Welcome to Week 2 of the 2026 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:
- Week 1 Thrills and Horrors
- Biggest Quarterback Outliers
- Biggest Wide Receiver Outliers
- De'Von Achane and Omarion Hampton
Let's roll...
Matt Waldman: Pick one who performed much better than they will all year and pick one who performed worse than they will all season.
Jeff Blaylock: Bryce Young threw for 361 yards and 3 touchdown passes against the Bears. Very little about his performance suggests this is Young's new normal.
Entering this season, he passed for more than 300 yards and threw 3 touchdowns exactly once, in a Week 2 loss at Arizona last season. He had topped 300 passing yards just 3 times before this season, and he's exceeded 200 passing yards in less than a third of his 46 career games.
His performance was aided and abetted by a Bears defense that pressured Young on less than 20 percent of his dropbacks, the second-lowest rate faced by Week 1 starters. That's about half the average pressure rate he saw last season.
Matthew Stafford won't play another game in the Southern Hemisphere, after a 15-hour flight, or on a cricket ground again, so safely throw away his dreadful game against the 49ers in Melbourne. The reigning MVP has had some duds as a Ram, particularly in 2024, when he completed fewer than 20 passes in 8 games and had no touchdown passes in 4 of those games. Expect some games to look a bit like Week 1, but most will be much better, starting with Monday night's home game against the Giants.
Ryan Weisse: It has to be Bryce Young, right? The game environment was perfect for a fantasy explosion, and Young did what he was supposed to do. We've fallen in love with these small sample sizes from Young in the past, only to be disappointed.
There just won't be many weeks where the Panthers and their opponent combine for 96 points. Young scored four touchdowns this week after averaging 1.2 per game over his career. Regression to the mean is coming.
Matthew Stafford will bounce back. A perfect storm of a weird game time, intercontinental travel, and a bad coaching decision led to the Rams falling flat in Week 1.
That will not be the case in Week 2, when they get extended rest before a Monday night home game against the Giants. Stafford was a top-5 fantasy quarterback last year, and while I expect regression, it will not be as bad as we saw in Week 1. With the weapons at his disposal, Stafford will be back in the top-15 discussion after this week.
Andy Hicks: Jaxson Dart played almost a perfect game. His pass completion rate was almost 80 percent. He threw for 3 touchdowns with 0 interceptions and ran smartly for 54 yards.
With Malik Nabers and Cam Skattebo returning, Isaiah Likely joining the roster, and John Harbaugh taking over as head coach, Dart finally has the ideal environment to play at his best. From what we saw in his rookie season, he's too young and impulsive to play at that level every week. It would be great if he did, but I feel like that is the best we will see.
Matthew Stafford looked like a player just trying to tick the boxes and get out of Australia with as little damage as possible. The Rams looked underprepared for Week 1, suggesting they are pacing themselves for the long haul.
Now, we must also consider that Stafford is approaching 39, and the team used a first-round pick on Ty Simpson to replace him. Conversely, he is the reigning MVP and coming off a 46-touchdown season. Until we see irrefutable evidence that he is past his best, we have to consider the whole first-week adventure an anomaly.
Jason Wood: I believe all three quarterbacks—Maye, Nix, and Stafford—have already turned in their floor games for the season, and I'd aggressively look to buy low if their current managers are panicking. That said, Maye gets the nod here because he plummeted to a QB27 finish after entering the year as my preseason QB2.
Yes, A.J. Brown’s trip to injured reserve caps Maye's ceiling for the next month or two, but remember: Maye led the NFL in yards per attempt and completion percentage last season without a true alpha receiver. He’ll course-correct quickly and settle in as an every-week, must-start QB1 the rest of the way.
Bryce Young won't score 30-plus fantasy points again this season. If you happen to roster him, find out immediately whether anyone in your league believes otherwise and trade him away. We’ve seen enough from Young to know who he is: a middling NFL starter destined to finish in the bottom third of the quarterback ranks on a per-game basis.
Phil Alexander: Bryce Young performed better in Week 1 than he will all season. Young entered 2026 having never finished higher than 35th in yards per attempt (hat tip to Pat Thorman). Thanks to Chicago's pitiful pass rush and comical coverage breakdowns, he averaged 9.8 yards per attempt in Week 1, trailing only Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Trevor Lawrence.
It's nice to see Young continuing to show flashes, but this game said more about the Bears' defense than it did about him. When Ben Johnson said he wanted to set the NFL scoring record, are we sure he didn't mean Chicago would need to?
