Welcome to Week 8 of the 2025 Footballguys Roundtable. Our intrepid panel of fantasy pundits discusses and debates four topics every week. We split the conversation into separate features.
This week's roundtable features these four topics:
Let's roll...
Matt Waldman: Bryce Young will be sidelined with a high ankle sprain. What kind of production can we expect from Andy Dalton for the next 2-3 weeks, and who will be the most productive two options in the Panthers' passing game?
Colton Dodgson: The early return on Andy Dalton's willingness to push the ball down the field is a promising place to start. He's attempted 13 passes across two extended cameos this season, and he has averaged 9.1 yards per attempt.
It's tough to put too much stock into his efficiency across such a limited sample. Still, even at 37, his appearances haven't looked hapless. It is the Year of the Unc, after all.
My feeling is Dalton's an elevated-floor option who can keep the skill players afloat. To be fair, Bryce Young's inconsistency to this point didn't create much of a ceiling. Outside of the running backs, no Panthers skill player is averaging double-digit fantasy points per game.
Young's been one of the league's least efficient starting quarterbacks. His -0.15 expected points added per dropback is tied with Geno Smith for 27th. His 61.6 completion percentage is still -1.8 percent below expected. His 2.81 time to throw average is likely contributing to the eighth-highest pressure percentage – 38.9 percent – among quarterbacks.
Can it really look much worse? We've seen offenses, namely the Bengals, have success with an approach that aims to get the ball out of a veteran quarterback's hands as quickly as possible. It can help mitigate pressure, and it puts an offense's most talented players in a position to shoulder the load.
Xavier Legette's role in the red zone to this point makes him interesting. He saw three red zone targets in Week 7 alone. Tetairoa McMillan, though, might actually see a slight bump with Dalton if he's leaned on.
McMillan's 26 quick targets are almost twice as many as any other Carolina pass catcher. He'll likely be utilized early in progressions. He's also first with 27 targets of 10 or more air yards.
If Dalton can mix the deep shots in with quick reads, while playing off of the Rico Dowdle and Chuba Hubbard-led run game, McMillan could have a versatile role to play in propping up this offense with manufactured touches and looks downfield.
Jeff Blaylock: In the five games where Dalton played at least 85 percent of offensive snaps, his favorite target was Diontae Johnson, who caught 25 of 44 balls thrown his direction. Tetairoa McMillan operates in a similar capacity to the role Johnson played last season. McMillan is the team's unquestioned WR1, so naming him as one of the two most productive options is hardly revelatory.
I expect a lot of checkdowns from Dalton. Last season, nearly one out of every five of Dalton's pass attempts were checkdowns. He led the league in checkdown percentage among quarterbacks with at least 100 pass attempts, and his average depth of target of 6.8 yards ranked 42nd.
Running backs were targeted 31 times in those five games for which Dalton was heavily involved. If Rico Dowdle and Chuba Hubbard were the same person, they would be the most productive receiving option.
However, they have split the workload, including in the passing game, when they've both been healthy, and this timeshare should continue. They could cancel each other out in the race to be the second-most productive option.
That leaves the tight ends. In those five games last season, tight end Ja'Tavion Sanders was targeted 21 times, second most on the team, with nine targets going to the other tight ends.
Sanders just returned from an ankle injury this past week, where he was targeted twice but failed to record a reception. Sanders played the most snaps through the first three games of the season, and I expect he will again see the field more often than Tommy Tremble or Mitchell Evans.
Sanders was targeted 16 times in those games by Bryce Young, third most on the team behind McMillan (27) and Hunter Renfrow (19), who was a healthy scratch this week. Given Dalton's propensity to check down, I'm going with Sanders as the other most-productive option in the Panthers' passing game.