The Biggest Risers and Fallers After Week 1

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Ben Gretch (0:40)

The biggest takeaways from week one of the 2026 season. That's what we're talking about today on Stealing Bananas. I'm Ben Gretch. Stealing Signals newsletter.

bengretch.substack.com. I wrote all day today. We usually do this Sunday night, Shawn.

I'm talking a minute about why we did it on Monday, but I have written part one all day long. Woke up at five, started. We're recording this at 9.3 my time. I've literally been working this entire time. I stopped writing and then started watching the last couple of games I hadn't seen before. I jumped on with you. With me as always is Shawn Siegel. You can find all of his fantastic work over at RotoViz. We were planning to do it last night. I messaged you. You had a volleyball match to attend yesterday, which was a fun thing. So you weren't gonna be able to watch all the games. I messaged you a little bit later and said, hey, I've been working through the games kind of slow. It's week one. There's so much going on. We're taking our time to really see what we're seeing and everything. You had had some technical difficulties. We decided to postpone it one day.

We've now both seen every game. I just watched the last couple, Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football. We're logging on Monday night. People who like our frantic, crazy Sunday Night Brains. They're still going to get crazy brain out of me tonight. How are you doing?

Shawn Siegele (1:59)

Well, 14 games is a lot.

The ones that I watched at the beginning, and on the road to and from volleyball, which is in a different city, it's 45 minutes down the road. Those games are a bit hazy, I have to say. I don't have the clearest impression of Buccaneers-Bangles other than, I mean, it was a terrible game, maybe the worst one of the week, when you consider how reasonably decent those teams are.

It was a game that the Bengals won, even though I promised myself I wouldn't say this because the Bengals did win, and I want to be positive about just everything, but certainly about the Bengals. But they again look like they hadn't practiced better just like every year when they start. So if you have some Jamar Chase teams, which we do because I was pretty insistent that he was the way to play, which I still think is the right call having watched the Atlanta Falcons game. But we know that, I mean, the Bengals go out and do some weird stuff in week one. Fortunately for them, Baker Mayfield was in full Baker Mayfield glory in the recollections I do have of the game, are him flying around randomly, worldly birding himself all over the place, almost scoring touchdowns and then rugby tossing the ball into the end zone for the other team, which it's just not how you win games. That's not how you win games, Ben.

Ben Gretch (3:25)

I, this is a really funny way to start because I went to write Stealing Signals today and I wrote the intro and I explained that I took a little longer to work through some of the games and so stealing bananas was going to be a day late because I wrote the intro separate and I sent it out this morning and I knew people would be looking for it so people that at least read the newsletter I wanted to let them know and as I wrote that I was like and I worked through it you know I worked through the games pretty intently and everything and then I go to the first game and the first game on you know I always go by the official NFL list the first game was this game the Bengals box and I was right about the team that won first or usually do whatever I make up my own rules half the time.

I get to that game and I get to start and I'm like I have no idea what I want to write all these notes to but I was like I have like no notes on the Bengals I don't even know what they did so I had to go back and it's like I'm like great I'm starting the season awesome my first game I have to go back and like rewatch stuff to try to figure out what actually happened in this game but yeah no I was and I'm sitting there looking at the box score I always go to the drive charts to try to figure it out but both teams got or the Bucks I know got about eight drives they lost four fumbles on their eight drives and they scored on all of their other four drives. They basically should have won this game if they didn't just keep fumbling and losing possessions which then gets back to how did the Bengals get into a position where they're only up six at the end and they have to convert four first downs to kill the clock and they do it and credit to Zack Taylor for calling a little bit of a pass first and not just trying to sit back and run run run and run out the clock but a pass first final drive let Joe Burrow go and your game for you I do think the Bucks must have been doing something to really take away chase because they got a target form on each of the first three drives and then just one more the rest of the game and that's when like Mike Kosicki started I'll tell you what's happening when he started getting stuff going was right from the beginning because he was completely uncovered the entire game it's like when you're going to go to your waivers and you're going to put bids in and I think you should put bids in for Mike Kosicki because most of the other tight ends in the NFL not only Isaiah Likely and Trey McBride didn't do anything, but I mean they just didn't cover it.