Matt HarmonFantasy analystWed, December 3, 2025 at 5:16 PM UTC·15 min readIn Weeks 1 to 5, Emeka Egbuka and Rome Odunze were WR3 and 4, respectively, in fantasy football points per game. They were averaging 89 and 74 yards per game, respectively, and had both scored five touchdowns, trailing only Amon-Ra St. Brown at the wide receiver position. These two young receivers were looking like not just two of the best picks you could have made in fantasy football, but a pair of growing star wideouts at a crowded position across the league.
Since then, a completely different picture. From Week 6 on, Egbuka has been the WR44 in points per game, averaging 49.4 yards per game and scoring just once. Odunze has been the WR54 per game, averaging 45.6 yards and scoring just once. It’s been much less enjoyable to be a backer of both players during this long stretch of cold games.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhat’s behind Egbuka’s and Odunze’s recent struggles
Now, let’s table-set here really quickly before we look at some of what needs to change in order for both players to finish the season closer to how it began, rather than what’s happened in the middle. For starters, this is just how it goes with wide receivers. No one wants to hear that variance is the simple explanation but it’s the reality of this position, in particular. Almost every player is volatile. Receivers can be up and down week to week, or, as is the case with these two, there can be chapters of the season where they’re hot and stretches where they’re cold in the box score.
Sometimes, wideout volatility is expressed weekly, and for others, it comes in buckets. That’s the case for both Egbuka and Odunze.
Again, no one wants to hear it or admit it, and we manage to forget it every offseason when we’re just looking back at full-season stats while debating ADP for months, but that’s the way it’s always been and the way it always will be. You’ll just sleep better at night and have a little more peace in the valley playing this game whenever you get around to accepting that — trust me, I spend most of my life studying this position, and I’m still learning this lesson every year. I’m talking to myself as much as you, dear reader.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe other thing we should clear up, and I believe this very strongly: neither of these wide receivers was secretly bad all along and just got lucky in some form or fashion to start the season. Both Odunze and Egbuka are good players who have played well, but not perfectly, in isolation, wire to wire this season. The fact that their best stretch happened to start and they’ve quieted since isn’t any more meaningful than when we see the inverse for rookies and young receivers; slow out the gates with a hot finish.
Something both of these guys share — you’ll actually find throughout this piece that the variables for both of these slumping wideouts are shockingly similar — is a midseason injury. Egbuka picked up a hamstring injury in Week 6 against the 49ers and I expected him to miss a few weeks with it. He returned in Week 7 right away to a full-time role. Odunze popped up on the injury report with a heel injury that he called a “progressive thing” throughout the season but peaked in Week 8 against the Ravens. He played through it in Week 9 but turned in a 0-catch game despite the team putting up 47 points on the Bengals, which was explainable with or without the injury.
Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but those two injury designations coincided right when their slumps began.
Yet again, no one wants to hear it because it’s an unsatisfactory answer, and folks — especially fantasy analysts and therefore players — want to treat the injury report like it’s some kind of gospel. The reality is, sometimes guys pick up injuries that nag throughout the year or for long stretches and it just impacts their play, even if they are full participants in practice and play in all the games. Healthy enough to be 100% available to play does not mean at 100% performance; talk to an NFL player one time and you’ll be quick to ditch the dogma of the injury report. Ultimately, if you’re on the field, you are responsible and accountable for the product you put out there but this can be the unsatisfactory answer to why a player isn’t producing at the levels we were accustomed to when they were fully operational.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt’s also not like these guys have done nothing for months. Odunze has two games of 10 targets in this stretch and went for 114 yards on seven catches in one, and 86 yards and a touchdown on six catches in the other. The floor for his weekly stats has just been quite low. Egbuka hasn’t crashed quite as low as often, but even he had a 115-yard day against a strong Patriots secondary right in the middle of this stretch.
