NFL 2026/27 - What to Expect and timeline
NFL 2026 New Season - What To Expect
NFL 2026 (17 week regular season) - By Rich 'Tighty' Prew - £125 - Subscribe here
Hello again everyone and welcome back for another season.
Beginning with a look at some of the structural themes taking place in the NFL and then relating through to the weekly tips.
Again in 2025 we saw an early season trend that offenses struggled relative to defenses. Part of this is intuitive - many starting offenses do not play much in pre-season - and it takes time to gel, especially if it’s a new scheme with new coordinators and/or new Quarterbacks. This generally sorts itself by about week 5-6. This year no less than 17 of the 32 NFL offenses have a new head coach and/or play-calling offensive coordinator. That is a lot of change when it comes to schemes and philosophy, caution is required when reading across from last season to this in these 17 teams in particular.
The NFL in 2025 produced a very similar result for offenses compared to 2024 but improved results compared to 2022-23. Prior to 2024 NFL scoring had had fallen to its lowest levels since the late 2000s. In 2024 and 2025 across all regular season games there were on average 2.43 offensive touchdowns a game up from 2.25 in 2023 (the lowest level since 2014). There is some way to go, it is still down from 2.74 in 2020, but offenses have begun to improve relative to defenses.
The NFL is a cyclical game. There has always been a consistent pendulum of counterpunching between offense and defense. Coming out of the 2020 season, NFL defenses gained an upper hand by playing more shell coverage (fielding more defensive backs) and playing lighter fronts (fewer players near the line of scrimmage to stop the run). The premise was to prevent big plays (rule changes a decade ago favoured offense and led to many more explosive plays deep down the field) and force offenses to run more plays, advancing down the field more slowly.
This was dramatically successful. Average passing yards per game has been on a steep decline since 2020 reaching a multi-year low (lowest since 2006) in 2025 at just 225 yards per game. Quarterback drop-backs (to pass) were 36 per player last year, the lowest since 2009 despite the best average starting field position since 2007, of which more later
In 2024-2025 offenses countered declines in the passing game by going “heavy”: running plays with 2 or 3 Tight Ends on the field (and less receivers). These players can block, to help the run game, but most effectively for player prop purposes can catch down the field too.
A quarter of the league’s pass plays last season had two or more tight ends on the field, the highest rate in the 2000s. Five teams ran 100-plus plays with three or more tight ends on the field, and another (Chicago) was at 99.
The LA Rams (as we’ll see in the next write-up, Super Bowl favourites this year) have been the clearest sign of the NFL pendulum swinging back to heavy formation offense. The percentage of plays ran with three wide receivers on the field by recent year are as follows:
2021 91%
2022 95%
2023 97%
2024 86%
2025 72%
The Rams ran an NFL-record 331 plays in 3 Tight End sets last season. The next closest team (the Steelers) was at 145. The Rams averaged 8.4 yards per pass play with three or more tight ends on the field. The league average was 6.3 yards. Offenses were able to do more in the passing game in heavier sets because defenses came out of their sub-packages/shells more often (to stop the run game/heavy sets). NFL defenses have placed such an emphasis on defending the pass out of the explosive three wide-receiver, spread-offenses that offenses have started to exploit it by creating explosive passing plays out of these heavy sets.
There will certainly be a bubble that pops here, just as in all prior NFL cycles, but 2026 does not appear to mark a shift in the league's direction. We appear to be “mid-cycle” which we can use in player props as the league is telling us it wants to keep going down this road in the immediate future.
At the NFL Combine in the Spring ahead of the NFL draft, the league invited a record 27 tight ends. 22 tight ends were then drafted, up from 15 in 2025 and 12 in 2024. This was the highest number of tight ends selected in a draft since 2002. 9 were selected in the top 100 picks, for the first time ever.
The NFL is sending a strong signal that it will continue this approach until it is pushed as far as it will go just as we previously saw with the spread-offense boom. Part of the month of August for me each year is following along the training camps via press conferences, podcasts, videos and reports and we can see from various teams that the use of 1-2 in particular (two tight ends on the field) is set to accelerate further. For example the Philadelphia Eagles attempted just 47 passes (29th) from 1-2 personnel last year and have spent all this training camp in 1-2. That to give one example may lead to prop bet pricing inefficiencies especially early season.
