Overachievers and Underperformers For Week 3 (Fantasy Football)
Okay, another week down of big performances, injuries, and the particular brand of pain only a fantasy football manager can truly understand. Congratulations to everyone drafted one of the overachievers below, and my condolences to those of us who started an underperformer.
To me, Week 2 is when things start to feel a lot more real. In Week 1, we can still make all the usual excuses: It was only one game. Maybe the offense needed time to settle in. Maybe our first-round pick needed another week or a better matchup…
Then Week 2 rolls around, and suddenly the players we have been riding for need to give us something to justify all that confidence. When they do absolutely nothing, again, we are left arguing with ourselves in the mirror like Willem Dafoe in Spider-Man over who we passed on in the draft and where it all went wrong.
However, fantasy football is a long game. Two weeks give us more information than one, which means we need to dig a little deeper into both the good and the bad. Trust me, narrowing down this list was not easy, but last weekend gave us plenty of candidates, and these are the players who ultimately made the cut.
Fantasy team starting 0-2 pic.twitter.com/fBFzyaLRSg
— kyle (@knicks_tape99) September 21, 2026
Underperformer: Colston Loveland (TE)
Week 2: 1 Reception, 3 Targets, 3 Rec Yds, 0 TDs
Fantasy Pts: 1.3 PPR / 0.3 STD
ROS Projected Fantasy Pts: 185.6
Do not get me wrong, Colston Loveland was absolutely a contender for the underperformer section last week. After two targets, zero catches, and a grand total of ZERO fantasy points in Week 1, I honestly thought his performance was so horrendous that I decided to give the guy another week before saying anything. That was obviously too generous of me.
Loveland needed to bring it in Week 2, and instead, he firmly landed in underperformer territory. He caught just one of his three targets for three yards in Chicago’s 9-3 loss to Minnesota, bringing his season total for two games to only 5 targets, 1 reception, 3 receiving yards, and 1.3 PPR points. For a TE who entered the season with considerable preseason hype and was being drafted as one of the first players at his position, those are pretty painful numbers to see.
There are, admittedly, a few excuses available. The wet and windy conditions at Soldier Field certainly did not help Chicago’s passing attack on Sunday, and Caleb Williams being carted off with a hamstring injury added another problem to an already ugly offensive afternoon. But the weather and a QB injury can only excuse so much, especially when Loveland’s lack of involvement has now carried through two games.
Things might not get any easier in Week 3. Williams is expected to undergo further examination on his hamstring, potentially leaving Tyson Bagent or Case Keenum under center against Philadelphia on Monday Night Football. That uncertainty, combined with Loveland’s limited involvement through two games, makes it difficult to feel confident about putting him back into a starting lineup.
Still, I do not think we should give up on him entirely. The Fantasy Footballers project Loveland for 185.6 fantasy points Rest of Season (ROS), so there is clearly still an expectation that the production will come. And after only two weeks, it is far too early to write off his entire season.
I gave Loveland a pass last week, but could not justify doing that again. If you drafted him expecting a reliable fantasy TE, 5 targets, 1 catch, and 3 yards through two games is nowhere close to what you signed up for. At some point, all that preseason hype has to start showing up on the field.
Colston Loveland for the second straight week.https://t.co/CSxoYyhCKg
— Dynasty FF Wolf (@DynastyFFWolf) September 20, 2026
Overachiever: Josh Allen (QB)
Week 2: 317 yards, 5 TDs
Fantasy Pts: 40.8
ROS Projected Fantasy Pts: 437.3
There are overperformers, and then there is Josh Allen casually totaling 317 yards and accounting for five of Buffalo’s six TDs in a 41-31 win over Detroit.
For a while, it was starting to feel a little like the Colston Loveland treatment for James Cook fantasy managers, as Allen and seemingly everyone else in Buffalo kept finding the end zone before Cook could. Last Thursday, Allen ran in Buffalo’s first TD himself, then proceeded to spread the love to Joshua Palmer, Dawson Knox, and Dalton Kincaid before running in another TD himself for good measure. Only then did he finally hand it off to Cook for Buffalo’s sixth and final trip to the end zone.
But this was ultimately the Josh Allen show, which is exactly why he lands among our overachievers this week. Allen threw for three TDs and ran in another two himself, once again showing the appeal of spending an early draft pick on him. He can put together a huge fantasy day with his arm, his legs, or, as he showed in Week 2, both at the same time. When your QB can throw for three TDs and essentially tack an RB stat line on top of it, there is not much more a fantasy manager or a Buffalo fan could ask for.
