[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning friends and enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have finally flushed out my very very initial thorough rankings for the 2026 fantasy football season and thus now I know where I stand and my higher in this guy and my lower on this guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're going through today.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got eight guys that I am I guess obnoxiously high on relative to what the current market price is for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I'll show you where I have them in my rankings.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll show you the difference in ADP, give you a little reason as to why.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe change your mind a little bit, and we'll go from there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's jump into the rankings.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the very first guy we're gonna start off with is a dude that I, I don't know that I've necessarily tasked myself to being a hate-rove him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I don't think he can get it done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been saying this for a while now, but that's real football.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're here to talk about fantasy football, and Justin Herbert is my quarterback full right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Currently going off the board as the QB 10 per ADP, which means I am six spots higher than the rest of the market.
[SPEAKER_00]: The most important thing to note when it comes to Herbert is simply his offensive line health with Rasheon slater and Joe Alt being back.
[SPEAKER_00]: They went out and grabbed Tyler Beatish off of free agency from Washington.
[SPEAKER_00]: They drafted Jake
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be night and day, going into the year, there are top 10 offensive line rank for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you can see here, and the other really, really big, important part of Justin Herbert's game here is that Mike McDaniel is coming over from Miami as the offensive coordinator in LA now.
[SPEAKER_00]: The part of Herbert's game that we really saw on Locke's last year was his rushing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's like a very untapped part of what we can see fantasy wise from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we've already seen the 5,000-yard passing season,
[SPEAKER_00]: If he gets those attempts, he'll be able to throw for a lot of yards, but I do think the Russian capability that we saw last year is something that we'll probably see stick around for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: He ran for 498 yards, which was second most in the NFL, and he still had the ninth most past attempts last year, which is increasingly impressive considering he missed a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I look at Mike McDaniel coming in as the offensive coordinator as opposed to Greg Roman Miami top five and play action rate number one in pre stat motion these are things that are cheat codes for offenses in terms of efficiency these are things that Herbert has never really had at a high volume and I would say like the one aspect of this offense scares me a little bit is like the lack of
[SPEAKER_00]: Explosive playmakers.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll have a fully healthy Amaran Hampton.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know lad McConkey is good, but it's the legit wide receiver one quit Johnson has been fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keenan Allen's a free agent right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did bring in David and Joku.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a rendezvous and broke out last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do think the one
[SPEAKER_00]: Upside case or the, or the bull case for this is we're going to see a lot more 12 personnel from teams around the league like people are going to start copying Sean McVay where they're putting two or three tight ends on the field at the same time and I think the fact that they signed in joku is like a really nice pairing between in joku and around a gets in and what that does is take a little bit of the pressure off of having to be three deep at wide receiver.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have a lot out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have Quentin Johnson out there and maybe someone can emerge behind those two, whether it's try Harris second year, second round picked from last year or Brendan Thompson, who Mike McDaniel loves like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe one of those guys can show out and be a consistent wide receiver 3, but if they do go very too tight and set heavy, you could see a world where the third wide receiver doesn't matter as much and the two wide receivers up top, Latinquent Johnson can get the job done.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for sure, that's the biggest worry for me when it comes to Herbert, when it comes to this LATM, but XMVP odds at 11 to one are really strong, plays in a dome, so he's going to have really good weather throughout the course of the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, just a heavy investment in the offensive line is really, really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, as we saw last year, everything kind of broke down, which did lead to a lot of rushing upside for a dude like Justin Herbert, but it was good to see that he wasn't afraid to use that to his advantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: So herbs are first guy for me on this list, and when I continue down the quarterback rankings, Matthew Stafford is my quarterback seven, which is somehow a hot take right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a quarterback 14 and 80p when you look at ESPN when you look at Yahoo, when you look at underdog.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like outside of the top 100 picks, so despite just having an MVP season,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get it, it's an outlier every year, 4700 passing yards, 46 passing touchdowns.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like the previous years, but I also say the year's prior to 2025 had a lot to do with the fact that he couldn't get Puka or Cooper Cup both at their full strength or healthy for the majority of the season.
[SPEAKER_00]: When last year we saw a Puka end of Octa Adam's really come together and like emerge and now Sean McVase is Mastermind who cooks up a new offense with the two tight ends and three tight ends on the field at the same time and led to a bajillion touchdowns.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stafford's Vegas line is at 4,000 yards.
