FantasyPros is already warning fantasy managers that two of 2025’s biggest outliers are unlikely to repeat their numbers in 2026. Matthew Stafford and Jaxon Smith-Njigba both turned in seasons that pushed draft prices higher, but the projection work points in the opposite direction now.
The search for their names makes sense because both players were difference-makers last year. Stafford threw for 4,707 yards and 46 touchdowns on 597 attempts, finished as QB4 and averaged 21.1 fantasy points per game. Smith-Njigba caught 119 passes for 1,793 yards, finished as WR2 in fantasy points per game at 21.2 and posted a 35.9% target share, a number that only looks more extreme when placed beside Malik Nabers at 34.9% in 2024 and DeAndre Hopkins at 35.2% in 2017.
For Stafford, the historical case for decline is simple. Outside his 2025 season, seven quarterbacks in NFL history have reached 46 touchdown passes in a year, and they averaged 16.4 fewer touchdown passes in their next full season. Drew Brees was the only one in that group who avoided a double-digit drop, sliding from 46 touchdowns in 2011 to 43 in 2012. FantasyPros sees Stafford landing closer to 30 touchdowns this season, which would still keep him usable but would make it hard to justify the same ceiling that drove his 2025 finish.
That warning matters because Stafford is not being drafted like a locked-in star. He is QB13 in FantasyPros ADP and usually comes off the board at the end of the eighth round, which suggests fantasy drafters already expect some regression. The gap is whether that price has moved enough to absorb the fall from 46 touchdowns to something nearer 30, or whether the market is still buying too much of last year’s peak.
Smith-Njigba’s case is less about touchdowns and more about volume that may not be repeatable. He saw 163 targets in 2025, but Seattle ranked 30th in team pass plays per game at 29.8 and tied for 30th in Pass Rate Over Expectation at minus 6.6%. A 35.9% target share can survive only so much if the team keeps throwing at one of the league’s slowest rates, and that is the friction point sitting under the breakout.
FantasyPros still had reason to praise the year, calling it a strong Year 3 for Jaxon Smith-Njigba, but praise and pricing are not the same thing. His 2025 line included 119 receptions, 1,793 receiving yards and a season that ended with a Super Bowl victory and the Offensive Player of the Year award, yet the math of target share says he does not need to be worse individually to be less valuable in fantasy. If Seattle’s passing volume shifts even modestly, the share that looked elite in 2025 becomes harder to defend.
That is why both names fit the same fantasy warning even though they got there differently. Stafford is the touchdown outlier whose historical comp points to a step back, while Smith-Njigba is the target magnet whose workload depends on a passing environment that was already thin. The safer read for 2026 is not that either player disappears, but that last season’s level is the ceiling, not the baseline.
Fantasy managers who want to pay for repeat production have to decide whether the market has already done the hard part for them. Stafford may already be priced for decline, but Smith-Njigba’s 35.9% share still leaves less margin for error than his 2025 box score suggests, and that is what makes both players useful again only if the draft room believes in another outlier season.
