0:00Good morning, friends and enemies. I have finally flushed out my very, very initial thorough rankings for the 2026 fantasy football season. And thus, now I
0:10know where I stand. Am I higher on this guy? Am I lower on this guy? That's what we're going through today, all right?
0:15I've got eight guys that I am, I guess, obnoxiously high on relative to what the current market price is for them, all
0:21right? I'll show you where I have them in my rankings. I'll show you the difference in ADP, give you a little
0:26reason as to why, maybe change your mind a little bit, and we'll go from there.
0:30So, let's jump into the rankings. The very first guy we're going to start off with is a dude that I've I don't know
0:35that I've necessarily attached myself to being a hater of him. I just I don't think he can get it done. I've been
0:40saying this for a while now, but that's real football. I don't care about that.
0:44We're here to talk about fantasy football, and Justin Herbert is my quarterback four right now. Currently going off the board as the QB10 per ADP,
0:52which means I'm six spots higher than the rest of the market. The most important thing to know when it comes to
0:57Herbert is simply his offensive line health with Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt being back. They went out and grabbed Tyler Biadasz off of free agency from
1:07Washington. They drafted Jake Slaughter in the second round to shore up the offensive line. So, it's going to be night and day. Going into the year,
1:13they're a top 10 offensive line ranked for me. As you can see here, and the other really, really big, important part
1:19of Justin Herbert's game here is that Mike McDaniel is coming over from Miami as the offensive coordinator in LA now.
1:25The part of Herbert's game that we really saw unlocked last year was his rushing, and I think it's like a very
1:31untapped part of what we can see fantasy wise from him. Like, we've already seen the 5,000-yard passing season. If he gets those attempts, he'll be able to
1:38throw for a lot of yards, but I do think the rushing capability that we saw last year is something that we'll probably
1:44see stick around for a while. He ran for 498 yards, which was second most in the NFL, and he still had the ninth most
1:50pass attempts last year, which is increasingly impressive considering he missed a game. So, when I look at Mike McDaniel coming in as the offensive
1:56coordinator as opposed to Greg Roman.
1:59Miami, top five in play action rate, number one in pre-snap motion. These are things that are cheat codes for offenses in terms of efficiency. These are things
2:07that Herbert has never really had at a high volume. And I would say like the one aspect of this offense that scares
2:13me a little bit is like the lack of explosive playmakers. You'll have a fully healthy Amari Hampton. We know Lad McConkey is good, but is he a legit wide
2:21receiver one? Quentin Johnston has been fine. Keenan Allen's a free agent right now. They did bring in David Njoku. They have Rondale Moore who broke out last
2:28year. So, I do think the one upside case or the or the bull case for this is we're going to see a lot more 12
2:35personnel from teams around the league.
2:36Like people are going to start copying Sean McVay where they're putting two or three tight ends on the field at the
2:41same time. And I think the fact that they signed Njoku is like a really nice pairing between Njoku and Rondale Moore.
2:46And what that does is take a little bit of the pressure off of having to be three deep at wide receiver. So, you
2:51have Lad out there, you have Quentin Johnston out there, and maybe someone can emerge behind those two. Whether it's Tre Harris, second year, second
2:56round pick from last year, or Brandon Thompson who Mike McDaniel loves. Like maybe one of those guys can show out and
3:01be a consistent wide receiver three. But if they do go very two tight end set heavy, you could see a world where the
3:08third wide receiver doesn't matter as much and the two wide receivers up top, Lad and Quentin Johnston, can get the job done. So, for sure, that's the
3:13biggest worry for me when it comes to Herbert, when it comes to this LA team.
3:17But his MVP odds at 11 to 1 are really strong. Uh plays in a dome, so he's going to have really good weather
3:23throughout the course of the year. And again, just the heavy investment in the offensive line is really, really important. Obviously, as we saw last
3:29year, everything kind of broke down, which did lead to a lot of rushing upside for a dude like Justin Herbert.