[SPEAKER_00]: His offensive line rank is in the top five.
[SPEAKER_00]: He plays in a stadium that has a dome, so we don't have real weather concerns.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a ton of few changes in the offseason that really matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: They obviously just traded from Isle Garrett, which will make their defense kind of elite.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe they need to throw the ball a little bit less.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to Stafford, when it comes to fantasy football analysis over the summer, I think when you have a player who does really well and almost nothing materially changes in the offense,
[SPEAKER_00]: Over analyticaling, whatever the fucking verb for that would be like looking at numbers too deeply to tell you why it's not going to be good this year Like sure there will be some regression on it, but suffered being at quarterback 14 to me feels crazy I had him in my big league last year loved owning every second of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like saffron's another dude where following a super flex league And I get him at the bottom of the QB1 rankings.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my QB1.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna feel great about that
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we move things over the wide receiver position, the next couple guys on this list, you'll be able to see on my rankings here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I first started doing research for this video, which was like a week or two ago, Devante Smith was the wide receiver 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since then, AJ Brown has now been traded to New England.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was writing this up though, I was doing it with the assumption that AJ Brown would be in New England any now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's the one there in New England, but that also moves Devante Smith up to be the one in Philadelphia.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very easy to say, it's very easy to see that when we look at splits with and without AJ Brown, they've on the Smith kind of becomes a different type of player.
[SPEAKER_00]: More targets, more receptions, more receiving yards, a lot more fantasy points, averages 16.2, PPR fantasy points for game, when AJ Brown was not on the field, that's comfortably inside the top 10 fantasy wide receivers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't even think like I'm not looking at Nevada Smith as a guy who's going to pop off for 1600 yards and 15 touchdowns, but you can have that like Calvin really 2020 type of year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think they're similar players.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes with this, when like a number one leaves, you automatically assume like all right, this other guy's going to step in and get a bazillion targets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do kind of think that's the case for Dvante, but we've also seen that go sideways before we're like, Juju Smith's user.
[SPEAKER_00]: massive target year next day Antonio Brown and Antonio Brown leaves and jugeosmiths used to can't really be the guy there with the Vanta, I'm more confident that he can be an alpha, or at least for like a season he can be force fed targets and be really efficient with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean dating back to college, don't admit that there's one of the most legendary college wide receiver's ever, he's been nothing but really good in the NFL as well, had one season where he didn't top 1,000 yards.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was because he missed four games.
[SPEAKER_00]: But otherwise, you're going to give a very highly efficient receiver, probably a huge boost in targets for the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think like Devontai Smith, more often than not, he's going to see, you know, a 25 to 30% target share.
[SPEAKER_00]: Him and Jalen Hurts already have this real building chemistry.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do draft McIleman and Eli Sowers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they add some past catching targets to the competition, but it's nothing that would scare me away from Devontai Smith.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we're going to watch Philadelphia this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Devonta Smith is going to see, you know, eight to 10 targets a game, probably haul in six to seven catches a game, usually finished between 1680 yards, score touchdown, score like seven rate touchdowns on the year and just be like a really, really good PPR play where like you can't really overthink this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just going to be very, very good for fantasy football.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he have the ceiling of other like a lead wider silver ones?
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably not, but I love Smitty as a pick if you can get them in the middle of the
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a couple spots below him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have Lad McConkey as my Widersie for 14 and he is currently the Widersie for 19 in the rankings.
[SPEAKER_00]: he's basically a mid 4th round pick right now and this is another one where I just don't necessarily want to overthink like we know lad is very very good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's capable of playing inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's capable of playing outside, keen and Allen is no longer there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the leading target guy is now out of the offense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mike Medano comes in as the offensive coordinator.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people have kind of been likening lad McConkey to a little bit of like a jail-in-waddle type where lad is not as explosive like down the field.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's like
[SPEAKER_00]: a deep passer, but I'd imagine they're going to get a lot of targets funneling towards uh, lad McConkey and Justin Herbert with the offensive line back, functioning normally again, I think is just going to do wonders for the offense.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like great offensive situation, good offensive line, great quarterback, really, really strong weapon.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just one where you're not going to go broke, taking a profit on a really good player that's probably going to have a really good fantasy year.
