Transcription
Good morning, friends and enemies. In today's video, we are going round by round, starting in round nine, ending in round one with the best pick and or picks to make in every round of your 2026 fantasy football draft. We did the opposite of this video in the last video. So, if you missed that, want to go check it out, see who your idiot league mates should be taking in fantasy drafts, go ahead and watch that video.
In round nine, which is where we are starting, there is a man I am very fond of. Pause. Resume. And that is Josh Downs, the Indianapolis Colts mini receiver. I'm such a fan of Josh Downs. I think we've been waiting for this perfect storm to happen and it's finally here. Each year we hope that he progresses through the wide receiver depth chart in Indianapolis and it doesn't really happen. However, here's what's changed going into 2026. Michael Pittman no longer there. Alec Pierce, and I think this is the biggest turning point here, is his injury and and whether or not he's going to be ready to go for the start of the season. He's returning from this ankle surgery. And listen, I don't want to get like overly pessimistic and unrealistically pessimistic about his return from the ankle injury. I think there's a good chance he plays in week one, maybe week two or three at the latest. However, what this is going to do is open the door for Josh Downs to be playing on the outside. That's been the real uh deter as far as Josh Downs's role has been in this offense. They only allow him to play pretty much in three wide receiver sets, playing those slot snaps. But since Michael Pittman is gone and since Adai Mitchell has pretty much been a pure outside receiver is gone and has been since last year, I think that opens the door to force Josh Downs onto the field. And once he's out of the bottle, you can't put the top back on it. They have almost nothing on their depth chart behind Alec Pierce. So you have your number one outside guy returning from a pretty serious ankle rehab with an unclear return timeline right now and it's like Nick Westbrook Aini behind him. Of course Josh is going to be a near every down player and we've seen you know stints and we've seen flashes of what Josh Downs can do and when you look at any of the underlying metrics he's one of the better separators at the wide receiver position and because he has so much experience in the slot like you can move him around all over the formation. I think he's good enough to play outside. Is he built to play outside? Probably not. But I think if you put him out there and allow him to run 80, 90% of the routes, he's going to be pretty damn good. You have Daniel Jones coming back from the Achilles tear. I think he's going to be ready to go for week one. Ready to go. Does not mean fully healthy. Obviously, I think he's going to struggle a little bit to connect on the deep ball. And that's another reason why I'm kind of fading these guys that run these outside downfield routes on the Indianapolis Colts. I think it's just more difficult to push off and be accurate downfield. And the other thing I'll say about Josh Downs, just an overall team thing for the Indianapolis Colts, their playoff schedule is phenomenal. You have Tennessee week 15, you have Cincinnati week 16, and then you have Cleveland in week 17. Cleveland's a, you know, a good defense, but without Miles Garrett, they're probably not the top 10ish defense that they've been in previous years. So, pretty soft schedule in the fantasy playoffs. So, to me, when I look at Josh Downs, I look at a guy who's very talented and is likely going to be forced into an every down situation this year, which it shouldn't take this long to get a guy like that on the field for all three downs. No pun intended, but I think I think we've gotten to the point there. So, at this price where there's so little opportunity cost, love Josh Downs in the ninth round. Full PPR, you really like it.
