We’re coming off an eventful week eight of NFL action, and I decided to highlight the eight coolest touchdowns, in terms of play design!
Moves I’d like to see ahead of the 2026 NFL trade deadline:
Two weeks away from this year’s trade deadline, I decided to briefly outline six players I’d like to see dealt still – three on offense and defense each. There seem to be as many “sellers” at this point of the season as there have been in some time, and plenty of teams can talk themselves into one more move pushing them over the top, without any juggernauts across the NFL necessarily.
This is what I came up with:
Ten statistics that have defined the initial third of the 2026 NFL season:
With the NFL adding an extra game back five years ago, splitting the season into thirds become reasonable, and six weeks in, this marks a good point to draw some conclusions. To do so, I tried to come up with numbers that best summarize what we’ve seen play out.
Therefore, rather than just throwing out a bunch of hyper-specific statistics, I chose ten that I believe best represent the storylines that have defined the first one-and-a-half months, tried to give context for those, and then added a few more metrics to each paragraph, which back up what the tape shows.
Let’s get into them:
Drake Maye-be back to MVP form
After coming up one vote short of winning the MVP award last season, Drake Maye seemed be continuing the downward trend he showed during the Patriots’ playoff run through the first three weeks of 2026. These last two games, he’s been spectacular, posting +0.52 EPA/play – nearly twice as good as what he did in the ’25 regular season. Let’s break down the early issues and how he’s corrected them!
NFL Power Rankings after the first quarter of the 2026 season:
Once we get through the first four weeks of the NFL season, it’s always a good time to reflect on what every team has shown us so far and try to stack them up against each other. We’ve seen plenty of surprises – both in a positive and negative sense. Three undefeated squads remain, while five are still looking for their first victory.
As I always like to remind people – these are power *rankings* rather than standings. So you may find some teams with better records above those with lesser ones, and direct matchups aren’t viewed as the ultimate decisive factor, even if the two sides share the same record. The purpose here is to judge the quality of each team right now, instead of their resume through the first month, in the spirit of how many of the 31 other franchises I’d favor them over.
Let’s go through the list!
Early risers for the 2027 NFL Draft:
We’re one month into the 2026 college football season, and while some players have disappointed, particularly as it pertains to next April, when many of them were supposed to change an NFL franchise, plenty of names have also emerged after being barely talked about.
I’m not going to spend time discussing Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith lighting the world on fire as a Heisman front-runner, Florida’s Jadan Baugh further cementing himself as the top running back in the 2027 draft thanks to a dominant opening stretch, or Texas edge rusher Colin Simmons just tying the program single-game sack record (five) – along with delivering one of the most insane celebrations I’ve ever seen on a football field.
Rather, the purpose of this article is to highlight those types of guys who have really put themselves on the radar of pro scouts with their performances up to this point. Some of them obviously were to a certain degree already, but have gotten a lot more people to buy in, while others did kind of come out of nowhere.
Let’s go through four names on offense and defense each!
The NFL’s saddest offense two weeks in
Through two weeks of the 2026 season, nothing across the NFL has been harder or sadder to watch than the Steelers offense. In this video, I’ll highlight their uninspiring run game, their elementary West Coast pass concepts, Aaron Rodgers’ lack of willingness to push the ball down the field, and even some of their protection issues.
Key takeaways from all 2026 week one NFL games:
Football is back! We’re only one of 18 weeks in, but what fans love to do, above all else, is to overreact to their favorite teams being back in action. The two front-runners for last year’s MVP trophy combining for just 17 points and going 0-2 collectively was the story of the two early matchups, before we saw the highest average points per game scored (53.3 PPG) across the Sunday slate.
Week one is always kind of weird, and the smart thing to do is to take everything we just saw with a grain of salt. Having said that, it’s our first look at rookies, new play-callers and how the guys on the field function as units. So it makes sense to decipher through all that fresh information and boil it down to a few key points.
To do so, I came up with my three biggest takeaways coming out of all 16 games, after watching the broadcast and/or tape afterwards. Within that, these points will, of course, be rather subjective in terms of what I believe matters most. Just last year, I highlighted the lingering issues for Buffalo’s run defense, but I also thought the early returns for the Raiders offense were promising, as it’s easy to fall back to your priors.
Let’s break it all down!
Bold predictions for the 2026 NFL season:
I already posted my full season predictions, but you have to put yourself out there with some hot takes. So here are five more bold predictions! 🔥
Predicting the entire 2026 NFL season:
We’ve arrived! The 2026 season is right around the corner, as we immediately get the rematch of Super Bowl LX, with the Seahawks trying to repeat as champs and the Patriots hungry to prove they’re a long-term contender themselves. Once again, what I did here was predict all 272 regular season games (an Excel sheet is attached at the bottom), then went through the individual playoff matchups and determined who I had facing off on the game’s biggest stage come next year’s Valentine’s Day.
Along with analysis for the seven playoff teams on either side of the bracket and how I ended up with them, I’ll actually start by outlining my pick and a dark horse name I like for each of the main awards during NFL Honors. Of course, those two things are heavily connected. Before you disregard my analysis on any of these selections based on your own beliefs, please bear in mind that I was ridiculed a year ago when I projected the Bears to be the NFC’s number two seed and the Patriots to win double-digit games, while ending up with the Lions and Commanders narrowly missing out on the postseason.
This is how I believe the upcoming season is going to shake out:
