Fantasy Football Stock Report: Brock Bowers, Emeka Egbuka among top risers, fallers in Week 3

As I write this on Sunday night, 15 of 16 Week 3 games are in the books (with Monday night remaining) and the season is sort of starting to round into shape. Sort of. There were promising improvements. Concerning trends. Performances that changed our early outlook on players and teams. As always, some of these shifting perspectives will have permanent ramifications in fantasy.

With that in mind, I've compiled another full fantasy stock report. These are the most notable risers and fallers heading into Week 4.

Across a number of platforms, I made a bold prediction before the season that Brock Bowers would break the single-season receptions record of 149, set by Michael Thomas in 2019. The Raiders tight end missed the first two games ... and now he's right on track to do exactly that. It was start-to-finish dominance from Bowers, who some feared would be hampered or limited in his Week 3 return. Instead, he caught 10 of 13 targets for 116 yards and a touchdown. If anything, it looks better for Bowers than it did before the season, because of how well Kirk Cousins is playing. The veteran QB has thrown three touchdowns in each of the first three games, with Bowers snagging the third score on Sunday. Clearly 100% healthy, in a passing attack that's been shockingly productive, with a quarterback who's led last year's worst team to a 3-0 start ... Bowers has immediately assumed his place as fantasy's top tight end and arguably one of the best position-adjusted players in the game.

After two straight games of single-digit fantasy points, managers were starting to panic on Drake London ... but it seems Michael Penix Jr. has returned to save the day. In his first start of the year, Penix found London nine times on 10 targets for an absolutely absurd 194 receiving yards. It was a career high for the 25-year-old receiver and came on a day when Bijan Robinson also rushed for 194 yards. While this might have been more of an indictment of the Packers ' defense than anything, it's clear that Penix is better for London's value than Cooper Rush or Jake Strand. By an order of magnitude. We'll see how the Atlanta offense fares in New Orleans in Week 4, but London is back to fringe WR1 territory after his dominant TNF performance.

While Harold Fannin Jr.'s Week 2 fantasy output of 7.9 points was relatively disappointing, he did catch five balls on six targets for 54 yards in that game, which is plenty solid for a tight end. In Week 3, he took all those numbers up a notch, logging seven snags for 51 yards on nine targets ... but far more importantly, he scored a pair of touchdowns to finish with 20.6 fantasy points. This was what managers expected when they drafted him in the upper-half of TE1 territory in the summer. If we turn a half-blind eye to Week 1, Fannin's first game with Deshaun Watson , he's now totaled 12 catches for 105 yards and two scores on 15 targets the last two weeks. Given the nature of the offense and the quarterback room, Fannin might not be the most consistent TE1 in fantasy, but Week 3 solidified that he does belong in that TE1 conversation. You can start him with relative confidence again.

While Jaylen Warren still has not found the end zone this season, he has been one of the most consistently productive dual-threat running backs in the entire league, and broke out on the ground on Sunday. Warren galloped for 127 yards on 17 carries in Week 3, while adding three catches for 49 yards as well. It was his third straight game with 40+ rushing yards and 25+ receiving yards. There's one other player that can match that claim ... and his name is Jahmyr Gibbs . Obviously, Warren's ceiling is much lower than Gibbs', and the lack of touchdowns is concerning. But Warren has played three potentially tough matchups and established an impressive floor throughout. As far as reliable RB2s or high-end FLEX plays, Warren looks like one of the better options and will get even better for fantasy as the touchdowns come through.

It's clear that whatever Kellen Moore is doing for Tyler Shough, it's working. At least for fantasy. Forget "strong streamer" or "good superflex QB2" or even "spot-start QB1" ... Shough is making a strong case as a top-tier quarterback in fantasy. He's scored 22+ fantasy points in all three games this season, with 250+ passing yards in each and a total of eight touchdown passes and one score on the ground. In fact, Shough is the first QB since Josh Allen in 2022 to log 250+ passing yards, multiple total touchdowns and 22+ fantasy points in each of the first three weeks of a season. The year before, the only players to do it were Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady . Shough has also rushed for more yards in each successive game this year (with 36 on a single carry on Sunday), and leads the entire NFL in attempts (132) and completions (91), and is second to Bryce Young in passing yards (917). His current pace? That'd be 5,196 yards and 45 touchdowns passing. The Saints are playing fun and competitive football, and Shough is both a beneficiary and a big reason why. Until further notice, he should be considered not just a QB1, but squarely in the next tier of quarterback stars behind Josh Allen (a la Mahomes and Joe Burrow ).