3:33But it was good to see that like he wasn't afraid to use that to his advantage. So, Herb's the first guy for
3:38me 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. He's a
3:45quarterback 14 in ADP. When you look at ESPN, when you look at Yahoo, when you look at Underdog, he's like outside of
3:51the top 100 picks, despite just having an MVP season. And I get it, it's an outlier of a year, 4,700 passing yards,
3:5746 passing touchdowns. It wasn't like the previous years. But I'd also say the years prior to 2025 had a lot to do with
4:03the fact that he couldn't get Puka or Cooper Kupp both at their full strength or healthy for the majority of the
4:09season. When last year we saw a Puka and Davante Adams really come together and like emerge. And now Sean McVay is this
4:14mastermind who cooks up a new offense with the two tight ends, the three tight ends on the field at the same time. It
4:18led to a bajillion touchdowns.
4:19>> Stafford's Vegas line is at 4,000 yards.
4:22His offensive line rank is in the top five. He plays in a stadium that has a dome, so we don't have real weather
4:27concerns. Not a ton of huge changes in the off season that really matter. They obviously just traded for Myles Garrett, which will make their defense kind of
4:34elite. And maybe they need to throw the ball a little bit less. But here's the thing, when it comes to Stafford, when
4:38it comes to fantasy football analysis over the summer, I think when you have a player who does really well and almost
4:43nothing materially changes in the offense, I think people go overboard over analyzing, over analytical-ing, whatever the [ __ ] verb for that would
4:52be. Like looking at numbers too deeply to tell you why it's not going to be good this year. Like sure there'll be
4:56some regression on it. But Stafford being at quarterback 14 to me feels crazy. I I had him in my big league last
5:03year, loved owning every second of him.
5:04So like Stafford's another dude where if I'm in a superflex league and I get him at the bottom of the QB1 rankings as my
5:10QB1, I'm going to feel great about that.
5:12So if we move things over to the wide receiver position, the next couple guys on this list you'll be able to see on my
5:17rankings here. And when I first started doing research for this video, which was like a week or two ago, Devonta Smith
5:22was the wide receiver 16. Since then A.J. Brown has now been traded to New England. As I was writing this up
5:28though, I was doing it with the assumption that A.J. Brown would be in New England and he now is. So he's the
5:32one there in New England. But that also moves Devonta Smith up to be the one in Philadelphia. It's very easy to say,
5:38it's very easy to see that when we look at splits with and without A.J. Brown, Devonta Smith kind of becomes a
5:43different type of player. More targets, more receptions, more receiving yards, a lot more fantasy points. Averages 16.2 PPR fantasy points per game when A.J.
5:51Brown was not on the field. That's comfortably inside the top 10 fantasy wide receivers. And I don't even think like I'm not looking at DeVonta Smith as
5:58a guy who's going to pop off for 1,600 yards and 15 touchdowns, but he could have that like Calvin Ridley 2020 type
6:04of year, I think. I think they're similar players. And sometimes with this, when like a number one leaves, you automatically assume like all right,
6:10this other guy's going to step in and get a bazillion targets. And I do kind of think that's the case for DeVonta,
6:14but we've also seen that go sideways before where like JuJu Smith-Schuster, massive target year next to Antonio Brown. Antonio Brown leaves and JuJu
6:22Smith-Schuster can't really be the guy there. With DeVonta, I'm more confident that he can be an alpha, at least for like a a season he can be force-fed
6:30targets and be really efficient with them. I mean, dating back to college, DeVonta Smith is one of the most legendary college wide receivers ever.