A guy that you probably like a little bit less in full PPR, but I still think is going as a value. And I I haven't heard a lot of uh JK Dobbins hype going into the season. And I get it, he's always injured, but if you look back at last year, like he had one of the safest floors in terms of workload of any running back in the NFL. He played up until week 10, he had one single game with fewer than 14 carries. He had 11 carries in that game. So double digit touches in every single game he played last year. They went out and despite the injury that he suffered at the end of the season, re-signed him to, you know, a a not nothing contract here, which tells me he's returning as a starting running back here. Yes, they drafted Jonah Coleman, and I think that's a depth piece because Sean Payton doesn't want to deal with JK Dobbins if he does end up getting hurt. Again, very much within the range of outcomes, but this feels a little bit to me like one of those situations where you have probably the best offensive line in the NFL, and you're kind of getting to just draft the starting running back here. Like it it reminds me of probably a slightly worse situation than what Javonte Williams had last year. Another reason I I think people don't love JK Dobbins is because he was so boring last year. He scored four rushing touchdowns in their first five games and people are like, "Shit, why didn't I just draft this guy?" And then over the next five games that he played, he scored zero rushing touchdowns. So, it was continuously like 14 carries for 75 yards. To me, that's much more of a product of just like bad touchdown luck. The team is still good. The team is scoring points. The offensive line is still great. He's still getting the workload. He just didn't happen to be the one that got in on the one or two-yard line. R.J. Harvey is there. He'll take passing down work, but I think all the signs pretty clearly point to the fact that they don't want him playing on early downs for the most part. I also think one untapped part of JK Dobbins's game is that he is a relatively good pass catcher. He didn't do it at high volume last year, but I do think there's some variance that could be baked into the fact that this is a Sean Payton offense. And Sean Payton offenses target the running back at such a high rate. Annually they're within the top three to five in terms of target share to the running back position and it's not just on third downs or obvious passing situations. They do it a lot on early downs. It just didn't really happen often for JK Dobbins. So I could see this being a random, you know, variance problem where next year he's seeing two to three targets per game because he's playing so many of the snaps. So overall, I think this is obviously massive injury risk with a guy like JK Dobbins. Like he can never finish the season, but he is also objectively the starting running back in a very good offense, in a very good scheme behind one of the league's best offensive lines. So again, do I think it's likely he's this year's Javonte Williams? Like, of course not. That's a very long shot bet. But if there is a guy who's going to do it, like he has an extremely similar situation with a little bit more competition in the backfield, of course, between R.J. Harvey and Jonah Coleman. But like if he ends up running for 8 to 10 touchdowns because he's just in a good offense, right place, right time, getting the workload of 12 to 15 carries a game, you could do a lot worse in the ninth round.
Moving down to round eight, this is a pretty quarterback-heavy round. So it's kind of tough to like pick and choose who you want to go for here. And there are a lot of like boring high-floor players like uh Michael Pittman in Pittsburgh, you have Rico Dowdle, you have Chris Godwin. Guys that are like, you know, fine if you kind of need to throw them into your flex or second flex or something like that. But ultimately, I think this is a really good spot to grab quarterbacks. And we do have another quarterback on this list. So, I don't want to go like super heavy, but I think this is a great spot to grab quarterbacks. You have Trevor Lawrence, who I think has a great combination of upside with his arm right now with the weapons and Liam Cohen's offense and obviously showed a ton of athleticism last year. So, I I think five or six rushing touchdowns again could definitely be within the range of outcomes there. Then you have a couple, you know, underrated dual-threat quarterbacks in Jackson Dart and Brock Purdy, and Matt Stafford obviously coming off the MVP season. So if you don't grab a quarterback up to this point, this seems like the perfect round to grab one.
The other name I'll throw out here is Quentin Johnston. I'm not like a huge fan of Quentin Johnston by any means. This is like a really good opportunity to get kind of like the cheapest part of the Los Angeles Chargers offense where I think most people are super excited about, right? You have Mike McDaniel coming over as the OC. You'll have a healthy offensive line which is also doubled down on and more invested into. You'll have Joe Alt back. You'll have Rashawn Slater back. They go out and grab Tyler Biadasz from Washington, which is a great signing for them. They they draft Jake Slater in the second round. So they should they should go from the offensive line being a massive liability last year obviously to one of the better units in the NFL. So you give Herbert that. You give Mike McDaniel this to work with. And I also think the fact that they bring in Charlie Kolar and David and Joku on top of already having Hayden Hurst tells me that they're probably going to go heavy personnel often. And what that typically means is less wide receivers on the field. So typical two wide receiver sets, meaning more targets for the wide receivers. And everything out of out of training camp is like Mike McDaniel loves Quentin Johnston. So he's probably more boom or bust on a weekly basis because that's just the type of player he is. But I do think if you're investing in the Chargers offense, like you have to spend a really early pick on Omarion Hampton. You also have to spend a pretty early pick on Ladd McConkey. So, if you want to get parts of this passing offense that will be a player who's probably on the field for 80% of the snaps, Quentin Johnston feels like a pretty good gamble at this point in your draft.
