What Should You Expect From Boye Mafe in 2026?

If you've been following my work, this title might trigger a little déjà vu. I've been on the Boye Mafe train before, no secret there, and I'll own it straight up. The take wasn't wrong; it was just early! Nothing in my evaluation of the player has changed. If anything, I'm more fired up about him heading into this season than I've ever been. Mafe finally has a clear path to a full-time starting edge role and should deliver instant production for a Bengals defense that's been starving for consistent pressure off the edge. The talent has always been there. The athleticism, the burst, the ability to win one-on-ones, it's all still intact. What was missing was the pure opportunity, and that door is now wide open. He doesn't carry the flashy name that dominates the national headlines or the early-round ADP chatter, but don't let that fool you. This is exactly the kind of player who can quietly become a reliable every-week starter in your IDP lineups. Opportunity meets talent, and the production should follow. I'm buying in.

How Did We Get Here?

Mafe entered the league as the eighth pick in the second round of the 2022 NFL Draft, a high-upside edge prospect the Seahawks hoped would develop into a cornerstone. His rookie season was productive but quiet, enough to show the traits were real, but not yet the kind of year that forces itself onto every IDP radar. Then 2023 hit, and the flashes of brilliance arrived in full. 52 total tackles, nine sacks, and six passes defended. That's the kind of well-rounded production only the better edge rushers put together. He wasn't just winning as a pure pass rusher; he was a consistent tackler with a real knack for disrupting the passing game. The biggest difference between those first two seasons was opportunity. In 2022, Mafe ranked third on the Seahawks' edge in snaps. In 2023, he led the group, nearly doubling his previous total and finishing with 808 defensive snaps. The production followed the increased role exactly as you'd hope.

Unfortunately, that 2023 campaign looks like the high-water mark in his career so far. The next two seasons never saw him approach even 75 percent of those 808 snaps. Seattle brought in veteran IDP staple Demarcus Lawrence and got a healthy Uchenna Nwosu back after significant missed time during Mafe's rise. Suddenly Mafe was, at best, the third option at the position on a team that also changed coaches mid-stream. Mike Macdonald, a defensive specialist who didn't draft him, took over and has since cemented himself as a "made man" in the NFL after last year's Super Bowl run. The talent never left Mafe. The pure opportunity did.

New Horizons

For the first time in his career, Boye Mafe hit the free-agent market this offseason. In March, the Cincinnati Bengals stepped up and signed him to a three-year, $60 million deal. In my view, this is as clean a landing spot as Mafe could have hoped for, an immediate impact opportunity for both the team and IDP managers. The Bengals have been desperate for consistent pass-rush production ever since Trey Hendrickson's health started to fail him. They've thrown two premium draft picks at the edge since 2023, Myles Murphy at 28th overall and Shemar Stewart at 17th overall in 2025, and those two have combined for a grand total of nine sacks across all their seasons. That is simply not enough juice for a defense that needs to help Joe Burrow.

Mafe walks into that vacuum as an immediate contributor and, more importantly, as a player the Bengals appear ready to build around. They already declined Murphy's fifth-year option, making him a free agent after this season if no new deal is reached. The money and commitment are already invested in Mafe. It gets better. Cincinnati also added two high-end interior defensive linemen in Dexter Lawrence II and Jonathan Allen. Those two will command significant attention from opposing offensive lines every week. That creates cleaner one-on-one matchups for Mafe on the edge, the exact situations where his athleticism and burst have always shone. Significant snaps plus favorable matchups equal production. This is the role Mafe has been waiting for.

Long-Term Expectation