Lastly, what has been will not always be. Just because these guys have been cold of late does not mean they can’t finish the season strong. In fact, based on what I see when I watch both players, from an individual standpoint and in the context of their environment, I’d be pretty shocked if they didn’t sprinkle in a couple of strong outings here down the stretch that boost their overall stat lines at the end of the season to be more commensurate with their talent level.
Let’s take a look at what needs to happen for each guy for that to take place.
Rome Odunze
What needs to go right around him
The Bears hiring Ben Johnson to be their head coach looks like a complete home run through 13 weeks of the season. Not only is the Bears offense a top 12 unit in points per drive (12th), success rate (10th), explosive play rate (third) and EPA per play (10th), it’s pretty obvious this team has bought into Johnson as a leader and vibes-creator. Chicago was a complete mess offensively, with hideous vibes last year, and now holds the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoff race. No matter how it ends, this already looks like a dramatic turnaround. This is all coming, in Johnson’s own words, despite the recent performance of the passing game.
Johnson isn’t specifically calling out his quarterback with that assessment. Caleb Williams is not a consistently accurate passer. He’s prone to sprays when he gets out of rhythm. A lot of those misses have come when he targets Odunze, which is probably just an effect of Odunze being the primary read and target on most plays, as he should be. Odunze has the fourth-lowest catchable target rate (67%) among 56 wide receivers with 50-plus targets on the season, per Fantasy Points Data. That being said, Williams is still trending in the right direction overall while managing the game and avoiding negative plays at a much better clip than he did last season. Some of those misses are a part of why the production has felt volatile.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementElsewhere in the offense, Johnson spoke to some of the details that needed tightening up overall, beyond just the quarterback. The running game is firing on all cylinders, a stark contrast from the shakiness of the aerial attack. That’s not shocking. For starters, this is precisely what happened in Detroit under Johnson. The running game took off before his complex pass game designs manifested into a strong unit. Look at the offensive line in Chicago; it’s full of experienced veteran players, especially on the interior. There’s a reason Johnson coveted and acquired all three of Drew Dalman, Jonah Jackson and Joe Thuney this offseason. Contrast that to the Bears’ passing game, which is full of second-year and rookie players.
Some of those young players are still making mistakes and you can see certain players still swimming with the heavy load of assignments in this offense. Routes don’t always break at the right depth; the timing is often just a hair off.
The good news is that all of that can be fixed with more time on task. None of the young players in this passing game looks like a terrible or useless player in isolation. In fact, everyone looks promising to varying degrees. They are just working through a complex offense that’s evolved throughout the year. The environment around Odunze needs to be better and based on the fundamentals of the play designs and some of the execution, I think it can get there by the end of this year, and if not, without a doubt in 2026.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Bears offense is a little crowded with quality pass-catchers and they’ve added different personnel groupings that have eaten into some of Odunze’s volume. But those will matter less on the margins if the entire ecosystem improves.
What he can do better
One thing anyone who has watched this team can see is that Odunze, while an excellent separator and good athlete, needs to be better at the catch point. He’s left far too many plays on the field with drops and losses in the contested-catch game on difficult but makeable grabs. I can point out plays where he’s open and he’s missed by Williams but if we’re calling balls and strikes here, this is a big part of the story.
I did not think Odunze struggled in this area as a rookie to a meaningful degree and he was downright excellent in both phases as a prospect. I’m confident these issues won’t persist long-term as he continues to establish himself as the No. 1 wideout in the offense.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOdunze is tasked with a ton of responsibilities in this passing game. He plays all three receiver positions (flanker, X and slot), is often put into motion to run routes at full speed and is even used as the insert player.
That is a ton on the plate of a young player, and most guys at his experience level aren’t doing all that. It’s super encouraging in the long term and you’ll feel that, once Chicago can weaponize its play-action concepts on the back of the potent rushing attack. However, I think you can also see Odunze thinking too much at times and that’s led to uncharacteristic mistakes with timing in terms of route depths and some of the misses at the catch point. Again, time on task likely smooths this out.