Moving into round seven, this will be for me an exclusive tight end draft pick. All right, this is where two guys that I absolutely love, Tucker Kraft and Sam LaPorta, are sitting. Last year when I made this video, we exclusively reserved the fourth round for Trey McBride. That turned out well. One of my few good calls. We're going to double down and exclusively remove every other player from this round except for tight ends. So, you have these veteran tight ends that have kind of fallen out of favor because we have that elite group of second-year guys, you know, jumping up the ranks in in Fant, and Lovett, and Tyler Warren, and obviously the recent breakouts of Brock Bowers and Trey McBride, and deservedly so. My thing with tight ends is this. Like, if I don't end up spending up for an elite tight end, which I don't really hate with Bowers this year, and I don't hate with Lovett this year either. If I don't do that, I'm not one of those people that's like, I'll just draft one in round 10 or 11 and like grab two of them and hope one of them breaks out. I want a set and forget guy. I don't care if he's boring. Give me those 10 points per game with, you know, a touchdown outlook every other week or something like that. And I think you get that with LaPorta and Tucker Kraft being attached to Green Bay's offense and Detroit's offense. So, we'll start with LaPorta. And obviously a lot of things to touch on here, but in the three years since he's entered the NFL in terms of fantasy points per game at the tight end position, he's been tight end three his rookie year, tight end eight, and then tight end seven last year. And I think what gives me the most confidence is the consistency we've continued to see across the Detroit passing offense. I think a lot of people were off them last year because they lose Ben Johnson and we're like, "Oh, they're going to fall off." And then Jared Goff just has his normal statistical 4,500 yards, 30 plus passing touchdowns and nothing fell off. And that gives me a ton of confidence for a dude like Sam LaPorta knowing that even without Ben Johnson, we could still write the ship. And now we have Drew Petzing coming in who I'm not like a huge fan of from, you know, creativity play-caller standpoint, but he did just come out of Arizona where Trey McBride eight and then eight and then eight and then eight. So at least we know he can feature a tight end in his passing offense. I think Sam LaPorta is his second most important passing piece of this offense outside of Gibbs. But Amon-Ra and then LaPorta. Like I do think LaPorta is more important to this offense than Jameson Williams is. And Jameson Williams tends to eat when LaPorta is not playing. So, he's coming off the back injury and I think that's another reason you're kind of getting like an injury discount on Sam LaPorta. But all signs point to him being fully clear for training camp and and and no issues in terms of his injuries heading into 2026.
On the other side, Tucker Kraft. The major concern here, of course, is his ACL. Suffers a torn ACL midway through 2025. Through those eight games, though, when he was healthy, 14.7 PPR fantasy points per game, tied for second most in the NFL. Only McBride would have finished higher than him. We've just seen Kraft develop into this, he was another guy that I loved last year, too, and it looked really good obviously until halfway through the season, but he's someone who's just improved and developed into this like all-around playmaker in each of his three seasons so far. He's gotten better and better and better, and he's one of the few tight ends in the NFL that I think you can actually like build a passing game around because he's so explosive with the ball in his hands. He has been top three in yards after catch per reception, yards per reception. You could target him downfield. You can give him a ton of line of scrimmage targets as well and let him kind of eat with that afterwards. And now you have guys like Romeo Doubs and Dontayvion Wicks gone. So the target tree is going to get more condensed. Now the ACL is the problem here. The things I think are working for him is that he's 25 years old. So he's very young and he can rehab. You could also just kind of search Twitter and look at any of the reports out of camp are that Kraft is like way ahead of schedule and fully expected to be good to go by week one. How much weight do you want to put on that? Up to you, but I'm buying the reports. The other thing too is the Green Bay medical staff is like notoriously cautious with allowing players to return from injuries. So I do think if he gets the clearance to go for week one. Yeah, maybe he's a little bit rusty for the first three, four weeks of the season, but if they let him go, I'm going to believe with like 95% certainty that he is fully healed. And again, maybe rusty the first month of the season, but Kraft, unlike LaPorta where like sure, he had the good rookie season, but I think that was when he finished as the tight end one, that was more of like a lack of high upside other options in the NFL. I don't know that I believe LaPorta has overall one upside in him outside of like maybe a random like 12 or 13 touchdown season. Tucker Kraft's a dude who could finish as the tight end one overall. And you know what, it might be uh the tight end five overall at the end of the season, but like he could be the tight end one in fantasy from weeks 6 through 18, and that's going to be a league-winning type of player. He has that type of upside, and I'm super willing to take that shot on Tucker Kraft in the seventh round.
