Transcription
If you play fantasy football, you're in the right place because today we're breaking down the five players I'd be betting my house on in fantasy this year. Now, why the heck should you listen to me? Well, I've helped over 10,000 people win their fantasy leagues over the last few years alone, including 75% of my home leagues last year. And I plan to do the same for you, help you win your league with this video.
All right, so we'll start with my first player here, and I really want to talk about Justin Jefferson because man, is this guy interesting or what? Almost every single year of his career dating back to his rookie season, he's been automatic until last year, which was strange because Jefferson, for the second straight season, played a full season of 17 games, but he saw a career-low 1,048 yards. It was the worst season of his career, including a year in 2023 when he missed seven games due to injury. What was the reason for this? Well, it was the fact that he had terrible quarterback play all year long. Everybody's going to go know nine JJ McCarthy. There was Carson Wentz. There was a bunch of other names towards the end of the season. When Carson Wentz, 2025 Carson Wentz is your best quarterback of the year, that's a problem.
Now, Jefferson really struggled. And you know this if you had him on your team that second half of the year, you couldn't trade him after the trade deadline and for the fantasy playoffs. Over his final eight games, he only averaged 7.3 PPR points per game. No touchdowns from weeks 10 through 17. Absolutely horrible. And I mean like during that stretch he was putting up similar production to guys like Keon Coleman on the Bills who some games were just getting benched and not even playing. Jaylen Naylor, a wide receiver three on his own team, was out producing him. This was concerning stuff. But like we said, the context has nothing to do with Jeff Jefferson. It has everything to do with the quarterbacks he was playing with. Last year the Vikings ranked fourth worst in the entire NFL in passing yards per game. They were only completing 61% of their passes. That was also bottom five in the league. They only attempted 485 pass attempts compared to the year prior to that with Sam Darnold when they were attempting almost a hundred more pass attempts on the season. So all of this, you're talking about the volume pie squeezing. You're talking about three to four different quarterbacks making starts throughout the season. All of them were pretty bad to average at best Carson Wentz some weeks.
But it's not like Justin Jefferson hasn't produced with bad quarterbacks or average quarterbacks in the past. I mean, we're talking about guys like Nick Mullen, Joshua Dobs in that 2023 season because despite being injured, he came back from injury and over his final five games with a combination of Joshua Dobs and Nick Mullins for a week or so and Joshua Dobs getting traded and not having any time to learn the playbook. Jefferson still averaged 18.8 fantasy points per game, over a 100 receiving yards per game during that span. Sure, that was two years ago, but you still have the same coach out there. You still have the same competition in terms of drawing attention away like TJ Hawkinson and Jordan Addison. I'm not concerned about like the skill set or the prime of Justin Jefferson. Maybe in two years or so we could start to have that conversation. That's not what's going on here. The guy literally went over 1,000 yards with like the worst combination of quarterbacks last year. But now that's going to change because Kyler Murray, yes, the all exciting Kyler Murray is on a one-year prove it year deal there. The former number one overall pick. And look, at the end of the day, like am I excited about Kyler Murray from real life for the Minnesota Vikings? Kind of. Like I would like to come on here and and say like no, right? As like a Green Bay Packers fan bias seeping in or something along those lines. But this is a big improvement for them in real life. But not only that, it's a big improvement in fantasy. Like this offense is going to get a massive bump up. Say what you want about Kyler Murray last year and like how the Cardinals tenure kind of ended, just different coaching staffs coming in there, not wanting to play that style of ball, maybe not having the greatest uh off-the-field relationship with Kyler Murray, that organization over the years. Okay, you you take that away in 2024 when he actually played a fully healthy season. 