Emeka Egbuka
What needs to go right around him
Most observers will immediately note that Egbuka has fewer excuses because he plays in a better environment than Odunze. That may be true on paper but the Bucs haven’t operated at that level offensively this season. They rank no better than middle of the pack in points per drive (22nd), success rate (29th), explosive play rate (17th) and EPA per play (18th).
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThis makes sense as the Buccaneers, at no point this season, have had all of their mainstay offensive names available at the same time.
They were able to survive Tristan Wirfs and Chris Godwin’s absence at the beginning of the season but as the receiver room and offensive line have continued to sustain cluster injuries (while Bucky Irving also missed time) the weight became too much to bear. Baker Mayfield, while a clear answer at quarterback and above the baseline overall for a quality starter, is still a streaky player who can experience ups and downs as his environment changes. His ball placement and timing have been shaky since a hot start to the season, and that’s been a problem for Egbuka.
Since Week 7, just 30 of Egbuka’s 58 targets (51.7%) have been deemed catchable, per Fantasy Points Data’s charting. On the season, his 66% catchable target rate is the second-lowest among the 56 wideouts with 50-plus targets, with only Jerry Jeudy checking in below him. Not all of that is Mayfield’s fault but it’s just the reality that some of the volume Egbuka’s been getting hasn’t been up to par.
My biggest personal gripe with Egbuka’s environment is that, with all the injuries to the wide receivers around him, he’s had to play a ton more X-receiver than expected. It’s been awesome to see Egbuka win in that spot on a route-by-route basis, especially early in the season, after he was a big slot in college, but that’s led to some of the volatility in his production and the low target quality.
In the first three weeks of the season, Egbuka’s slot rates were 44.2%, 37.3% and 39.5%. He’s had to move mostly to the X position since Mike Evans went down because guys like Sterling Shepard and Tez Johnson aren’t credible options out there. Even in the last two weeks with Godwin back in the lineup, Egbuka’s fallen to 21%.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAgain, it’s not that Egbuka needs to line up in the slot to win on his routes or that his production inside versus out is all that different. It’s just far easier to cloud and shade extra coverage toward the X-receiver than it is the movement Z or slot receiver. Egbuka’s level of play to start the year absolutely commanded that level of attention and with the other guys in the room needing role catering, it’s been harder to move the rookie around to get him loose from that coverage.
While the return of Mike Evans may cause some of Egbuka’s targets to get shaven away, I’m always willing to sacrifice a few inefficient looks in order to facilitate better overall offensive results. That tradeoff could be good for Egbuka, as Evans will resume the X-receiver spot and allow Egbuka more presnap flexibility.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhat he can do better
Just like Odunze — it’s really rather striking how similar the reasons for their slumps are, overall — Egbuka is not blameless. The rookie has left plays on the field.
At least once or twice per game of late, he comes up with a costly drop that costs the team a chance to move the football and Egbuka a shot at a long gain. He’s also lost some contested catches that aren’t by any means gimmes but they're the difference between being a good starting receiver and a high-end WR1. Just like Odunze, I think Egbuka generally has strong hands and displays all the necessary tracking and physicality at the catch point to win in tight coverage. We just have to iron out the mistakes.
Egbuka has a 7.1% drop rate on the season, right in the same ballpark as fellow rookie Tetairoa McMillan. The Panthers' rookie is a fantastic player. He also has the exact same amount of single-digit fantasy point games (six) and a nearly identical yards per route run (19.4 to 1.92) as Egbuka. Still, because he’s had his best games lately and Egbuka’s were so long ago at the start of the season, it’s not a talking point of concern for the Panthers wideout. It really shouldn’t be for either player when you take that into consideration. We’re just skewed by whatever has happened most recently.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOther than his hands, there are some very minor nitpicky details you can make in Egbuka’s game. However, it’s mostly normal rookie critiques and nothing that would prevent him from finishing strong in 2025.
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