The other player that I will point out here, non-tight end if you want to go elsewhere, is uh Jordan Tyson. I want to take a shot on Jordan Tyson somewhere in my fantasy drafts this year. Love the setup, love the player. I think he could legitimately battle Chris Olave for the team lead in receiving yards this year. Maybe over the second half of the year. Maybe not the full outlook of it, but I am a huge fan of Jordan Tyson. I'm a huge fan of the situation, the strength of schedule, playing in the dome, the environment, Kellen Moore, tons of plays. It's fast-paced. Like me some Jordan Tyson.
Round six is where I think all hell kind of just breaks loose here. And you have all types of upside and downside and risk and first-round rookies and high-upside Christian Watson's of the world and you've got multiple Jaguars wide receivers. There's a lot of guys I like in this round, but I think I'm going to narrow this round down specifically to one player and that is Jaden Daniels, the quarterback for Washington. All right, we are one year removed from him putting up a a 4,500 yard season total yards, 900 rushing yards, 31 total touchdowns as a rookie. And a lot of people going out on a limb last year, you know, touting him as the possible overall quarterback one in fantasy football. I wasn't there, but like if you're getting him now at QB6, at QB7 in drafts, wherever he's going in the sixth round, that rushing upside is so enticing. Last year, he obviously dealt with like 95 different injuries. Can he stay healthy for the full season? Listen, one thing I've learned is I'm not trying to predict injuries in season. I think if a guy is going into a year and he's not fully cleared or an injury happens at the end of August or something like that, you know, you're playing with fire in that case. But I'm not going to try to predict fluky injuries to a guy like Jaden Daniels. Could happen, whatever. That's just not how I'm drafting. Now, the Washington receiver group is is it's gross. Like the weapons group out there is gross. They got Terry McLaurin who he was another one like all of last year. He went in with a contract holdout and then he got hurt pretty early and that just hampered his entire season. They do go out and sign Chig Okonkwo at tight end, which I like. They draft Antonio Williams to be a slot guy, who I like. I still think they're very likely or they're probably the favorite to sign one of, you know, Keenan Allen and/or Stefon Diggs, which I think will then solidify their group as being like not great but not the worst. I've also never been a fan of Kliff Kingsbury's offenses. So getting David Blough in there, I'm I'm actually excited for. I think their scheme will help Jaden Daniels much more than what Kliff Kingsbury's was. So I don't know. I'm I'm just looking around and I'm seeing Jaden Daniels who rushed for 900 yards as a rookie. Like you're getting a dude that could easily rush for 1,000 yards right now in the sixth round and that feels free. Like you know he's putting up 30-point games throughout the season. So yeah, all this to say there's nothing new here. I think you just need to drop the recency bias. The rookie of the year amazing for Jaden. Sophomore year terrible. Lot of injuries, lot of just [expletive] going on in Washington. New year, wipe the slate clean. You know how explosive of a player Jaden Daniels is. Just let that be your pick.
Moving into round five, let's show some love to the here. I'm going Mike Evans at the 509. Mike Evans moves from Tampa Bay for the first time in his career. He will be playing elsewhere. San Francisco 49ers signed him to be their wide receiver one. I I I believe that he will be the dude running routes on every single snap. I think behind him totally up for grabs. Do I like Ricky Pearsall? Yeah, I'm I'm willing to take shots on him later in the draft, but I think Mike Evans is going to contend for leading the league in touchdowns this year. I think you have George Kittle, who's been a good red zone target obviously for Brock Purdy. They've had great chemistry. He's returning from an Achilles tear. It's a very serious injury. It happened very late in the season and he's old. That's going to be tough to come back from. So outside of Evans, you have no real like proven downfield threats. You have CMC who's obviously going to see, you know, 23, 25% target share, but then it's just Mike Evans, man. And the thing about Evans is like maybe you think he's lost a step, that sure he got hurt last year, but when he's on the field, I've seen nothing out of him that makes me feel as if he's too old to play at a high level anymore. And I think being part of the Kyle Shanahan scheme is also one of those things that takes pressure off of top guys. It takes pressure off of dudes who are aging a little bit where I think like even if Mike Evans has lost a step, Kyle Shanahan is so creative at getting his best playmakers open and scheming them to the right parts of the field that I don't think it's really going to matter.