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw him finish really strongly down the stretch last year, becoming the number one target once again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, that's a dude that, you know, I'll probably be patting a lot of my teams with him as my wide receiver too.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he drops into the fourth and I go wide receiver heavy, he'd be a great wide receiver three.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next couple dudes I want to talk about are just the culture sievers in general, both Alec Pierce and Josh Downs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have significantly higher than their current ADPs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alec Pierce is the water siever 33 in dress right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have met 26, Josh Downs is the water siever 48 right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have them up at 36.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a lot of this ADP suppression is because of the unknown of Daniel Jones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I think the reason I like them so much is because we're finally getting like a condensed target share.
[SPEAKER_00]: with a lot of these guys because 80 Mitchell is obviously in New York now and Michael Pettman Jr. was traded to the Steelers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it opens up players to have like secure roles where we saw this in Indy.
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw this in Green Bay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It became really, really hard to trust any significant like target source.
[SPEAKER_00]: in any given game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they do bring in Tyler Warren last year, obviously, and was a phenomenal rookie and should probably soak up a ton of targets, if not lead the team in targets, but I also think having a Michael Pittman out of the way is massive for a dude like Josh Downs, and I think that will allow him to play more sets on the outside, and in splits where Michael Pittman hasn't played over the last couple of years, it's a very small sample size, but whenever he doesn't play Josh Downs kind of blows up and has a really good game relative to the way that
[SPEAKER_00]: He has played previously with my equipment is on the field and I do think Daniel Jones will be out there for the cults at the start of the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Will he be less mobile for sure?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also think Alec Pierce is probably an underrated receiver.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: He got a, you know, fat bag this offseason.
[SPEAKER_00]: He felt a little one-dimensionally.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had like 45 catches or something last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you do look at the numbers, he's becoming a good separator.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at Matt Harman's reception perception profile on Alec Pierce, he's
[SPEAKER_00]: becoming a really good separator, and he clearly has a great chemistry with Daniel Jones.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've recigned him in favor of Michael Pittman.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't go out and draft the notable wide receiver.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the condensed target chair in the indie aligned with the fact that Alec Pearson Josh downs are both good separators in their own right, and on bank down Daniel Jones being ready for week one.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are all discounts I think you're getting on players that are going to perform well above their ADP this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more over the running back tab here, and let's talk about Carolina, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what you're gonna see.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna see Jonathan Brooks, six spots higher in ADP for me, RB34, and a spot higher than Chuba Hubbard, who is eight spots lower than ADP for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not going to make any logical sense and people that watch Jonathan Brooks in college and people that were a fan of him will understand you've probably forgotten by now, but Brooks was one of the most exciting running backs as a prospect coming out over the last few years that second round pick out of Texas is even more impressive when you think about the fact that he just tore his ACL and then went in the second round still.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no Vegas lines up around him.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have no idea what his injury status is going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, he is, you know, an elevated concern for his injury ratings.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got two ACL tears now over the last couple years.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is very young still though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still just 22 years old as of this recording.
[SPEAKER_00]: People don't know this, but Frank Gore, when he was very young, towards ACL twice as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he played for fucking 40 years, all right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not giving up on Jonathan Brooks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Offensive line rank inside the top 10, they bolstered it more this off season.
[SPEAKER_00]: They dealt with a lot of injuries last year, but it still didn't hold Rico Dattle back from going nuclear.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'll say is they showed last year that they're not afraid to bench Shuba Hubbard.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the other players performing better than Shuba Hubbard is, Rico Dattle is now in Pittsburgh.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we're hearing out of training camp is really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Jonathan Brooks is apparently looked very good, and I still think they want him to be a big piece of this backfield.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I think it's going to be some sort of committee?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I do, especially to start the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it might be in favor of Cuba.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think as the year wears on, they're going to keep putting Brooks on the field and see like, oh, we don't get this out of Cuba Hubbard.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I could see it working into sort of a time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that we saw last year with Rico data taking a lot of early downwork, Cuba Hubbard, playing a lot of like third down and past catching roll.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's very clear that Brooks is going to be the more talented back there, the one that gives him a higher level of
[SPEAKER_00]: This is definitely a risky pick, but right now I really like him because his ADP is outside of the top 100 picks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as you can see on ESPN, he's won 26, yeah, who won 25, underdog 1113.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it Brooks starts to creep up ADP, you know, by the end of the summer and he's like at 7th round pick, we're going to pump the brakes a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But right now Brooks is one of my favorite players coming out of Texas in college, obviously a brutal run out when it comes to injuries.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's a dude that I want on my team and I think is going to have massive upside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Moving up the running back list a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to stop and you have about Tony Pollard a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a relatively boring pick and I get that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not going to win you your league by any stretch of the imagination.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the RB31 right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have him up at RB27, which is seven spots higher than consensus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tony Pollard's been about as consistent as you can find or running back over the last 40 years, 1000 rushing yards, 1000 rushing yards, 1000 rushing yards, 1000 rushing yards, 1000 rushing yards, dating back to 2022.
