Amid a vast sea of podcasts devoted to the topic of fantasy football, "The Ringer Fantasy Football Show" is easily one of the most popular, ranking third in total downloads among such shows. On Thursday, the show, which is hosted by Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly and Craig Horlbeck, dropped their annual "Sleepers and Top Targets for 2026" episode, the main conceit of which is that all three contributors have to "turn their key" on a player for him to be fully endorsed by the show as a favorite target this year.
At the 41:13 mark of Thursday's show, Horlbeck introduced Buccaneers second-year wide receiver Emeka Egbuka as the next player up for debate. In the midst of the discussion that followed, which included concern over the toe injury that currently has Egbuka sidelined, the hosts also evaluated the Buccaneers' offensive prospects as a whole in 2026. To put it mildly, the Ringer Fantasy Football Show experts are quite high on Tampa Bay's attack this year, and for one key reason.
"I'm a key-turn on this," said Kelly, who is also the show's resident NFL Draft expert. "I'm a big believer, I think, in this year's Bucs offense because of the offensive line. I think their offensive line could be elite, and we've seen how that spills over into fantasy scoring so much. Like, think about some of the old days with the Cowboys' offense, where everybody's eating because the offensive line is just so f****** good. And I think they have the potential to do that if they can stay healthy."
For the record, all three hosts did "turn their key" for Egbuka despite some reservations regarding his injury.
"Obviously, the question is, is his foot hurt?" said Kelly. "We don't really know. I guess, how hurt is it – we don't really know at this point in time. So I'm still turning the key on Emeka Egbuka. I love him. I think he's a really, really good player and he's going to have a better role that suits his skillset this year than he did last year. I think Baker Mayfield's going to be a lot better than he was last year. So I think we could see this team turn back into a really high-scoring sort-of fantasy juggernaut."
Horlbeck was even more bullish on Egbuka's potential output this season, even comparing his breakout potential to the the emergence in 2025 of Seattle wideout Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who won the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year award after catching 119 passes for 1,793 yards and 10 touchdowns.
"If he were to play Week One and he is healthy, I think he is one of the best bets to be the 'JSN'of this year, except he's playing the Cooper Kupp role," said Horlbeck. "I think him on Tampa Bay in this new offense under Zac Robinson with a healthy Baker Mayfield, he has the chance to truly be a defining character in fantasy this year. You look at what he did in the first five weeks of last year as a rookie where it was like all-time numbers. It was like Randy Moss and then Emeka Egbuka, how good he was in the first five weeks of the season. Mike Evans is gone."
The Buccaneers believe they have the makings of one of the NFL's most productive offenses in 2026 and, indeed, it starts up front, where all five starters from the team's dominant offensive line in 2024 are expected to be ready for Week One. It appears that the analysts on the Ringer Fantasy Football Show feel the same way.
