Look into the end zone of an NFL game this weekend, and there was a good chance a tight end was celebrating.
Sunday saw 20 touchdown catches by tight ends, the most on any single day in NFL history. The Las Vegas Raiders win over the New Orleans Saints was a glut of TE TDs, with four tight ends combining for six total touchdown catches.
“I think it’s amazing,” Juwan Johnson, who caught two touchdowns Sunday, told me. “I think it’s a real dedication to what the guys have done in the offseason. It’s a mental drain blocking some of the best running backs in the game, corners, safeties, linebackers, but then being asked to go out there and run and catch a ball. Sometimes, you can get into the end zone.”
The Saints ultimately lost when Raiders tight end Brock Bowers caught a fumble with 6:22 left, as teammate Michael Mayer had done earlier in the day. And Johnson wasn’t the only Saints tight end with multiple scores Sunday. Noah Fant also had two tackles for loss in the New Orleans loss.
The NFL is enjoying a tight renaissance, and the numbers may surprise you. In 2024, tight ends totaled 178 touchdowns league-wide, accounting for 22% of all passing touchdowns. Last year, that number increased to 231 touchdowns—a 30% increase—and accounted for 28% of all passing touchdowns. It’s a small sample, but three weeks into the 2026 season, NFL tight ends are on pace for 289 touchdowns — that’s 62% more than two years ago, and a 32% share of all TD passes.
Juwan Johnson was one of four tight ends to record a touchdown in Sunday’s Raiders-Saints game. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
Growing 12 personnel — with two tight ends and two receivers — grabbed headlines last year, with offenses liking a look that didn’t easily point to an obvious run or pass, creating mismatches down the field. Offenses used 12 personnel on nearly a quarter of their snaps in 2024 (22.1%) and again in 2025 (22.1%), according to FOX Sports Research.
“You have teams that made a big leap, like the Rams, that paved the way for so many ways to know the possibilities of what could be,” Johnson told me. “You have teams with a West Coast offense like (Raiders coach Clint) Kubiak, (San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle) Shanahan, guys in Seattle running a majority of 12 personnel. The way they operate with tight ends — it’s encouraged a lot of coordinators to do the same.
The growing value of tight ends was evident in this year’s draft, when nine were taken in the first three rounds — up from just three in 2024. You’re seeing it in lucrative contracts, too — the Raiders dealt Mayer, their No. 1 tight end.
The NFL already has four tight ends with three touchdowns in three weeks, showing the promise of more production during the season. George Kittle is among that group, who took two hits on Sunday as he continues his remarkable rehabilitation from an Achilles tear. Johnson, Fant and Dallas Cowboys Jake Ferguson are the others with three touchdowns already this year.
However, only twice in the last decade has a tight end caught 12 or more touchdowns in a season (Eric Ebron in 2018; Travis Kelce in 2022), but that could go back to the Rob Gronkowski/Jimmy Graham/Vernon Davis peak of 2009-15, when there were 10 such seasons. Tight ends led the league in touchdown catches three times in a five-year span during that stretch, which may never happen again.
The Saints had as many tight ends Sunday as they had in all of 2025, but Johnson said he doesn’t keep track of how tight ends are doing around the league, though he has someone else looking out for him.
“To be quite honest, I had no idea,” Johnson said. “The person who tells me about any of this stuff is my wife (Chanen). She’ll update me: ‘He did it. He did it. As much as I’ve played football, she’s fallen in love with watching football, and that’s something we can relate to. After all, these guys are my friends, too, so I’m confident a lot of these guys are going to do well. We have a lot of great, explosive, elusive tight ends in this game, so any time they do something positive, it’s not a shock to me.”
As much as we stress the importance of keeping your starting quarterback healthy, the first three weeks of the NFL season haven’t exactly illustrated that yet.
Six teams have had to play a quarterback other than their Week 1 starter, and those teams are 6-0 in those games, including Case Keenum’s big win Monday night for the Bears. Those six (Keenum, Atlanta’s Michael Penix, Minnesota’s Carson Wentz, Giants’ Jameis Winston, Seattle’s Drew Lock and Washington’s Marcus Mariota) have thrown for 14 touchdowns and just two interceptions.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – SEPTEMBER 28: Case Keenum #11 of the Chicago Bears celebrates after a touchdown against the Philadelphia Eagles during the first quarter of the game at Soldier Field on September 28, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
The same teams that are 6-0 with a sophomore quarterback are a combined 5-7 with their Week 1 starters, with 14 touchdowns and nine interceptions by those quarterbacks.
The Vikings’ aggressive defense is a big part of why they are 3-0 to start the season, with defensive coordinator Brian Flores doing far more than any other defense in the league. They’ve hit 68.4% of their opponents’ downs, which is over 20% higher than the second-leading team (New England Patriots, 45.2%), according to Sharp Football Analytics.
With all that hitting, the Vikings have a league-best 14 sacks, rank second in scoring defense and first in third-and-red zone defense. What has been underestimated is how many opponents are using penalties to avoid even more dismissals. Through three games, the Vikings have the best penalty differential in the league – opponents have 13 more penalties for 102 more penalty yards than Minnesota. They have forced opponents into four false starts and eight holding penalties.
Buccaneers QB Baker Mayfield was sacked six times in their loss to the Vikings. (Photo by Mike Carlson/Getty Images)
Tampa Bay struggled to contain Minnesota’s defense on Sunday, going 0-for-9 on third downs. The Buccaneers’ average third-down yardage was 14 yards for first downs. Penalties pushed them to a first-and-27 and, separately, to a third-and-29 and a third-and-36, so the league sack total could have been much higher.
How strange is it that the first two starting quarterbacks to take snaps this season were both … undrafted? First, Atlanta’s Jack Strand played as a function of the Falcons’ injury issues, and now the Buccaneers will turn to Jalon Daniels with Baker Mayfield injured. Fernando Mendoza, choice no. 1 overall to the Raiders, has yet to hit a milestone with Kirk Cousins leading Las Vegas to a surprising 3-0 start.
Undrafted rookie quarterbacks generally have a rough time of it — over the past two years, they’ve combined for a 1-5 record as a starter, two touchdowns and 12 interceptions. The best recent examples were Tommy DeVito of the Giants and Tyson Bagent of the Bears in 2023, who went a combined 5-5 with 11 strikeouts against nine interceptions.
Jack Strand made his NFL debut in Week 2. (Photo by Butch Dill/Getty Images)
When was the last time the first two starting quarterbacks to play were drafted? It feels like 2000, when Doug Johnson played for the Falcons and Clint Stoerner played for the Cowboys in the first four weeks. Throw in the draft picks from that year, and those rookies went on to win seven Super Bowls.