Waldman: I'm picking on you, Phil. Not maliciously, but I just happened to see these games. The Bears' rush was good enough; Young's work was better.
#Panthers Late in the game, Bryce Young anticipates the blitz and with three defenders bearing down, reads the DBs switching coverage of.
— Matt Waldman (@MattWaldman) September 16, 2026
Allows Young to place the ball behind Tetairoa McMillan to err on the side of a catchable underthrown ball.
Badass pic.twitter.com/4gM9w71bZM
There are more touted quarterbacks who wouldn't know what to do with this late inside lane from the edge.
Two things can be true:
— Matt Waldman (@MattWaldman) September 16, 2026
1) The Bears may have a bad defense
2) Bryce Young played pretty well.
Excellent side-step, climb, and then flush. The side-step climb vs the late edge rush slicing inside is very difficult. Good work. pic.twitter.com/ZTdPDBrPJg
Young has a blocker facing a mismatch against a superior edge defender and handles this well preemptively.
Bryce Young down by 14 at top of 4th QTR with a strong climb and throw to Tetairoa McMillan for a big play.
— Matt Waldman (@MattWaldman) September 16, 2026
Climbing maximizes current route value.
McMIllan gets stripped -- a momentum-killing play that could have altered the tenor of this game. #Panthers
Growing pains. pic.twitter.com/7Y7LqVEEFj
This is a five-man pressure, and Young is quick enough to make at least two reads as the pocket compresses. There are QBs with more buzz who fall apart in these situations.
I like this throw from Bryce Young after looking right on 3rd and 2.
— Matt Waldman (@MattWaldman) September 16, 2026
Spots Tremble breaking across and places it safely away from the defender coming from the right. Get the safe catch and conversion, avoid the hospital ball. pic.twitter.com/hJI4AcneT2
I don't know what the data is saying, but I'm on the fourth example from this game where Young is doing a strong job of working against good pressure. When a quarterback has to elude two points of pressure in succession, that's the quarterback doing a good job and not the pressure being low quality.
Bryce Young to Hubbard TD1 #Panthers
— Matt Waldman (@MattWaldman) September 16, 2026
This quick execution from recognition to release in this situation is low-key difficult. Seeing the RB wide open after trying to flush left, cutting back right, and getting the ball out fast to exploit the space without a lot of time to set pic.twitter.com/kF9ml5hPDW
The stats you mentioned are WR-dependent, and they didn't have more than one decent WR for most of last year. With Jalen Coker locked to complement Tetairoa McMillan and a legitimate tight end in the receiving game in Darren Waller -- for as long as it lasts -- I think we'll see his production rise to borderline fantasy QB1 status in leagues with 12-16 teams.
He may wind up a middling starter, but I'll argue with Wood that it's not purely due to Young, but more to a lack of consistent receiving talent on the field.
Matthew Stafford performed worse in Week 1 than he will all season. Before last week, the last time Stafford scored around four fantasy points in a game he finished was Week 5 of 2017, when he gutted through multiple leg injuries. And while I haven't checked the schedule, I'm pretty sure he won't be asked to play football three hours after a 16-hour transcontinental flight again this season.
Darin Tietgen: It's gotta be Matthew Stafford. He just has way too many weapons to be the absolute worst fantasy quarterback of Week 1. And now that the Rams' defense has lost Myles Garrett for a month, they will lean on the offense, led by Stafford's arm, to win games.
Sean Settle: For the quarterback who performed much better than he will all season, I will take Caleb Williams, and it is worth noting he authored his four-touchdown outburst in a 59-37 win over Carolina.
When a quarterback puts up that kind of number in a 59-point outing, it usually says more about the game script and the defense involved than about his true level. Williams was excellent, but I do not expect Chicago to be part of many games like that this season.
For the quarterback who performed worse than he will all season, I will take Bo Nix. He completed 17 or 28 passes for only 131 yards with 1 touchdown and 1 interception, and he lost a fumble on top of it, in a 31-10 loss to Kansas City. Denver's offensive line and receiving corps are better than that performance suggested, and I expect Nix to look far more comfortable once the Broncos get a softer matchup.
Waldman: As always, thanks for reading.
Check out the links below for all of this week's roundtable topics:
- Week 1 Thrills and Horrors
- Biggest Quarterback Outliers
- Biggest Wide Receiver Outliers
- De'Von Achane and Omarion Hampton
Good luck!
