Fantasy Football Video: Is Emeka Egbuka a top-50 WR for next season, despite rough second half?
- - Fantasy Football Video: Is Emeka Egbuka a top-50 WR for next season, despite rough second half?
Yahoo Sports Fantasy Staff January 15, 2026 at 10:14 PM
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Tampa Bay Buccaneers WR Emeka Egbuka had one of the most exciting starts to an NFL (and fantasy football) career that we’ve seen. Unfortunately, the hype train went off the rails fast and by the time December rolled around, we were questioning everything we saw and knew about Egbuka in this Tampa Bay offense.
Matt Harmon and Justin Boone discussed Egbuka’s fantasy outlook for the 2026 season and whether he’s a top-50 wide receiver after having such a quiet second half of his rookie campaign.
Harmon viewed Egbuka as more of a Tier 2 prospect coming out of the 2025 NFL Draft, where the WR was selected in the first round with pick No. 19. The initial thought was Egbuka would become a very good No. 2 WR option in the NFL. Despite the hot start, that’s sort of what we got from Egbuka in what Harmon described as a “bizarre” rookie season.
Egbuka, 23, finished with 63 catches on 127 targets for 938 yards and six TDs over 17 games. That was good for a WR26 finish in half-PPR formats in terms of fantasy points per game (10.2) on the season.
Boone admits that they might have to take the “L” on this one with Egbuka. Through the first five weeks, the Bucs rookie was the WR3 overall. From Week 6 and on, Egbuka was the WR57 in scoring. You probably regretted hanging onto him late in the season, Boone explains.
In dynasty, it’s a different story.
When you look at Tampa Bay’s receiver room, there are plenty of question marks, Boone says. Mike Evans turns 33 and is a pending free agent who could also decide to retire. Chris Godwin Jr. was injured in 2024 and took a while to get back up to speed this season. It’s unclear if he can bounce back and be the same player we saw from 2019-23. Jalen McMillan missed almost all of 2025 but returned in Week 15 and made some noise to end his season.
Hopefully, after things shake out this offseason, we see some optimism going into Egbuka’s second year in the league. But for now, things are a bit up in the air.
Boone has Egbuka ranked 71st overall in his early top-150 players for fantasy football in 2026. The Yahoo analyst also has Egbuka ranked as the WR32 in his positional ranking, just behind Godwin. Egbuka comes in as the WR20 in Boone’s dynasty rankings for January and his early trade value charts.
Source: “AOL Sports”