If you paid the premium for Allen on draft day, Week 2 was a pretty good reminder of what you bought into. The Fantasy Footballers currently project him for 437.3 fantasy points Rest of Season (ROS), and performances like this are exactly why his weekly ceiling remains so ridiculously high.
maybe fantasy isn’t that hard.
Just draft Josh Allen.2026 – QB1
2025 – QB1
2024 – QB2
2023 – QB1
2022 – QB2
2021 – QB1
2020 – QB1 pic.twitter.com/m1K5ElT5nA— SleeperNFL (@SleeperNFL) September 21, 2026
Underperformer: DK Metcalf (WR)
Week 2: 4 Rec, 9 Targets, 27 Rec Yds
Fantasy Pts: 6.7
ROS Projected Fantasy Pts: 185.2
For the second week in a row, DK Metcalf has gotten plenty of opportunities, but has very little to show for them. He seems to have developed a case of “butterfingers” when it comes to actually catching the football, hauling in just four of his nine targets for 27 yards in Pittsburgh’s 20-3 loss to New England. That gave fantasy managers another frustrating afternoon from a player who has now seen 19 targets through two games. Seriously, that is not a bad amount of looks.
The volume is at least encouraging. Metcalf led the Steelers in targets, again, but the opportunities are becoming harder to celebrate when the production is nonexistent, and the results look almost identical each week. In Week 1, he turned 10 targets into four catches for 40 yards. In Week 2, he followed that up with four catches for 27 yards on nine targets. It is basically the Spider-Man pointing meme in stat-line form.
Yet another drop for DK Metcalf!!!!! #yips #Steelers #NFL pic.twitter.com/5LH7Dl7sSo
— Steelers Depot 7⃣ (@Steelersdepot) September 20, 2026
Some of the blame certainly belongs to Pittsburgh’s passing game as a whole. Aaron Rodgers finished with only 187 passing yards while averaging 4.8 yards per attempt, and rookie Germie Bernard somehow led the Steelers with just 35 receiving yards. Basically, no one in this offense had a banner day on Sunday.
But that only excuses so much. Metcalf was brought in to be the centerpiece of this passing attack for more than $30 million, and 19 targets should be producing a lot more than eight catches for 67 yards. The opportunities are there. The production simply has not followed, and it is not as if his first two matchups presented some impossible gauntlet for a receiver of his caliber.
The Fantasy Footballers currently project Metcalf for 185.2 fantasy points Rest of Season (ROS) because a player commanding this many targets is going to keep getting opportunities to score points. But heading into a Week 3 matchup against Cincinnati, fantasy managers need those opportunities to start translating into real production.
Aaron Rodgers and DK Metcalf every play pic.twitter.com/tIAaVh4cZw
— SteelYinzer (@YinzerofSteel07) September 20, 2026
Overachiever: Jaxon Smith-Njigba (WR)
Week 2: 9 Rec, 155 Rec Yds, 3 TDs
Fantasy Pts: 42.50
ROS Projected Fantasy Pts: 336.4
THE BIG KAHUNA. A few WRs understood the assignment in Week 2, but Jaxon Smith-Njigba passed the test with flying colors. JSN caught nine of his 11 targets for 155 yards and three TDs in Seattle’s 31-7 win over Arizona, delivering the kind of fantasy performance that can single-handedly swing a matchup and wasted absolutely no time getting started.
On Seattle’s opening possession, Drew Lock threw an absolute dart to Smith-Njigba for an 82-yard TD, the longest reception of JSN’s career. If you spent a first-round pick on this guy, watching him take one to the HOUSE on the opening drive was probably all the reassurance you needed to start texting in the group chat.
Smith-Njigba kept it rolling from there, adding a seven-yard TD in the third quarter before finding the end zone for a third time on a 12-yard score in the fourth. By the end of the afternoon, JSN had scored in three different quarters and racked up a whopping 42.5 fantasy points.
The scary part for everyone who does not have JSN on their roster is that Week 2 did not exactly come out of nowhere. Through two games, Smith-Njigba has caught 17 of 22 targets for 277 yards and four TDs. That is a 77.3% catch rate while averaging 138.5 receiving yards per game, making it abundantly clear that he is picking up right where he left off as one of the premier WRs in fantasy.
Next up is Washington, and as a Commanders fan, I am already preparing for the reckoning. Washington’s secondary looked awful this past weekend, and now it has to deal with a receiver coming off a 155-yard, three-TD performance. I might not particularly enjoy watching that matchup, but JSN fantasy managers certainly should.
Turns out JSN is this year's JSN
— Sigmund Bloom (@SigmundBloom) September 20, 2026