), Betr (a sports betting and media startup), GoPuff, Sip Margs, Mother Wolf Miami (a restaurant), and Drink Update. He’s represented by United Talent Agency. The Finance and Entrepreneurship double major from Miami wasn’t decorative — he’s been building something outside football for years, and at 30, that infrastructure looks increasingly like the plan B that was always plan A.

What Kind of Player He Actually Is

The honest scouting report on Berrios is mixed in the way honest scouting reports always are. His strengths are real: exceptional agility in confined spaces, strong football IQ, reliable hands underneath, and special teams instincts that are genuinely rare. His 2021 return average of 30.4 yards per kickoff return led the entire NFL. That’s not a fluke number — it reflects real explosiveness and field vision.

The limitations are just as real. He’s 5-foot-9 and light, which means physical defensive backs can press and reroute him. He lacks the arm length to win jump balls. He’s never approached 500 receiving yards in a season except for 2021 and 2022, and both of those came in expanded roles created partly by injury to other Jets receivers. Sports Forecaster noted in their 2025 profile that he “lacks the big hands needed to snatch the ball out of the air” and remains “significantly undersized” for a professional wide receiver. That assessment isn’t wrong.

What he’s done with those limitations, though, is the actual story. Seven seasons. Four teams. One All-Pro. A career that should have ended three or four times by conventional roster logic and didn’t, because he does one or two things at a level most rosters can’t easily replace.