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.
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!
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! 🔥
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:
The preseason is there for young players to make noise and grab the attention of coaches. I wanted to highlight these four rookies who have showed out through the first two weeks (plus), with a collection of clips on each of them.
Fantasy football season is here, and this is my one annual video dedicated to finding great value selections. As always, we’ll run through two quarterbacks and tight-ends, three running backs, wide receivers and defenses, who I believe are underrated based on their current ADPs.
It’s that time of the year again. As NFL Network’s official rundown is coming to its final stretch, I will once again release my own version of the list. Trying to compare across different positions without a metric-based system always invites a certain level of subjectivity, but considering some of the head-scratching results from the cumulative rankings by the players, I feel pretty good about my process.
So, to clarify yet again, these are my top 100 players for the 2026(!) season. While I don’t want to project a whole lot, this was never meant to be in retrospect of the previous year. Therefore, if some guys showed improvement/regression over the course of 2025, I did understandably take that into account.
Additionally, if there are pre-existing injuries, suspensions or other facts that we already know will likely cost certain players multiple games this upcoming season, that did affect their ranking or made them ineligible for me altogether. Two names I just couldn’t find spots for – reports around Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers’ recovery have made his return date too dubious, and I’m very happy to hear that Nnamdi Madubuike is expected to continue his pro career, after missing all of 2025, with concerns around having to potentially recover medically due to a neck injury.
Now, let’s get to the actual rundown:
Every year we see a couple of #NFL teams come out of nowhere and vastly exceed their previous win total. I ranked the eight teams most likely to go from worst to first inside their division!
As I said when I birthed this little offseason project last year, what I’m writing about here challenges what the NFL is trying to sell the fanbases of all 32 teams at this point of the calendar – everyone is live to win the upcoming Super Bowl. Probably in no other league do they pursue parity to this extent, and we just watched the Seahawks hoist the Lombardi Trophy at the start of February, despite being tied for 19th in preseason betting odds when toe met leather the first time again. Nonetheless, not all franchises treat each offseason as if they need to maximize how many games they win that season, and therefore it differs what would be labelled a “successful campaign” for them respectively.
So again, while this isn’t a novel concept, and I like to buy into the idea of anything being possible, I do believe that teams across the league are more willing to accept the idea of different stages of roster construction and trying to build a winning program over a longer period of time. Therefore, laying the groundwork and contextualizing where the focus should lie for each of them, as well as what they realistically should be shooting for, is constructive – and a perfect exercise here for the end of July. It may be fair to simply measure success based on how far they make it in 2026, but for others, displaying growth in certain areas to improve their outlook for the future, may be more important, actually.
Let’s go through them by division!
While third overall pick Abdul Carter only collected four sacks in his rookie season, the advanced metrics and tape suggest that he should have a bright future as a pro. I went through all of his QB pressures from the season to analyze his strengths and areas of improvement.