6:36He's been nothing but really good in the NFL as well. Had one season where he didn't top 1,000 yards. That was because
6:41he missed, you know, four games. But otherwise, you're going to give a very highly efficient receiver, probably a huge boost in targets for the year. And
6:49I think like DeVonta Smith, more often than not, he's going to see, you know, a 25 to 30% target share. Him and Jalen
6:55Hurts already have this real built-in chemistry. They do draft Mazi Smith and Eli Rogers, so they add some pass-catching targets to the
7:02competition, but it's nothing that would scare me away from DeVonta Smith. So I think we're going to watch Philadelphia this year and I think DeVonta Smith is
7:09going to see, you know, eight to 10 targets a game, probably hauling six to seven catches a game, usually finish between 60 and 80 yards, score a
7:16touchdown, you score like seven or eight touchdowns on the year, and just be like a really, really good PPR player where
7:22like you can't really overthink this.
7:23He's just going to be very, very good for fantasy football. Does he have the ceiling of other like elite wide receiver ones? Probably not, but I love
7:31Smitty as a pick if you can get him in the middle of the third round. And then a couple spots below him, I have Jaylen
7:36Waddle as my wide receiver 14, and he is currently the wide receiver 19 in the rankings. He's basically a mid fourth
7:43round pick right now and this is another one where I just don't necessarily want to overthink. Like we know Ladd is very
7:49very good. I think he's capable of playing inside. I think he's capable of playing outside. Keenan Allen is no longer there. So the leading target guy
7:55is now out of the offense. Mike McDaniel comes in as the offensive coordinator. A lot of people have kind of been likening
8:00Ladd McConkey to a little bit of like a Jaylen Waddle type where Ladd is not as explosive like down the field I don't
8:05think as like a deep passer, but I'd imagine they're going to get a lot of targets going towards Ladd McConkey and Justin Herbert with
8:13the offensive line back functioning normally again. I think is is just going to do wonders for the offense. So it's like great offensive situation, good
8:20offensive line, great quarterback, really really strong weapon. It's just one where you're not going to go broke taking a profit on a really good player
8:27that's probably going to have a really good fantasy year. We saw him finish really strongly down the stretch last year becoming the number one target once
8:34again. So Ladd's a dude that, you know, I'll probably be patting a lot of my teams with him as my wide receiver two.
8:40If he drops into the fourth then I go wide receiver heavy, he'd be a great wide receiver three. The next couple
8:44dudes I want to talk about are just the Colts receivers in general, both Alec Pierce and Josh Downs I have significantly higher than their current
8:51ADPs. Alec Pierce is the wide receiver 33 in drafts right now. I have him at 26. Josh Downs is the wide receiver 48
8:57right now. I have him up at 36. Now a lot of this ADP suppression is because of the unknown of Daniel Jones and then
9:05I think the reason I like him so much is cuz we're finally getting like a condensed target share with a lot of
9:11these guys cuz Zay Jones is obviously in New York now and Michael Pittman Jr. was traded to the Steelers. So it opens up
9:17players to have like secure roles where we saw this in Indy, we saw this in Green Bay. It became really really hard
9:24to trust any significant like target source in any given game. Now they do bring in Tyler Warren last year obviously and was a phenomenal rookie
9:31and should probably soak up a ton of targets if not lead the team in targets, but I also Also having Michael Pittman
9:35out of the way is massive for a dude like Josh Downs. And I think that will allow him to play more sets on the
9:41outside 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
9:48play, Josh Downs kind of blows up and has a really good game relative to the way that he has played previously when
9:52Michael Pittman is on the field. And I do think Daniel Jones will be out there for the Colts at the start of the year.
9:57Will he be less mobile? For sure. And I also think Alec Pierce is probably an underrated receiver. It is weird he got
10:02a, you know, fat bag this off season. He felt a little one-dimensional. He had like 45 catches or something last year.
10:08But if you do look at the numbers, he's becoming a good separator. If If you look at Matt Harmon's reception perception profile on Alec Pierce, he's
10:14becoming a really good separator and he clearly has a great chemistry with Daniel Jones. They resigned him in favor of Michael Pittman. They didn't go out
10:21and draft a notable wide receiver. So I think the condensed target share in Indy aligned with the fact that Alec Pierce
10:28and Josh Downs are both good separators in their own right. And I'm banking on Daniel Jones being ready for week one.
