Will 2026 Be a High-Scoring NFL Season?

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Colm Kelly (1:13)

What we are most looking forward to in Week 1 and questions for the NFL season in general, that's what we're talking about today on RotoViz Overtime. My name is Colm Kelly. You can follow me on socials ad over Tim Ireland. Of course, you can always check Shawn's work up on rotoviz.com. Shawn, you might kick this one off by letting the listeners know what you and Ben have planned. Have you planned ahead? Have you got that recap on deck? Are you ready to go for Week 1?

Shawn Siegele (1:41)

Yeah, we'll see. It's late late for me now that I'm back in Kansas City.

Colm Kelly (1:49)

The positive is you can do 11 a.m. Eastern now, but you may not be able to link up for the end of the day recaps. That could be the challenge.

Shawn Siegele (2:00)

No, it creates a little more time in the day too to actually watch those games. When you're out on the West Coast, Colm, both the starting line up decisions come early, and then recording the show comes early in the evening. Now, we're fired up, we're ready. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Colm, are you already having stress streams? I'm very excited, enthusiastic, optimistic about this season. I think that it is going to be one of the best ever. I've mentioned that I think that 2026 drafting landscape was the most fun, in many ways, the easiest, which is the famous last words kind of comment. But it's also allowed for the most creativity of any draft season in memory. And so that part of it has been fantastic. You've got this question that we're going to discuss about, can the NFL get back to scoring? I think there is reason for optimism there. I'm fired up about that. We have all of these either committee backfield situations or two, three deep wide receiver groups or making a bet on the more talented wider receiver, the one who seems like he is going to break out and be an impending star.

Well, some of these things are not going to go our way. And you're going to have that first recap show on Sunday night. And there's going to be so much excitement for certain things. There's going to be a decent amount of consternation. Like, what were the coaches thinking? Because we thought they had a plan to score points and win games.

And it seems like they're just out there doing stuff. So you don't want to anticipate too much of the negative. But we also know that we need to be balanced in our approach. Not everything is going to go well.

Colm Kelly (3:40)

I did have a phrase that I had written down in the first show. It was balancing the optimism for upside and the pragmatism for week one. And there's always that part where, especially if we draft teams with young players, with rookies in particular, that you may want that kickstart of the season to be very hot. And straight away, they're off to a fast start. But there is that realization that sometimes that isn't the case. And sometimes that means that in week three or week four, that does happen and it continues. But sometimes with some players, Shawn will know if we go back numerous years, Kyle Pitts was one of those players that just seemed to break our heart every week. And he's now almost kind of rebounded to a point where some huge games last season. And we'll see how it goes with him and the Falcons this season. But you do have that each season. And the thing that I'm very, very interested about is some of these teams. Like I mentioned, the Jets and the Titans game spread there. It's one of the only games this week. It's actually the only game. There's some games around 40 points, but it's the over-unders at 39 and a half. So these obviously Vegas is expecting offenses to struggle a little bit. But there's always those couple of teams every year. And I don't mean the Jets and the Titans, but they're often in that category. Where you're like, could they make the jump?