As established earlier we know Quarterback passing yards per game are declining, but Tight End receiving yards are increasing year-by-year (and of course that is increasing from within a smaller pie, so wide receiver yards are down more than Quarterback yards). In 2025 Tight Ends accounted for the highest percentage of receiving yards than at any point in the last ten years. See:
We can begin to see some “top-down” thoughts which might lead to player prop value themes but the other side of that is defending the offensive “meta”. Whilst Tight Ends are on one side of the ball on the other we have linebackers and safeties with whom defenses can match-up. The safeties who can come in the box and be a difference maker in coverage and in the run game are the ones who are important and for now there is a shortage of these players who can do both.
For the 2025 Super Bowl winner Seattle Seahawks they found such a player in drafting Nick Emmanwori last year and this were able to stay in nickel/shell defenses at the league’s highest rate against bigger personnel. The three 2025 secondaries that consistently stood out for just absolutely smothering passing games in zone coverage were as follows: Seahawks - Chargers - Eagles.
To take that a stage further as an example, the Eagles secondary coach Christian Parker left to become the Cowboys defensive coordinator. The Cowboys ranked 31st in defense last year. Then the Cowboys drafted the best safety prospect in many years (Caleb Downs) early in the Spring and you can see the direction a new defense might be going, and just saying “attack the Cowboys defense, it was so poor last year” might be completely outdated with new coaching and new personnel.
The Chicago Bears were third in the league in answering heavy personnel with nickel coverage but got smashed in the run game for that decision last year. What this highlights is that a logical next evolution to the heavy-Tight End trend is defenses figuring out how to play the run decently without having to fully concede their pass defense.
So back to 2025, and offense being slightly further ahead of defense compared to 2022-23 and equal to 2024, Offenses scored on 41% of their drives that did not end in kneel-downs, their highest rate in the last ten years outside of the COVID-influenced 2020 season.
Part of what we also have to continue to factor in is the new rules on kick-offs, returns and the balls.
Here are league-wide showing the average starting point (yard line) of a drive post-kickoff:
2022: own 25.3
2023: own 25.5
2024: own 30.0
2025: own 30.7
And the percentage of drives that ended in a touchdown:
2022: 20.7%
2023: 20.1%
2024: 22.5%
2025: 23.0%
Unfortunately, touchdowns per game treaded water because overall possessions once again dipped. Offenses averaged only 10 possessions per game that did not end in kneel-downs, their fewest in the 2000s. We have lost roughly 1.5 possessions per team per game from where things were back in 2010. As a result of fewer possessions, offenses sagged down to 61.3 plays per game, the fewest of the 2000s. There were 485 fewer offensive plays last season than there were in 2024 and a whopping 1,004 fewer offensive plays than there were in 2023. That’s a lot of plays where we could have more ways of winning prop bets.
A central component reducing possessions (and thus plays) is the league’s new kickoff rules and kickers now attempting more long-range field goals than ever leading to more and more drives ending in field goal attempts than ever before. This is down to the new “kicking ball process” where rather than getting a ball to kick at the start of the game teams receive the game balls in the game week and can “knock them in” beforehand. In each of the past two seasons, 19.1% of all possessions have ended with a field goal attempt, the highest rate of the 2000s. In the year 2000 there was one 55+ yard field goal. In 2025 there were 74!
Overall, scoring and touchdown rates per drive are trending up, but possessions and play volume keep dropping off resulting in modest offensive improvements without reaching the boom levels of 2021-21.
Let’s wrap up, moving on from general themes to potential player prop implications. I’ve talked a lot about passing out of “heavy” formations with 2 or 3 Tight Ends on the field. However 2025 showed that the recipient of passing game efficiency out of run sets may not be just the Tight Ends. Seattle for example led the league in explosive plays (20+ yard passes) out of 1-2 and 1-3 but the majority of plays went to their top wide receiver Jaxson Smith Njigba who led the league in receiving.