10:34These are all discounts I think you're getting on players are going to perform well above their ADP this year. Let's move over to the running back tab here
10:40and um let's talk about Carolina, man.
10:42Here's what you're going to see. You're going to see Jonathan Brooks six spots higher in ADP for me, RB 34, and a spot
10:49higher than Chuba Hubbard, who is eight spots lower than ADP for me. This is not going to make any logical sense. And um
10:56people that watched 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
11:02the 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
11:10think about the fact that he just tore his ACL and then went in the second round still. Um there are no Vegas lines
11:14up around him. We have no idea what his injury status is going to be. Obviously, he is, you know, an elevated concern for
11:19his injury rating. He's got two ACL tears now over the last couple of years.
11:23He is very young still, though. Still just 22 years old as of this recording.
11:27People don't know this, but Frank Gore, when he was very young, tore his ACL twice as well. And then he played for
11:3240 years, all right? So, I'm not giving up on Jonathan Brooks. Offensive line ranked inside the top 10. They bolstered it more this offseason. They
11:40dealt with a lot of injuries last year, but it still didn't hold Rico Dowdle back from going nuclear. What I'll say
11:44is they showed last year that they're not afraid to bench Chuba Hubbard if the other player's performing better than Chuba Hubbard is. Rico Dowdle is now in
11:52Pittsburgh. What we're hearing out of training camp is really good. Like Jonathan Brooks has apparently looked very good, and I still think they want
11:59him to be a big piece of this backfield.
12:01Do I think it's going to be some sort of committee? Yes, I do. Especially to start the year, and it might be in favor
12:06of Chuba, 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
12:11get this out of Chuba Hubbard. So, I could see it working into a sort of a time split that we saw last year with
12:16Rico Dowdle taking a lot of early down work, Chuba Hubbard playing a lot of like third down and pass-catching role, but I think it's very clear that Brooks
12:21is going to be the more talented back there, the one that gives him a higher level of explosion. This is definitely a
12:27risky pick, but right now I really like him because his ADP is outside of the top 100 picks. As you can see on ESPN,
12:32he's 126, Yahoo 125, Underdog 113. So, if Brooks starts to creep up ADP, you know, by the end of the summer and he's
12:38like a seventh-round pick, we're going to pump the brakes a little bit, but right now Brooks is one of my favorite
12:42players coming out of Texas in college.
12:45Obviously, a brutal runout when it comes to injuries, but he's a dude that I want on my team and I think he's going to
12:50have massive upside. Moving up the running back list a little bit, I want to stop and and yap about Tony Pollard a
12:56little bit. He's He's a relatively boring pick, and I get that. He's not going to win you your league by any
13:00stretch of the imagination. He's the RB 31 right now. I have him up at RB 27, which is seven spots higher than
13:07consensus. Tony Pollard's been about as consistent as you can find a running back over the last 4 years. 1,000 rushing yards, 1,000 rushing yards,
13:141,000 rushing yards, 1,000 rushing yards. Dating back to 2022, you never think of him as an upside guy because he's only rattled off five, five, six,
13:22and nine rushing touchdowns, but on the lower side of that the last few years.
13:27As I've said the last few summers, however, like your rushing upside in terms of touchdowns is almost always going to be a product of how good your
13:33offense is, right? And the Titans have invested kind of everything in making sure K'Lavon Chaisson can take his next step up. They bring in Brian Daboll as
13:42OC, which I love that that swap there.
13:44They grab Carnell Lake with the fourth overall pick this year. They sign Wan'Dale Robinson, who's not like a super high-ceiling player, but he was
13:50really good for New York last year. Now, what that does is allow there to be this like this this group, which now has
13:57depth cuz I think Shamier Dewey-Carter was really good last year. Alec Ingold's all right. Calvin Ridley, if he can come back and like provide anything as a wide
14:04receiver 3-4, I think you have like a decent-looking room here. They did draft Nick Singleton. He's a fifth-round pick.