Moving from round five down to round four. Just want to remind you before we do so, all of my rankings and write-ups on these players, like everything I'm saying is already available in our draft guide, which is part of our membership on bdge.co. So, in the fantasy membership, you're going to get all these rankings regardless of what kind of league you're in. So, Superflex, one quarterback, PPR, non-PPR, you'll get outlook write-ups, you get the Vegas prop numbers, you get strength of schedule data, offensive line ranks. You'll also be able to sync your league this year if you are on Yahoo, ESPN or Sleeper, which is dope because then you can use our rankings, it'll cross it off in real time as your draft is going on. So, you can go sign up for the membership on BDGE.co. Or the cheapest way to get it is by going over to our partner MGM. And if you use our code BDGE when you sign up for a new account and you deposit just 10 bucks or more and you play any slip on there, as soon as you play the slip, you should get a promo code in-app in their message system. That gives you three months free to our fantasy membership. All right, so cheapest way to get it by far. Head over to MGM if you're a new user, sign up with code BDGE, play any slip of $10 or more and you'll get that.
Let's move to round four. And I think round four might be the round to take your shot. Round four is going to be the one that you want to get a little bit risky on because I think a lot of the players in this round are risky where when we move to round three, I think you have more sure things. I think you have like high-floor boring picks that will cement a really good roster. But round four has a lot of players if you're like a Luther Burden guy or a Colson Lovett guy, you want to shoot on some upside for Chicago. I like that. For me in particular, I have one boring pick who we've seen do it a million times. I have one risky pick who we've seen do it once and then flat out. And then I have one very high upside but high-risk pick. So we'll start with Ladd McConkey. A lot of what I said for Quentin Johnston I think is echoed to Ladd except he's a lot more expensive because he's already shown the upside in his rookie season where he blasted off for over a thousand yards. I love his fit in the Mike McDaniel offense. I could see him easily using him in the way that he's used Jaylen Waddle or Tyreek Hill over these recent years. Of course, it's a little bit scary coming off like the absolute disaster of his sophomore season last year, but I'm willing to chalk up most of the Chargers tendencies 2025 to the fact that the offensive line getting hurt just kind of ruined everything in LA. With Ladd, I again it's I want the highest upside piece of this passing offense that I think could legitimately contend for one of the best in the NFL. I would say if I have concerns about Ladd, they would be do we ever get to the point where Ladd can see 140, 150 targets and be a true true alpha number one in an offense. You know, remains to be seen. Also, touchdown upside is a little bit tough given his size. Like when they're down inside the 10 or five, they're likely drawing up plays for the tight ends. They're likely drawing up plays for Omarion Hampton. Justin Herbert, you know, we know can scramble a little bit too. So wouldn't be surprised if he puts together like a Trevor Lawrence light type of year last year where when they're inside the 10, he kind of just dips out and runs for four, five, six rushing touchdowns in that area of the field. So there are definitely concerns with McConkey, but I do think as just a separator and as a player attached to an offense and this type of scheme is one that I I want to attach myself to going into 2026.