3,800 passing yards, completed 69% of his passes. This was a guy who averaged 7.1 yards per attempt, right? The rushing yards were obviously there at 572. Uh, this was a good quarterback, not only for fantasy purposes, but in real life. Was he a top five quarterback in the NFL? No. Was he a top half of the league quarterback? I'd say so. Like at bare minimum, yes. Which was way better than the combination of quarterbacks the Vikings had last year. I mean, you know, Trey McBride, the best tight end in football last year and probably over the last two years or so in 2024, that last season that he played with Kyler Murray, Trey McBride is the number one option in that offense, was able to put up 111 catches, over 1100 yards, 147 targets as a number one option in that offense. Now, maybe Kyler Murray just goes back to the short to intermediate parts of the field with TJ Hawkinson this year, an older tight end who's had knee problems. He's not Trey McBride. Used to be that model of player. But I'm probably going to say that Kevin O'Connell is going to shape his offense still around Justin Jefferson, which means that Justin Jefferson might be in line, if this offense was to throw 500 plus times, which I think they will, for this 147 target role, if not more, for a 100 plus catch season. Maybe not the type of role Jefferson will have, but right around there, I think Jefferson can bounce back pretty easily to one of these, 1200 plus yard seasons, double digit touchdowns, nearing 100 receptions, and finish as like a top 10 pick in fantasy. I feel pretty confident about that right now. Justin Jefferson on Underdog. If we use their ADP, they have the best source, at least at this time of the year. He's going as the 10th overall pick. You know, I think that's fine. I don't think that's terrible by any means. But if I pull up my early best ball rankings, you can get these in the fantasy blueprint. It will be re-releasing for 2026 uh on June 1st. So, be sure to check it out at at blueprint.com so you can get on the list for when it drops at the lowest price. But, I have Justin Jefferson right now as my ninth overall player for best ball purposes. So, if we scroll down right here, if you want to see these rankings, you can just join the blueprint at joinblueprint.com as well for this version. These are already out for uh the couple thousand blueprint members that we have having access to this. But you can see right here, we'll highlight it. Justin Jefferson's my ninth overall player. So, I mean, I'm slightly technically ahead of market. His ADP is like 10. On some sites, it's 11. I'm ninth. I would just prefer to have Justin Jefferson right now over guys like CD Lamb who most likely are still going to be competing with George Pickens. I don't think he's sitting out this year. There's an argument as the season gets closer, assuming that everything is good here in Minnesota. We'll see what happens with the NFL draft. There's an argument that I start to take Justin Jefferson over guys like Jonathan Taylor as well. So, Jefferson last year was like a consensus top five or six overall pick. He's dropping in drafts a decent amount, a late first round pick. Now, like if you have a late pick so far this year, obviously I would say early on I would want the number one or number two pick to get uh Gibbs or Robinson as like slam dunk plays. But if you're a guy picking at the turn right now and you could land in like a combination of Justin Jefferson and Saquon Barkley, Justin Jefferson and I don't know, Ashen Genty, Justin Jefferson and let's keep going, Kenneth Walker on the Chiefs. That feels really good. Justin Jefferson is somebody I'm betting my house on as of right now.
The next player I want to talk about is Brock Bowers of the Las Vegas Raiders because he's currently sliding in ADP, believe it or not, like backwards. Like last year, this was a guy that was going in the early second round. Now a lot of the times he's falling into the third round of early fantasy drafts, mostly baseball drafts. Let's not forget in his rookie season, he put up those historic numbers with the Raiders and not a great quarterback situation by any means during that time. 112 receptions, led all tight ends, almost 1,200 receiving yards was number one, yards after the catch was number one. He had one of the best seasons we have ever seen for a a tight end in general. He was number three in fantasy points per game as a rookie with 15.5 points per game. Okay. Then 2025 comes, new quarterback in Gino Smith there, new coaching staff, and it just didn't work out. Not only that, but Brock Bowers got hurt early on. He only ends up playing 12 games, but out of these 12 games, if you actually look at like his full snap shares, only like eight of them are he's actually going