14:10So, like he is someone who I will be taking some shots on in drafts this year. I do like the talent there, but
14:14he's coming back from an injury and again, he's a fifth-round pick. But, I'm kind of a fan of uh of Tony Pollard this
14:19year. I think their offensive line has been improved a little bit. They brought in some pieces. So, overall, I think if
14:24you think the the Titans are going to take a step up, then Tony Pollard should be a huge beneficiary from that. Even if
14:29even if it's more so tilted towards the passing game because the one aspect of Tony Pollard's box score that isn't really seeing any love is the rushing
14:38touchdowns. And that's because if you're not inside the 5-yard line, often you're probably not scoring that many rushing touchdowns. So, I'm a little bit above
14:44consensus on Tony Pollard right now. And then if we move over to the last position here, we have the tight ends.
14:50And I have Dallas Goedert here as my tight end nine, tight end 12 in ADP. I'm not going to go too deep into this. It's
14:56just another thing of like the splits there between when A.J. Brown is on the field versus off the field, Dallas Goedert also sees a huge boost. We've
15:03just seen this over the last like 3 years. When any of those guys are off the field, whether it's DeVonta or A.J.
15:07Brown or Dallas Goedert, like the other guys just get funneled a bunch of targets and we have a very clear indicator of like what's happening going
15:13into next year. We don't have to We don't have to think about it through injuries or that kind of lens right now.
15:17We know who's not going to be there. So, I like Dallas Goedert there. And then the last player I like on this list more
15:23than ADP is Chiggy. Chiggy signs I think it was like 3 years 30 something million with the Washington Commanders. Right now his ADP is tight end 22. I have him
15:32as tight end 15. So he's not a sure fire like must draft type of dude that I feel comfortable getting into my lineup right
15:38away, but I do think they are so void of of talent there in the passing game right now and they signed Chiggy to be
15:44like that athlete there, right? Zach Ertz is coming off the ACL tear so like he's very old. I don't expect to see
15:49much out of him there. But I think Chiggy's shown like that that breakout kind of upside that we'd hope to see
15:55continue in Tennessee, but Washington clearly believes in him. This is a guy that can play after the catch. He's a guy that has good hands. This is a guy
16:01that I think if given the opportunity in a consistent, you know, high producing offense like I think Washington will be with Jayden Daniels this year, I do like
16:09taking Chiggy with some upside shots here especially after that contract he signed with them. Overall, it's a good good good schedule for the the passing
16:18game here. Little rough early on, but once you hit this slate of Giants, Cincinnati, Arizona, Tennessee, it's it's it's going to get nice and juicy
16:26there. So I will wrap up there. All this stuff is on bdge.co by the way. This is our fantasy membership. All of our
16:34products are now under one membership.
16:35So the draft guide, the rankings, in season out of season, all this stuff is just going to be updated on this
16:41website. One membership gets you everything and as you can see the tech has been incredibly upgraded from last year and will only continue to get
16:49better and better. You can compare players if you want. We'll have all the Vegas lines and projections ready for you guys by the time your drafts roll
16:56around. We're actually working on a live draft assistant that you could sync with your league as well. So it'll like take
17:00guys off the list as you're drafting them on Sleeper on ESPN etc. We've got some [ __ ] really really cool things
17:06in the works. So you can go sign up for a membership on bdge.co.
17:10We've also got a very very cool promo running with MGM. If you have not yet signed up and you place just a $10 bet
17:16on there using code BDGE when you do your first deposit of $10 or more, uh you're going to get access to the
17:22fantasy membership for 3 months for free just by placing a bet on MGM with our code BDGE. All right, I love you all.
17:28I'm out. I'll see you over there on the site. Smooches.
