Matthew Stafford’s 46-touchdown 2025 season has landed him on FantasyPros’ fantasy regression list for 2026, even though his ADP already prices in some decline. For fantasy managers, the issue is not whether he was great last year; it is whether a QB4 finish at 21.1 points per game can survive a return to normal touchdown output.
Stafford’s 46-TD outlier
Stafford threw for 4,707 yards on 597 attempts, and his 46 touchdown passes were more than he threw in 2023 and 2024 combined. FantasyPros’ historical comparison is blunt: there have been 7 instances in NFL history of a quarterback reaching at least 46 touchdowns in a season outside Stafford’s 2025 run, and those passers averaged 16.4 fewer touchdown passes in their next full season.
Trevor Lawrence delivered his first legitimately great fantasy season after Jaguars' coaching change shows how quickly draft prices can move after a breakout year; Stafford is facing the opposite market pressure, with QB13 pricing at the end of the eighth round reflecting the risk before most drafters even get to his name.
Drew Brees and the drop
Drew Brees offers the cleanest historical marker in the group. He threw 46 touchdown passes in 2011, then followed with 43 in 2012, a smaller slide than the average but still a reminder that a huge touchdown year does not usually repeat at the same level.
Stafford’s case is tighter because the 2025 total was not just strong; it was an outlier against his own recent production. Fantasy managers drafting him now are buying a 38 years old quarterback who just posted a season that sits well above his 2023 and 2024 totals, which is why regression talk is attached to him rather than to his draft slot.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba volume
Jaxon Smith-Njigba also appears on the 2026 Fantasy Football Regression Candidates list after a 2025 line built on volume that is hard to reproduce. He caught 119 passes for 1,793 receiving yards, finished as WR2 in fantasy points per game at 21.2, and won Offensive Player of the Year in 2025.
His 35.9% target share came on 163 targets, while The Seahawks ranked 30th in team pass plays per game at 29.8 and tied for 30th in Pass Rate Over Expectation at minus-6.6%. That mix makes the season look efficient on the surface and fragile underneath; he ranked 21st in routes run with 482, which tells fantasy drafters the production came from a narrow, elite slice of the offense rather than from broad passing volume.
2026 fantasy football running back tiers gives a useful comparison point for value shuffling across draft boards: when the market expects a player’s role to shrink, the price can fall even before the stat line does. For Smith-Njigba, the practical move is to treat 2025 as the ceiling case, not the baseline, because 163 targets from a 29.8-pass offense leaves little room for a second straight leap.
FantasyPros in 2026
FantasyPros did not just single out Stafford and Smith-Njigba; it framed both as regression candidates for 2026, which tells managers to separate last season’s box-score peak from this year’s draft cost. That is the useful read here: Stafford’s elite touchdown pace and Smith-Njigba’s target share were real, but the market already shows some skepticism on Stafford, and Smith-Njigba’s workload profile suggests the harder path is repeating the volume.
The cleanest conclusion is to draft both with a ceiling capped below their 2025 peaks. Stafford belongs in the middle quarterback range, not beside his 46-touchdown season, and Smith-Njigba should be priced as a high-end receiver whose 2025 usage was built on exceptional share rather than a typical offense-wide passing environment.