out there and bringing Brock Bowers. And in in one of those games, he went absolutely nuclear. Remember this game right here, 31.3 fantasy points, 126 yards, multiple touchdowns. He did it then again a couple of weeks later, 140 uh yards, uh 10 catches, 30 fantasy points, right? Like when he was actually healthy last year, a 20-point game right here to end the season, 15.15. So when he was healthy, he was still great. We know this guy is going to be great. Now he's entering year three and everything is going to be different. Worst case scenario last year in terms of the offense he was in. Literally as bad as it gets, the Raiders averaged the fewest passing yards per game with like 140 passing yards per game. Total yards per game when you're factoring in rushing and passing was still the fewest at 245 by nearly 15 yards less than any other team. Depending on like the metrics that you look at, this was one of the least efficient offenses that we have seen in the past 10 years. There's a reason why that quarterback Gino Smith is gone. There's a reason why the coaching staff is all gone. It was absolutely putrid and now there's going to be a brand new quarterback room in there. Most likely, this is being recorded right before the NFL draft, but most likely the number one overall pick by consensus standards at this point is going to be Fernando Mendoza. We would hope that that's an upgrade, but probably he's not going to start right away. At least as of right now, because Kurt Cousins has signed a a pretty big deal, a 5-year $172 million deal. It's basically a one-year deal potentially if they wanted to pick up an option, a two-year deal in there. Kurt Cousins probably starts the season. Kirk Cousins isn't the most exciting quarterback at this stage in his career, but Kirk Cousins, I would say, is probably, you know, on par with Gino Smith, maybe slightly better at this point in their careers. And then you have Fernando Mendoza, who has not only a floor, but a lot of upside as a number one overall pick. So, the situation for Bowers is already better in terms of quarterback play. His own health alone is better, so that helps. And then you look at just the target competition. This is before the NFL draft. I assume they're going to add at least one more guy. But when your number one wide receiver right now is a speedster and Trey Tucker, a guy in Josh Jacobs, a top receiving option who didn't play much last year as a rookie because Jacobe Myers was there for half the season. Free agent wide receiver Jaylen Naylor to be your new number two. Dante Thornton as a field stretcher didn't really work out last year. Like there's not much here. The Raiders are most likely going to be adding some sort of wide receiver in the draft. Maybe a late free agency ad like Deebo Samuel or Jauan Jennings. But whoever gets added here, unless it's like an early first round pick a wide receiver, which I'm not expecting by any means, you're probably looking at just no target competition for Brock Bowers in an offense that should be much better under Clint Kubiak. He literally won a Super Bowl last year and revamped that entire Seahawks offense. Sam Darnold still looked good. Jackson Smith-Njigba was the most valuable offensive player probably in the NFL skill position-wise last year. The year before that, Clint Kubiak when his players were actually healthy with the Saints to start the season was a number one scoring offense for those first month of the season or so. So this guy, I think at this point we can say Super Bowl winning, proven offensive coordinator. He's going to be calling the offense here. That's good news again for Brock Bowers. So all this stuff should be improving for Bowers, who was going as an early second round pick last year, but now on average, he's going as the 23rd overall pick in drafts. In your 10 team formats, that's a third round pick. In your 12 team formats, that's basically one pick away from being a third round pick. He's going in the late second. Right now, I'm a little bit ahead of consensus on Brock Bowers, and he's somebody that I I very much so want to be betting on if this is where he's going to continue to go. You can see Brock Bowers right now for me is my 21st overall pick. I prefer taking Brock Bowers over Chase Brown, over Derrick Henry, over Nico Collins, over Chris Olave, and slightly over George Pickens as it stands today according to the best ball rankings courtesy of the fantasy blueprint if you want to get in early right now and get on the wait list for the 2026 version of the blueprint. You can check it out at jointheblueprint.com. There'll be a link in the description.
