Quarterbacks have been the talk of the town throughout the opening weeks of the 2026 NFL offseason. Both Tua Tagovailoa and Kyler Murray were released, triggering monster cap hits for the Miami Dolphins and the Arizona Cardinals, respectively. They have since gone on to find new homes, one in Atlanta and the other in Minnesota, but some remain unclaimed.
Kirk Cousins was also heading to the Falcons in a monster deal not too long ago, but he, too, has been released after an ill-fated two-year stint in Georgia. Aaron Rodgers continues keeping the Pittsburgh Steelers on tenterhooks: Will he or won’t he remain? And that’s without even mentioning the upcoming draft, where Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza is all but guaranteed to head to Las Vegas while the consensus QB2 Ty Simpson waits to see if he is considered a first-round prospect.
But that is offseason talk. In six months’ time, the NFL will return to the gridiron, but which quarterbacks will be under the most pressure to deliver when it finally does? Let’s take a look.
Lamar Jackson
Let’s call it what it is: no quarterback alive is more unguardable when fully healthy than Lamar Jackson. Two MVP awards — the 2019 unanimous demolition, the 2023 encore — a football IQ that makes defensive coordinators rearrange their entire week of preparation. And yet. A 29-year-old entering a new coaching staff era in Baltimore, coming off the worst statistical season of his career, carrying a 1-4 playoff record that hangs over every highlight like a fog that won’t lift.
Can Lamar finally conquer January? Defensive coordinators who’ve spent years in cold sweats watching him scramble for 80 yards before halftime would love a definitive answer. So would the bookmakers.
The early Bovada NFL futures odds peg the Ravens as a +1100 contender to lift the Lombardi at Super Bowl LXI on Valentine’s Day next year in Los Angeles. Only the NFC West heavyweight Rams and reigning champion Seahawks are considered more likely. But Baltimore’s hopes are pinned almost entirely on Jackson, with their offense designed to weaponize his legs as a constant threat, bending opposing defenses until they break.
When the hamstring forced him into a half-throttle version of himself throughout the back end of last season, his side became average. Not bad. Bang Average. In a conference now brimming with game-winning QBs, average ends your season before Thanksgiving. The new coaching staff inherits that fragility as their first real test: can they build something sustainable enough to survive another partial Lamar season? Because his body increasingly seems to have opinions of its own.
Age 29, prime window, everything on the line. Anything short of a deep playoff run this season — and we’re talking at minimum a divisional win — becomes the defining annotation on his legacy. Not the MVPs. Not the rushing records. The Januaries he couldn’t conquer.
Joe Burrow
Somewhere in a Cincinnati rehab facility last fall, Joe Burrow iced his surgically repaired left toe and stared at a ceiling that had become disturbingly familiar. Grade 3 turf toe — a complete soft tissue tear, the kind that requires reconstruction, not just rest. Surgery in Week 2. The Bengals placed him on IR immediately. A minimum of three months out; Pro Football Doc called even that optimistic. He played eight games upon return, threw 17 touchdowns, posted a 100.7 passer rating — elite, by any reasonable standard — while Cincinnati finished 6-11 and missed the playoffs for the third straight season.
Three straight playoff misses. Ja’Marr Chase waiting. The most dangerous receiver in football burning another year watching from January’s sideline.
Burrow entered 2025 as a legitimate MVP frontrunner — 4,918 yards and 43 touchdowns the previous season, the kind of numbers that make defensive coordinators physically ill. Then Arik Armstead fell on his foot in Week 2, and the whole thing collapsed. This is the Bengals’ nightmare: a franchise quarterback whose brilliance is undeniable, whose body has now betrayed him twice in three years — wrist in 2023, turf toe in 2025 — and a cap structure built around his ceiling, not his injury floor.
A full 17-game Burrow, healthy, running-temperature, is a Super Bowl contender. The question Cincy’s front office can’t afford to ask too loudly is: what if they never get that version again?
Josh Allen
The numbers from January 17th are going to follow Josh Allen for years. Four turnovers against Denver in the AFC Divisional round — two interceptions, two fumbles lost — in a 33-30 overtime loss that handed the Broncos a trip to the Conference Championships when the AFC had never been more wide open. Kansas City gone at 6-11. Baltimore home watching. Burrow and the Bengals once again missing out. The throne was there for the taking, and Allen couldn’t claim it.
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This is the duality that defines him. The most physically freakish quarterback in football — MVP in 2024, a force of nature who generates moments that don’t belong on a human highlight reel — yet somehow, he entered that Broncos game having already compiled six career playoff turnovers before kickoff. He added four more.
Let’s not sugarcoat the math: that’s 10 playoff turnovers in 16 career postseason games, a rate that would concern any front office carrying the kind of all-in architecture Buffalo has constructed around him. Sean McDermott’s job security is entangled with Allen’s January performance in ways that make everyone in Orchard Park nervous, and he felt the full brunt of that last season, axed after the Broncos defeat.
Joe Brady now takes over, and his future depends on what Allen does under the bright lights of the postseason as well. Is Josh Allen’s ceiling a divisional round loss? Because that question is now being asked in boardrooms, not just on social media.