The signal from players like this, and the last draft is that we will see a lot more 1 or 2 wide receiver sets and far fewer with three receivers on the field. The corollary of looking for the top wide receivers and the Tight Ends in the passing game is likely to be fewer opportunities for slot receivers/second and third wide receivers on the depth chart which simply aren’t going to be on the field as much.
Seeing how some of that worked out in practice last year these were the Yards per route run leaders from Heavy personnel (fewer than 3 receivers on the field) ie where the defense is expecting run, and the offense generates big pass plays:
1 Puka Nacua 6.24
2 Luther Burden 5.26
3 Jaxon Smith-Njigba 4.87
4 Amon-Ra St Brown 3.65
5 CeeDee Lamb 3.35
6 Zay Flowers 3.34
7 George Pickens 3.3
Some familiar names there for people who followed the column last year and in many cases from teams with the best play-callers concentrating on their most dynamic players.
Wrapping all this up, in 2025 wide receivers accounted for 58.4% of targets, the lowest mark since 2017. Comparing 2016-2020 data versus 2021-2025 data, wide receiver routes and targets are down across the board. Even so, top wide receivers are up in receiving yards per game as those targets concentrate towards the best players who can win against various types of coverage.
I’ll be back in the next fortnight with two ante-post write ups covering season-long markets whether that be the Super Bowl, divisions and teams and then player markets (passing yards, rushing, receiving, comeback player and rookies etc).
Then Week One write-ups. I will have something for the opening game of the season, on Wednesday 9th September. There’s also a game on Thursday 10th in Melbourne, so I will look at that separately before moving onto the Sunday games.
Here is the report Schedule for the next three weeks:
- Friday August 21st Ante-Post Team Markets
- Friday August 28th Ante-Post Player markets
- Tuesday Sept 8th Opening game Patriots at Seahawks (Sept 9th)
- Wednesday Sept 9th Thursday Night Football Rams/49ers, Melbourne (Sept 10th)
- Friday September 11th Sunday week 1 Matches
- Weekend of 12th-13th September : Monday Night Football Week 1 Broncos at Chiefs
Most of the weekly work beyond Week One will be published on the Friday afternoon of each week (last year prices were usually live early enough to publish before each weekend, but potentially it might be on a Saturday morning) focusing on Sunday/Monday games
The bread-and-butter of our player prop work is anytime touchdown scorers and occasional first touchdown scorers. I know some subscribers take anytime bets and back them in first touchdown scorer markets accepting higher variance and perhaps only a few winning bets each season at higher prices but, in this the fifth year of this Betting Emporium strategy, we go for the lower variance approach. Other markets can be player passing yards, rushing yards and receiving yards over/unders to give some frequent examples. For the Super Bowl we expand to kicking/sacks/interceptions markets, which are often not available in the regular season.
I don’t cover each game every weekend but was covering up to 8 a week last year (high point totals expected a decent first filter, highly ranked offenses, weak defenses are others) and each game “shows the workings” looking at match-ups between team units as well as player statistics.
It is not surprising that in each of the last four years weekly results for our approach have improved into and through the second half of the season as trends establish. Logically therefore unit sizes should begin by being modest, and bigger weekly bets made after the first 5-6 weeks.
Thank you to subscribers new and old, here’s to a good season. I’m available any time on X DMs (@tighty) for NFL discussions, or clarifications about bets/prices/markets etc.
NFL 2026 (17 week regular season) - By Rich 'Tighty' Prew - £125 - Subscribe here
NFL 2026/27 - What to Expect and timeline
Timetable
Here is the publishing Schedule for the next six weeks:
- Friday August 14th: What to expect from this column this season
- Friday August 21st: Ante-Post Team Markets
- Friday August 28th: Ante-Post Player markets
- Tuesday September 8th:Opening game Patriots at Seahawks (on Wednesday Sept 9th)
- Wednesday September 9th: Thursday Night Football Rams versus 49ers, Melbourne (in the early hours of Friday Sept 11th)
- Friday September 11th: Sunday week 1 Matches
- Weekend of September 12-13th: Monday Night Football Week 1 Broncos at Chiefs
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