[SPEAKER_00]: You never think of him as an upside guy because he's only rattled off five, five, six, and nine rushing touchdowns, but on the lower side of that, the last few years, as I've said the last few summers, however, like you're rushing upside in terms of touchdowns, is almost always going to be a product of how good your offense is, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Titans have invested kind of everything in making sure cam board can take his next step up.
[SPEAKER_00]: They bring in Brian Deble as O.C.
[SPEAKER_00]: which I love that, that swap there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They grab Carnell Tate with the fourth overall pick this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: They sign on Juan Del Robinson, who's not like a super high ceiling player, but he was really good for New York last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now what that does is allow there to be this group, which now has depth, because I think Shamir DK was really good last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I mean, here's all right, Calvin Ridley, if he can come back and provide anything as a wide receiver of three, four.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if I get decent looking room here,
[SPEAKER_00]: They did draft Nick Singleton, he's a fifth round pick.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he is someone who I will be taking some shots on in drafts this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do like the talent there, but he's coming back from an injury.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, he's a fifth round pick.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm kind of a fan of Tony Pollard this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think their offensive line has been improved a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: They brought in some pieces.
[SPEAKER_00]: So overall, I think if you think the tightens are going to take a step up, then Tony Pollard should be a huge beneficiary from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if it's more so tilted towards the passing game, because the one aspect of Tony Pollard's
[SPEAKER_00]: isn't really seen any love is a rushing touchdowns and that's because if you're not inside the five yard line, often you're probably not scoring them any rushing touchdowns.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a little bit above consensus on 20% right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then if we move over to the last position here, we have the tight ends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have Dallas got her here as my tight end nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Titan 12 and ADP.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to go too deep into this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just another thing of like the splits there between when AJ Brown is on the field versus off the field.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dalskotter also sees a huge boost.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've just seen this over the last like three years when any of those guys are off the field, whether it's the Vance A or AJ Brown or Dalskotter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the other guys just get funneled a bunch of targets and we have a very clear indicator of like what's happening going into next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to we don't have to think about it through injuries or that kind of lens right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know who's not going to be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I like Dallas got her there and then the last player, I like on this list, more than ADP is Chiggy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chiggy signs, I think it was like three years, 30, something million with the Washington Commanders, right now is ADP is tight in 22.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have him as tight in 15.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's not a surefire, like mustraft type of dude that I feel comfortable getting into my lineup right away, but I do think they're so void of talent there in the passing game right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: and they sign Chiggy to be like that athlete there, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Zachard's just coming off the ACL territory, so like he's very old.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't expect to see much out of him there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think Chiggy's shown like that that breakout kind of upside that we'd hope to see continue in Tennessee, but Washington clearly believes in him.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a guy that can play after the catch is a guy that has
[SPEAKER_00]: good hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a guy that I think if given the opportunity in a consistent, you know, high-producing offense, like I think Washington will be, which in Daniel's is here, I do like taking Jiggy with some upside shots here, especially after that contract he signed with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Overall, it's a good, good, good schedule for the, uh, the passing game here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Little rough early on, but once you hit this slate of the giant Cincinnati Arizona Tennessee, it's, it's, it's, it's going to get nice and juicy there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I will wrap up there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, all this stuff is on bdge.co, by the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: this is our fantasy membership.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Your drafts roll around.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I love y'all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you over there on the site.
[SPEAKER_00]: Smooches.