All right, next up, I want to talk about Garrett Wilson because Garrett Wilson to me right now is a very strong value in drafts. I mean, let's not forget last year through the first five weeks of the season before Garrett Wilson himself got hurt, he was a top five fantasy receiver. Would he have kept it up the whole season? Probably not. But he was at that point. During that span of games, he only played two more games the rest of the season, of which he left both of them early due to injuries. But in those five healthy games that we got to see of Garrett Wilson, 19 fantasy points per game, 9.6 targets per game. He had a 34% target share during the span, which was second in the NFL. He had four touchdowns in five games. He was fantastic. All while being on the Jets offense that last year, this is sorted by yards per game, ranked last in the NFL only, which is pretty shocking that they were actually ahead of the Minnesota Vikings with the quarterbacks they were putting out there. And the Raiders, 140 passing yards per game, so atrocious last year, only a 60% completion percentage. They only threw for 2,385 yards. Even the Raiders had 500 more yards on offense last year. That's how bad the Jets passing attack was. And despite all of that, when he was actually out there and healthy. Now, part of that is, of course, because well, they lost their number one wide receiver for most of the season. So, it's kind of tainting some things there and they had other injuries, of course. But Garrett Wilson was just keeping this offense afloat when he was actually healthy. And the reason being is because he's actually a highly talented player. I mean, you're not earning 34% of your team's targets if you're not doing that. You're not competing. If we scroll up here, according to Player Profiler, remember back in 2024 when he played with Davante Adams and he still had in that season while playing with Davante Adams 153 targets, right? This is a guy who just knows how to earn targets. The year before that in 2023, 168 targets. The dude knows what he's doing out there. He is fantastic despite the terrible offense that he's in. And now he's not going to have the quarterbacks last year that he had. The combination of Tyrod Taylor, Justin Fields, Brady Cook, none of those guys were starting NFL caliber quarterbacks. Maybe there was some hope for Justin Fields at the start of the year that quickly became obvious that he wasn't. Instead, he's going to get a quarterback upgrade. Say what you want about Gino Smith in the terrible Raiders offense last year. Gino Smith still in that bad Raiders offense last year completed 67% of his passes threw for over 3,000 passing yards, which is still 500 yards more than Justin Fields, the quarterback for the Jets to start the year last year's career high, so that's saying something and that was in a terrible environment with bad coaching with not a lot of personnel with Brock Bowers getting hurt the three years before that you can see the two right here 4300 yards 3600 yards he was throwing for 4,000 yards per year the three seasons before that so maybe he gets a little bit closer to that and at the end of the day this is still which is pretty sad to say probably the best quarterback in his career. Like this version of Gino Smith compared to like the versions of Aaron Rodgers in the past and what they got out of Justin Fields last year. This is probably the best quarterback that Garrett Wilson has ever played with in his four or so year career. Oh, and we should also call out that there's probably a good chance the Jets take a wide receiver in the NFL draft in the first round. Um, they do have multiple picks in the first round, but like as of right now entering the draft, Adonai Mitchell, who I do still think has some upside, but he's not like a target threat. He's not going to have 100 plus targets most likely this season. He's not much of a threat after that. Like there's nobody else really here. Uh, who am I supposed to be concerned about on this Jets team like Allen Smith, a guy that they drafted last year? No. So I do think that they are liable at pick 16 overall to potentially take a wide receiver. Will Jordan Tyson fall to there? Do they want him at Kai Lemon? He kind of overlaps with Garrett Wilson in some ways. I will see what they end up doing with that pick. If they don't take a wide receiver in the first round, then it just absolutely wheels up for Garrett Wilson to have another 150 or so target season. Like there were some rumors um that the Jets were in the trade market discussions that they had some interest in Davante Williams and that his name was being thrown out there. But if we pull this up right now, uh, just recently news came out that Davante Williams was actually traded, no, not to the Jets, to the Philadelphia Eagles. So we'll see what that means for AJ Brown after the post June 1st cut. But all this basically tells you is that there's not much else out there. Like maybe they sign Jauan Jennings like we said earlier with the Brock Bowers in the Raider situation. Maybe they sign Deebo Samuel. Those guys aren't scaring me away from Garrett Wilson's overall target floor and ceiling. Pretty surprising to me that in early drafts, Garrett Wilson is going as the 36th overall player. So, a third to fourth round pick right now. Uh, just based on the overall target volume that he should have, I am going to be higher than the field on Garrett Wilson. Let's pull him up right now to where he is in my rankings. You can see that I have Garrett Wilson as my 33rd overall player and there's a chance that he even creeps up ahead of Travis Etienne and Tee Higgins as we get a little bit closer and I finalize some rankings in my next update. So you can see right here, Garrett Wilson, he's 33rd overall. Um, you can see Rashee Rice is right below him. You could ignore that for now. This is going to get updated tomorrow for the Rashee Rice news and he's going to get bumped up to probably being a second round pick, most likely a top 24 pick. Rashee Rice. We'll talk a little bit more quickly about the Rice Rashee Rice situation later on in the video. But by all accounts, Garrett Wilson, especially if he falls into early round four for you in 10 team formats, he's definitely going in round four right now. Looks like a strong option. Not many guys in round four of drafts are going to have like 150 target potential and have a decent chance to get there.
