Atlanta Falcons: Michael Penix Jr. vs. Tua Tagovailoa
Michael Penix Jr., the former eighth overall pick, has already faced a quarterback competition in his short career. After Atlanta signed veteran Kirk Cousins to a huge deal in the 2024 offseason, the Falcons used their top-10 pick that year on Penix. Cousins lasted just two seasons of his four-year, $180 million contract before being released this offseason, seemingly handing the job to Penix. However, the Falcons signed Tua Tagovailoa to compete with Penix and create the most intriguing quarterback competition in the league.
The Falcons have given Penix two seasons to lock down the job. His rookie season was largely a redshirt year behind Cousins, only starting towards the end of the season when Cousins proved he wasn’t the answer. In those starts, the team went 1-2, while he threw for 775 yards, threw three touchdowns and three interceptions — good enough to be a mid-range fantasy QB2.
Unfortunately for Penix, he didn’t improve in his sophomore season, throwing for fewer than 2,000 yards and nine touchdowns in nine games. He had only three interceptions, but threw one or zero touchdowns in seven of those nine games. Through Week 11, when Penix partially tore his ACL and was lost for the season, Penix was just a low-end QB2 in fantasy scoring.
Enter Tagovailoa. The Falcons could use the excuse of wanting a veteran backup while Penix gets over his injury, but Tagovailoa was the biggest name at the position this offseason, and his signing sent a message. Tagovailoa led the Dolphins to the playoffs and made the Pro Bowl. He could easily win the starting job in Atlanta even after Penix returns from injury.
So far, Penix and Tagovailoa have split time under center in organized team activities (OTAs), but Penix hasn’t been cleared for the next phase of the offseason program. This will give Tagovailoa the first opportunity to learn new head coach Kevin Stefanski’s offense. If he can be remotely competent, it will be hard for Penix to overtake Tagovailoa in such a short amount of time before the regular season.
Miami Dolphins: Quinn Ewers vs. Malik Willis
The 2026 Miami Dolphins look like an entirely different team from the 2025 edition. Jaylen Waddle, Tyreek Hill and Tua Tagovailoa are gone. Malik Willis is in at quarterback to go along with, quite possibly, the worst receiving corps in the league, ‘led’ by Malik Washington, Jalen Tolbert and rookie Chris Bell.
Tagovailoa is leaving a nearly $100 million cap hit in his wake. In his place will be either second-year quarterback Quinn Ewers, who started a handful of games to end last season when it was clear Tagovailoa was on his way out, or free agent Malik Willis, who cashed in on his brief appearances as Jordan Love‘s backup in Green Bay.
The Dolphins got a preview of Ewers, the former seventh-round pick, at the end of last season. He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t particularly good either. In three starts, he threw for 579 yards, three touchdowns and three interceptions.
Over those starts in Weeks 16-18, Ewers was just a top-25 fantasy quarterback. But they were the first three starts of his young career, so there’s plenty of development yet to do.
Willis joins the new regime in Miami, which is largely staffed by former Packers, as the presumptive starter after signing a three-year, $67.5 million deal. It was largely due to a late-season appearance in place of an injured Jordan Love. Willis threw for 121 yards and a touchdown and ran for 44 more yards after coming on in the middle of an overtime loss to Chicago.
Willis followed that up with 288 passing yards and a touchdown to go along with 60 rushing yards and two more scores on the ground in his lone start of the season. Willis was a top-three fantasy quarterback that week despite the Packers losing to Baltimore.
The new Dolphins signal-caller showed flashes of that kind of performance in his previous season with the Green Bay Packers but never in his two seasons with the Titans, which is how he ended up as a backup in Green Bay in the first place.
Cleveland Browns: Deshaun Watson vs. Shedeur Sanders
A competition no one saw coming is in Cleveland, where veteran Deshaun Watson is battling second-year quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
Sanders ended last season as Cleveland’s starter, with the team going 3-5 while Sanders threw for 1,400 yards in seven starts to go along with seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions. And despite making the Pro Bowl (which was dubious), there are still plenty of questions surrounding Sanders and being what the Browns need.
No stranger to questions himself, Watson is attempting a quasi-comeback as a productive quarterback. Between injuries and off-the-field developments, Watson hasn’t played a full season since the COVID-19 era, missing entire seasons in 2021 and 2025.
Watson turns 31 this season, prime years for a quarterback. The lack of options (along with his record-setting contract) is what’s keeping Watson in this race. In 19 starts across three seasons as a Brown, Watson has averaged 177 yards per game, with 17 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
The veteran quarterback does have a track record of being a good fantasy quarterback. Unlike Sanders, he undoubtedly earned his three Pro Bowl appearances in Houston, averaging nearly 4,300 passing yards a season and throwing for at least 26 touchdowns in each season as a starter.
Much like the battles above, the competition in Cleveland will come down to a veteran who may be past his prime, pitted against a still-developing signal-caller with little-to-no track record.