Wow. Drake Maye was in this section of last week's column, where I said that he "could get into a barn-burner against the Jaguars ... so you're probably still starting him (and hoping) for at least another couple games." That hope came crashing to the ground in Week 3. Maye is lost. Unequivocally discombobulated and frankly incapable of NFL-level quarterback play right now. I watched the entire Pats-Jags game on Sunday and saw nothing redeeming from the third-year QB, who is now up to six giveaways and one touchdown through three games. In the absence of Stefon Diggs and Kayshon Boutte — with whom Maye had uncanny downfield connections last season — as well as an injured A.J. Brown , it just seems like the Patriots quarterback has zero chemistry, zero confidence and zero comprehension of opposing defenses. Last season's QB2 overall is simply not present right now, so if you're making lineup decisions involving Maye, forget about last season entirely. Next week, he faces the Bills, which means he'll likely be throwing a lot ... but I'd be hesitant to trust him in any matchup right now. At best, he's a fringe QB1 in good matchups. More likely, he's a park-on-the-bench asset we can hope improves when Brown eventually returns.

Oddly, Emeka Egbuka has been one of fantasy's most consistent wide receivers. The problem is that he's scored 8.8, 8.8 and 8.7 fantasy points, which, while impressively consistent, is not useful in starting lineups. Moreover, he has yet to top five catches or 63 yards in a game and had just three catches for 16 yards two weeks ago. None of this is WR1 material, and it's not great WR2 material either. But to make matters worse, Baker Mayfield dislocated his thumb on Sunday and is likely to miss some time. That leaves Egbuka and the rest of Tampa Bay with undrafted, six-year Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels in the interim. And while Mayfield hasn't been great, it's pretty tough to imagine Egbuka suddenly breaking out with an unheralded backup quarterback. Candidly, nothing about the Buccaneers offense has been encouraging through three weeks, so no matter how much time Mayfield misses, the outlook is currently grim for Egbuka's fantasy managers. Given the talent we saw early last season, he's worth holding on your bench. But he should not see your starting lineup for the foreseeable future.

It's been quite the yo-yo start to the season for Jaylen Waddle. He was non-existent in Week 1. Then he was the entire offense in Week 2. And on Sunday night, he did see seven targets but caught just two of them for 10 yards. The Broncos offense was a disaster for most of the game, before finding a small resurgence in the second half, and confidence in Davis Webb 's play-calling is ... less than a mile high. When it comes to Waddle specifically, it's less than an inch high. So far, a career-low 38.2% of his routes are in-breaking and 17.1% of his routes are deep (second-highest mark of his career). It feels like he's getting the Marvin Harrison Jr. treatment, and in two of three weeks, it has not worked. Here's a quick hint, Davis: Waddle's averaging 2.9 yards per route run on in-breaking routes and 1.4 YPRR on every other route. And in his career in Miami , he averaged 2.7 yards per route run on in-breakers and 1.9 on all others. If the offensive minds in Denver don't start utilizing Waddle where he's best — tearing up the intermediate middle of the field — and continue to run him straight and deep, he's going to be extremely frustrating for fantasy.

I said leading into last week that it was essentially now-or-never for Quinshon Judkins, in an extremely juicy matchup with the Panthers. And while Judkins did end up rushing for 70 yards ... that's pretty much all he did. It took him 18 carries to get there (3.9 yards per carry) and his two receptions on the day went for just nine yards. As a result, he finished with single-digit fantasy points for the third straight week, in the second game the Browns managed to win. If Judkins can't hit double digits in (rare) Browns wins against beatable defenses, when or where can we ever expect him to do so? The answer, until further notice, is nowhere and never. At least not predictably. Judkins has been extremely inefficient and has yet to find the end zone through three weeks. He's still dominating carries in the offense, so we can't drop him, but that almost makes him more problematic for fantasy. For now, park him on your bench, find an option with higher upside if you can and hope that he finds a second gear (and a touchdown or two) in the coming weeks.