Tag Archives: Football

Storylines around the NFL

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: 

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NFL Film Breakdowns

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!

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NFL Power Rankings

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!

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NFL Film Breakdowns

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.

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NFL Predictions

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! 🔥

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NFL 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:

 

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Fantasy Football

Fantasy diamonds for 2026

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.

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NFL Top 100

My NFL Top 100 Players of 2026:

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:

 

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NFL Predictions

NFL teams most likely to go from worst to first in 2026:

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!

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NFL Offseason

What does success look like for your favorite NFL team in 2026:

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!

 

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