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The next guy I want to talk about, another wide receiver entering year two for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, their former first round pick from last year, A.J. Brown. Because if you look at his season from last year, like at the end of the year, it's just going to look like, all right, solid season, but there was like a stretch of games in there where he was people were talking about how high up in Dynasty drafts is this guy going to go? Is he one of the best wide receivers in Dynasty and all this? Because to start his season, the first half of the year, those first nine games, 16.3 fantasy points per game, he was a top 12 wide receiver, not among rookies, among all receivers. Eight and a half targets per game, 75 receiving yards per game. He was definitely delivering during the stretch. He had a 25% target share. Part of that stretch though there were injuries to Chris Godwin. There were injuries or at least missing time for guys like Mike Evans suffered the hamstring injury. So it is a little bit skewed in terms of who was on and off the field but still 16.3 fantasy points per game according to RotoViz. We should call out though like if you were watching fantasy the first month of the season last year you know that in a lot of our videos I bua we said was a sell high. It was unsustainable. He had six touchdowns in like his first eight NFL career games just getting propped up by the touchdowns right? We said that was probably unsustainable. And then you see the second half of the season, uh, guys start to come back. Chris Godwin starts to come back, play a little bit better. Eventually, Mike Evans comes back. In those final eight games, he only averages six fantasy points per game. Still gets target volume, 6.6 targets per game. Still getting hype from his coaching staff. And Baker Mayfield loves the guy, but only 32 receiving yards per game according to Roto. So, there's a lot in here, right? It's the rookie year. He comes out hot. He's getting a lot of touchdowns. And you might just think he fell off a cliff, which is partially true, but really Baker Mayfield got hurt in week 12 and A.J. Brown was dealing with his own injuries. So that's going to skew a lot of the samples for your second half of the season. Your quarterback's banged up and so are you. And according to the Player Profiler game logs, you can kind of see right when it happened. This is week one right up here. We're at the top. So obviously great start to the season. 23 fantasy points, 13, 14, 20, 31. Right during this stretch, he's has five touchdowns in five games. So he looks like unbelievable. And then this is where the Baker Mayfield injury starts to take account and his own injuries. Know uh playing through the MKUA and Baker nine fantasy points 6.2 8.2 3 and a half 10.4 four, five, five and two. So like obviously some of these games Evans is in, Godwin is in, some of them they're not. But the big thing here is like injuries. Also again he is a rookie. So just the fact that he had that hot start to the season as a later first round pick is great news. Like at the end of the day when a first round rookie receiver goes out there, plays in all 17 games, plays banged up, has 938 yards in his rookie year, 63 uh touchdown or 63 catches and six touchdowns. Yeah, that's going to be a good rookie season. But since it ended so flat, a lot of people are going to remember that and it's just like leaving this bad taste in people's mouths. However, he's now entering year two in this Bucs offense. And not only that, a big piece of target competition went away with Mike Evans signing a three-year deal in free agency, leaving Tampa Bay after all these years to go ring chasing with the San Francisco 49ers. So, what does that mean? Well, it means a lot of targets are on the table. Evans has been banged up with hamstring injuries each of the past two years and really for a lot of seasons in his career. But if you just look at this, last year alone, in the eight games that he did play, and this is a little bit skewed because he left some of them early, averaging 7.6 targets per game. If you take out the games that he left early, he was averaging 8.4 targets per game. The year before that, in just 14 games, he earned 110 targets. So, you're talking about a guy who over these last couple of years is averaging like eight targets per game over the last three years. That's with Baker Mayfield. So, now you're stepping into a situation where eight targets per game have to leave the lineup. You're getting Chris Godwin, another year older. He's also another year removed