The 5 second-year NFL players who will become stars this season

There are already a few guys from the 2025 NFL Draft class who are stars. Tetiaroa McMillan was the Offensive Rookie of the Year, Carson Schwesinger was the Defensive Rookie of the Year, and Nick Emmanwori was a game-changer in the postseason during a Super Bowl run. 

None of those guys are household names, but they’ve all hit a level of stardom. They’re not at Josh Allen-level by any means, but they’re definitely notable. Let’s take a look at some of the other fellas who could get a second-year bump and make a name for themselves and how they could get there. 

Jihaad Campbell, LB, Philadelphia Eagles

Football is more fun when linebackers are good. We’ll never get back to the time of Brian Urlacher and Ray Lewis separating running backs from their consciousness on a weekly basis, but if you just watch Fred Warner play football, you’ll have a good time.

Warner is the star inside linebacker in the NFL right now, and he’s got an insurmountable lead on everyone else. Jihaad Campbell, though? He’s certainly got an opportunity.

You look at some of the top linebackers that have been in Vic Fangio’s defenses: Zack Baun, Roquon Smith, NaVarro Bowman, Patrick Willis. Those are some dudes. 

Howie Roseman has never spent real resources on linebackers … let alone spend a first-round draft pick on one. We can (probably) safely assume that Fangio played a big part in that. If he likes you, then you’re doing something right. 

Now, the problem is that last season, he didn’t get nearly as much playing time as you would expect a first-round linebacker to get. Luckily, a lot of that is because when Nakobe Dean came back from his patellar tendon tear, it didn’t look like he missed a step, and he was amazing. 

So it’s not like Campbell was missing time on the field because he was getting outplayed by a schlub. We saw what he was able to do. He was great in coverage. He was great laterally. He was great downhill. He made plays everywhere. It wasn’t super consistent, but he was a rookie, so it makes sense. 

Now that Dean is gone, it’s going to be Campbell who gets to line up next to Zack Baun as a full-time starter. Once he gets rolling, I think there’s a really good chance that he shows why he was a first-round talent, and he’ll be a 2026 version of those game-changing linebackers of the early 2000s.

Tyler Warren, TE, Indianapolis Colts

The Colts went into their Week 11 bye with an 8-2 record and a +122 score differential. They were on fire, and everything was great. Then they came out of the bye, went 0-7 down the stretch, ended up starting Philip Rivers, and everything great was equally terrible. 

One of the guys who got the short end of the stick was Tyler Warren. The Colts drafted him 14th overall, and he came out of the gate really hot. In those first 10 games, he was averaging 6.7 targets, 5 catches, and 61.7 yards per game. That’s a catch rate of 74.6% and 12.3 yards per catch.

In the seven weeks of hell afterward, he was getting 6.4 targets per game, but his production plummeted to 3.7 catches and 28.6 yards per game. That’s a catch rate of 57.8% and 7.7 yards per catch. 

There’s simply no way that Warren doesn’t get back on track this season, and I imagine that’ll happen pretty quickly. Daniel Jones popped his Achilles on Dec. 7, 2025, so if/when he plays in Week 1, it’ll be just nine months after the injury; he’s not going to be moving anywhere close to what we’ve seen from him when he’s at 100%.

That means that those quick hits are going to need to be there, and if Shane Steichen gets Tyler Warren moving on the boundary side of the field or right in front of Jones’ face, he’ll get back to being a pass-catching demon. 

As for blocking: Warren can do it, and he’s good at it. But it takes a couple of years of consistently blocking at a high level for a tight end to make a name for himself doing it. 

Emeka Egbuka, WR, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Remember at the beginning of the 2025 season when the Buccaneers looked like the class of the NFL? Remember when their offense was shelling teams, and then just like the Colts, everything farted out. 

During the first half of the season, Emeka Egbuka looked like he was going to walk out of the season being a unanimous OROY. He was ripping defensive backfields to shreds and scoring touchdowns like it was an addiction …

Then the Buccs’ offense started getting hurt. It went from explosives and gutting efficiency to using tweezers to pull teeth from a cocaine-fueled shark.

The point is that we’ve seen Egbuka be a certified stud. We’ve seen guys like DeVonta Smith, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Amon-Ra St. Brown, CeeDee Lamb, and Justin Jefferson be studs in their rookie season and then have a second-year breakout. 

If Egbuka’s going to end up being the future of the wide receiver group in Tampa, he simply needs to have that kind of season … And luckily, he’s playing with an extremely slighted Baker Mayfield. It sure seems like the pieces are built for the Buccaneers to have a new franchise staple.

Travis Hunter, CB, Jacksonville Jaguars

It feels like we (all of us except for Jags fans) kind of forgot about Travis Hunter. Just to recap:

• He won the Heisman in 2024.
• He said that he wanted to be a two-way player in the NFL
• The Jaguars traded up to the second overall pick to draft him
• He was good when he played, but that was only seven games 
• He tore his LCL at the end of October and had surgery. 

Since he really entered the spotlight, this is the longest that we’ve gone without seeing him play football. That’s really a shame because he’s awesome … But now, he’s got the opportunity to seemingly come from nowhere and make a name for himself. 

He’s an entirely different cat than every other player in the NFL because of that two-way potential. If he can be a two-way player and be brutally effective, then that’s a sure-fire way to become a star … But it’s easy to say that and infinitely more difficult to actually do it. 

Deion Sanders is the most famous two-way player in the history of the NFL, and it just so happens that Sanders was Hunter’s coach in college. So if your plan is to be that guy, there’s no better coach to prepare you.

But think about Deion and how his career went: He was drafted in 1989, and he was primarily a cornerback … and he was a really good one too. It only took him three seasons to become a perennial All-Pro player.

It wasn’t until 1996 (his eighth season) that he finally got the workload of a real wide receiver. He was targeted 67 times that season and had 36 catches for 475 yards and one touchdown. That was over half of the targets and catches that he had in his career.

My point is that Hunter has two routes to his 2026 stardom: He can be a two-way player, be four years ahead of schedule, and be awesome in every facet of the game. Or, he can do the smart/normal thing and only be the lockdown corner that we all know he can, but also the lockdown corner that his team needs.

Omarion Hampton, RB, Los Angeles Chargers

You want to be a linebacker in a Mike McDaniel offense. By no means is the job going to be easy, but he’s shown that he’s a play designer who can make a run game beautiful … and that makes carrying the ball a whole lot less difficult.

For Omarion Hampton, it’s going to feel like he’s getting to sleep in his own bed after being stranded on an island for 10 years. 

He’s going from Greg Roman’s archaic, brutal, and entirely unexplosive run-dominant offense to one that is the prototype of the offensive meta. 

Think of it like breaking out of prison: Greg Roman’s run game wants to break down the wall in the cell. If that doesn’t work, then he’ll bum-rush a guard and head towards the front door. Mike McDaniel, on the other hand, will pay a different cell block to create a distraction for you. All the while, he actually got a job working for the warden and stole his keys … He didn’t need the distraction at all; he already had a way out, but schemed his way to freedom. 

Both options can work … but the one that uses cunning and finesse is the plot of a movie, rather than just a scene in a movie. It’s high-level stuff.

Hampton is going to have a healthy/better offensive line and a run game that’s designed to help him. He’s already a really good running back, but now he’s getting put in a position to succeed, and that’s going to make his life a whole lot easier.

This dude is going to pop in his new offense. You’re going to be fiending for him to be not just on your TV, but also on your fantasy team. 

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