from injury, but another year older. Everything is lining up for A.J. Brown to take a step forward. This is still a pretty competitive wide receiver thing. All wide receiver room all things considered, assuming Chris Godwin gives them anything this year, and I think he will. He's going to earn targets. Jaylen McMillan in his rookie season was looking pretty good. I'm curious to see how they use all these guys this year because so many of them are probably at their best playing out of the slot. But of course, not all three guys can be in the slot at the same time. So, we'll see what McMillan can do. They have Kaden out there. They have guys in the backfield who can catch passes now that they added some new players. So A.J. Brown, he's still the guy that I want here. Maybe McMillan's like an interesting later round pick, but I do think I out of those eight targets per game that Mike Evans is going to leave behind. If he could just soak up a couple of those per game, one or two targets per game, there's a big ceiling. We should also call out that there's a brand new offensive coordinator here in Zac Robinson. This is the same guy who turned Drake London last year into the wide receiver seven in fantasy. He Drake London also had a good season in 2024 under Zac Robinson. He knows how to use his best players out of the slot, which is exactly where all these Bucs receivers, including Brown, can maybe get some benefits. In 2024, uh Drake London had the big season 1,200 yards. He stayed healthy. He was a top 10 wide receiver in fantasy. Even last year, despite bad quarterback play and him dealing with injuries for like a third of the season, you're still getting 68 catches, 919 yards out of Drake London, and he's still finishing with a top 10 point per game fantasy season last year despite the injuries and the bad quarterback play. So, uh, he's not the same player by any means. Drake London is a more traditional X receiver, has a lot more size and a totally different skill set than A.J. Brown, but it's just the philosophy of putting your best players in the slot to win. Godwin's going to get his. Brown is going to get his as well. Brown is currently going in the beginning of fourth rounds of drafts. I I mean, I think that's probably mostly fair if you see where I currently have Brown in my top 250 best ball rankings. Let's scroll down to that range of the draft. I currently have him as my 35th overall player. So, I'm a little bit ahead of consensus there. I do think this range of like the early fourth round is solid. I would much rather have Garrett Wilson who is a more proven number one on his team than an A.J. Brown who it could be Godwin this year. It could just be a clear distribution. But at the end of the day, I think like his floor is going to end up being round four or five. So, it's only upside from there.
All right, next up, let's talk about Kenneth Walker, the brand new Kansas City Chiefs running back. He's coming off of a Super Bowl MVP performance and he's now going to Kansas City. Now, look, before we get into the landing spot, let's just kind of establish the type of player that Kenneth Walker is. Because last year kind of threw some things out of whack. If you took Kenneth Walker most likely in the fourth rounds or so of your fantasy drafts last year, you probably weren't happy. You were probably pretty frustrated seeing him go absolutely apeshit in the playoffs and the Super Bowl because he did nothing for your fantasy teams. In 2025, he stayed healthy. He played all 17 regular season games. He did go over a thousand rushing yards, which was encouraging, but the problem was he lost a lot of receiving production and he lost all his red zone work. He goes from 46 receptions the season before with a different coach, uh, Ryan Grub, I believe, to 31 receptions. And his touchdowns hit a career low with just five. So, he only averaged 28 or or 11 fantasy points per game, 28th amongst running backs. Nowhere near good enough to be a fourth round pick and like your number one or number two RB last year. Now, the reason why all this happened was in 2024 with a different coaching staff and Ryan Grub, they used him as a three-down back. He had a career-high with 46 catches, the most he's ever had in a season dating back to college and even high school. But then last year with a new coaching staff there, like we talked about earlier, Clint Kubiak, they split the backfield. Only 48% of the snaps, not even the majority, went to Kenneth Walker. Over only 51% of the opportunities. And the real real thing that struggled for Kenneth Walker, he only saw 36 red zone touches, 24th in the NFL. He split the red zone touches and lost goal line work last year to Zach Charbonnet, who started to become a 50-50 backfield split. They would split drives together. Kenneth Walker, even on his own birthday in a prime time game last year, was pulled off the field at the goal line. So Zach Charbonnet could score the touchdown. I'm sorry if I'm giving you PTSD if you were a Kenneth Walker drafter last year, but like this was the situation we were dealing with. It was just kind of like free Kenneth Walker and free Zach Charbonnet. And then the fantasy playoffs came and Zach Charbonnet got banged up and Walker just went absolutely ballistic. 100-yard game against the 49ers against the Rams when you factor in his 49 receiving yards, another 100-yard game. And then in the Super Bowl, he goes for over 150 total yards in that game. 27 carries, 29 total touches. Super Bowl MVP performance for a pretty lackluster Super Bowl all things considered. Um, yeah, Kenneth Walker is still that dude. He just showed it. He's still in, I would say, like that prime window of his career. He's just a 25-year-old running back. Heck, half the running backs in this year's NFL draft are going to be like 24, 25-year-old rookies. So, Walker's already been in the league for multiple years and he's still this young. He's still in his prime. He also got a solid investment from the Kansas City Chiefs. $28.7 fully guaranteed at signing. Three years, $45 million deal overall. So, like this is a contract that says you're our guy. They did not resign Isaiah Pacheco. He's now in the Lions. As of this recording, they did not resign Kareem Hunt. All they did was bring in uh Amari D. Marcato, a former Arizona Cardinal, I believe. And then Breece Hall, their seventh round pick from last year, converted wide receiver to running back in college type of guy. So, really no competition. Probably they'll add a guy in the NFL draft maybe late in the free agency process, but this NFL draft, if you know anything about it, there's one maybe two or three starting running backs and like guys who can threaten a starting job. The all the other guys are like ancillary players. Now, we should also point out that Patrick Mahomes has not had a thousand-yard rusher in his career as a starter. Believe it or not, the last guy to do it was Kareem Hunt back in 2017 when he was the RB5 that year for 272 carries, almost 1,400 rushing yards alone, 11 or 11 total touchdowns. So, Patrick Mahomes, his starting running backs average around a touchdown per game in the career. If Kenneth Walker is now going to be that guy for Kansas City, which it looks like based on investment, based on competition, just based on his skill level compared to the other backs in this backfield, his five touchdowns from last year, can very easily this year be 10 to 12 plus. Walker rightfully so, is going as the 16th overall pick in drafts, right around the middle of the second round. I think that is totally fair based on where he's currently going. I have Kenneth Walker as my 18th overall player, so 16th or so. I do think that he is valued in the middle of the second round. I do think that we'll see what the NFL draft does, but um pending some of the NFL draft results, there's a chance that Kenneth Walker gets bumped up ahead of some other guys on this list like maybe even a De'Von Achane or a Trey McBride. I am starting to get a little bit worried. We'll talk about this in a future video about De'Von Achane. Just looking at the entire shape of what this Miami team is looking like in 2026. Spoiler alert, it's not good.
Now, quickly before we get into this next guy, again, a reminder, we mentioned it earlier, blueprint.com. I don't want to take up too much of your time. You just enter your email right here. If you want to win your fantasy league with confidence in 2026, this will put you on the wait list for the 2026 blueprint. It will be dropping for this year on June 1st. So, if you're not already a member, be sure to get on that list because you'll be able to access the blueprint at the lowest price. If you were a member last year, you still have to get on that list. So, be sure to check it out at blueprintdrop.com. You'll be getting notified a week before the public at the lowest price of the blueprint will ever be. So, check it out down below. It helped 10,000 people win their fantasy leagues over the last few seasons. It helped me win 75% of my home leagues, including the Flock League, which many of you watched, the most watched fantasy league in the world. Helped me take that down as well as the champion. Walked in there with the blueprint, won the whole thing. So, check it out, blueprint.com.
Now, the honorable mention I want to talk about here is Rashee Rice. Uh, this video has five players. He would be the sixth. He's an honorable mention because we have to talk about it. This guy has had so many off-field issues. It's probably going to impact if he gets a new contract or not with the Kansas City Chiefs. We'll see. But as of right now, his latest off-field issue, Rashee Rice won't be disciplined after investigation into accusations from his former girlfriend. NFL included, he has not engaged in contact that violates the personal conduct policy. So, as of right now, it looks like Rashee Rice is going to be playing a full 2026 unlike 2025 where he was suspended for another off-the-field issue. Right? So, if he's going to be playing, if we can separate the person from the player and talking about fantasy football specifically here, I don't know how this guy should be getting out of the second round, if not first round of some fantasy drafts. I mean, just look at it. None of these were full seasons due to injury and suspension, but he was averaging 18.8 fantasy points per game last year, 16.2 fantasy points per game the year before that. As a rookie, he even averaged 13.3 fantasy points per game. He's found success in the playoffs when he's been on the field. So, uh, we also should call out that this is a guy who right now, as of right now, is multiple years removed from his surgery. Right. So, if we pull this up, Jeff Mueller on Twitter, a great follow. Be sure to follow him at JM Thrive PT. Rashee Rice led in this category coming off of an LCL and hamstring repair entering year two removed from the surgery. So if we look at this right here, yards after the catch per reception leaders, Rashee Rice was number one last year coming off of the surgery and now he's going to be another year removed. Patrick Mahomes will likely be year one off ACL likely emphasis on shorter passes and yards after the catch. That helps contract or that helps Rice as well who's in a contract year. So to sum all those stats up for you, Rashee Rice is basically going to get maybe a less mobile Patrick Mahomes, which means shorter, quicker passes instead of taking off and scrambling. That helps Rashee Rice. And this was a guy who already dominated in terms of yards after the catch ability in this offense last year. Number one in the NFL and wide receivers with 50 receptions or more. Number one was Rashee Rice coming off of an injury. Now he's multiple years removed from that injury. He should only be more effective in this area. This is also a Chiefs depth chart that currently lacks a lot of depth. They lost Marquez Valdes-Scantling. He's now on the Eagles this offseason. It's basically Xavier Worthy and Travis Kelce and that's it. Like we'll see if Jaylen Royals a rookie they took last year does anything. Other than that, like this depth chart is very very thin. They're probably I actually want to do this. Let's do this on the fly right now. Let's look up our Lads Chiefs depth chart um and see the most updated depth chart as of today because I'm just very curious. So T.K. Thornton they obviously brought back. So those are the starters. It's going to be Xavier Worthy, T.K. Thornton, and most of the time your slot wide receiver Rashee Rice after that. I mean look at the backups here. The depth is thin. Jaylen Royals, uh Jason Brownlee, like there's nothing here. So, T.K. Thornton as an outside burner, Xavier Worthy has kind of the same role in some ways. And then Rashee Rice in the slot going to get a lot of that middle of the field production, especially with Travis Kelce being yet another year older. So, as of this recording, Rashee Rice has been getting bumped up a little bit. He's currently going 26th overall in the third round. This is only going to keep going up. Spoiler alert. We'll see by the time August comes and your drafts come in September and like how high he goes in drafts. But, when my latest update comes out before the news and like the possible risk of a multiple game suspension, I had him as a third round pick. Now without any suspension, even if Patrick Mahomes might miss some time, which all signs point to right now, Mahomes hopefully being ready week one, Andy Reid and Mahomes week one availability, I would never bet against him. So we'll see. There's a chance that he should be ready week one. Maybe not as effective, but assuming Patrick Mahomes is ready by week one or even after four weeks on like the PUP list and he's ready week five, whatever it is. Either way, you're looking at a situation here where Rashee Rice is going to have like the target potential as a guy that needs to be a top 15 fantasy pick. So, these are the five players I would bet my house on entering 2026 fantasy football, including that honorable mention of Rashee Rice. I know it's early. I I know it's really early, but it's good to start to look at these things early now that free agency is over, NFL draft stuff and all that. We're having some fun here. I appreciate you all tuning in. Be sure to hit the subscribe button before you go if you found this enjoyable.