If I don't get Ladd, I love me some Cam Akers, man. This is without a doubt the scariest pick to make here. But Cam Akers, what he showed as a fourth-round rookie last year through the first eight weeks of the season before he got hurt was legitimately like elite stuff. Third, third among running backs in expected fantasy points per game. What that just tells you is his role was as good as pretty much anyone outside of a Christian McCaffrey or a Bijan Robinson or a Jahmyr Gibbs type. He's not that explosive obviously and he's not as good of an NFL running back. And the biggest elephant in the room here is the ankle injury that he suffered. But I mean the videos coming out are just insane. He's doing backflips everywhere. The guy cannot stop doing backflips. He lands some of them, he doesn't land some of them. But to me, I think he's fine. Everything out of camp says that he's a full go to be that guy. I think there's a lot of people that are just pointing to two injuries over and over and over again that are similar injuries, but from what I've heard are actually worst-case scenarios for these injuries as opposed to Cam Akers'. And that's Tony Pollard and that's Mark Andrews. One, Mark Andrews was old by the time it happened to him. And that's a tight end. I don't I don't care about that one. Tony Pollard I think is more relevant because he was a young explosive running back. Tony Pollard's injury, his fractured ankle that hurt him in the early portion of the following year happened late late January. You're talking about January 20, I think it was 22nd, 23rd, 24th, somewhere in that range, very late into the NFL offseason. Cam Akers' happened at the end of October, early November. So you're talking about a pretty massive gap in between the recovery timeline that Cam has relative to Tony Pollard. So Tony Pollard was one worse and also happened much later in the season. I just cannot emphasize how big of a role Cam Akers had in this Giants offense last year. It was every single goal-line carry, nine of nine goal-line carries through the first eight weeks of the season, 100% of them. He had 23 of 26 red zone carries and he had 65% of the running back targets despite remember last summer he was dealing with I think it was a hamstring injury for most of camp. So he actually missed a lot of summer camp and then still dominated the touches. Now, they do have a new coaching staff, so obviously that could skew things, but Cam Akers is a workhorse, man, and I think they're going to use him accordingly. This offense could be really exciting if Malik Nabers is actually back and is playing week one or two. Jackson Dart excites me. They also use the top 10 pick on an offensive lineman, so that will be a little bit better. I don't think they're going to be a top-tier offensive line by any means, but good to see them invest in that as opposed to not. So, yeah, I I love taking shots on Cam Akers if he's your if he's your running back two. I think the workload is going to be super super high and he gets all the valuable touches as well. Like he gets the goal-line carries because he's a [expletive] battering ram and he's also unbelievably skilled in the passing game. He is such a smooth athlete and pass catcher and and that's where the upside comes in with a dude like Cam Akers. So I love him.
The other dude in this round that I mentioned that I would touch on quickly is just Davante Adams. I know people are kind of off on him. And I think he's, you know, past the the twilight years of his career, which very well might be true. But I still think Davante Adams as the only other pass-catching weapon in an offense that just saw Matt Stafford throw for a billion yards and 45 plus touchdowns and win the MVP and you're attached to Sean McVay is still a part of an offense that I want. Like even if Davante Adams is not as good as he once was, his targets per route run, like he's still getting targeted at an insane level and he's still going to be a top red zone option and he's still going to lead the NFL in end zone targets most likely. So, did he lose a step? Possibly. But I just love the situation here.
As we move into round three, I mentioned that this to me is a high-floor round. I'm looking at guys like Javonte Williams, Josh Jacobs, and DeVonta Smith. Those to me, you have DeVonta Smith coming in and stepping in as the wide receiver one in Philadelphia with A.J. Brown leaving. Anytime A.J. Brown didn't play, DeVonta Smith just absolutely balled out. He is such a good route runner and separator that I I just don't see a world where he's not fed 140 targets this year and kind of just provides you an extremely high-floor, you know, borderline wide receiver one season. I'd be surprised if he doesn't finish somewhere within the wide receiver 9 to like 13 range and as a third-round pick like happy to just kind of throw that into my PPR lineup and enjoy the fruits of that. They're going to be a healthy offensive line again and be much better than they were last year. Obviously Kevin Patullo is out of there. So that is my, you know, and A.J. Brown being out of there. Talent being gone sucks obviously, but there's a lot less toxicity now in Philly, which could mean a better overall, you know, environment for the rest of the playmakers there. So DeVonta Smith, I have every confidence level that he can be the wide receiver one on that team. Javonte Williams again showed us last year that he is the RB1 in Dallas is an extremely high-scoring offense, extremely productive offense where they add no competition to that backfield. And I'm not even sure Jayden Blue is going to carve out a role. Like it might just be Javonte Williams once again playing 75 to 80% of the snaps. And because he's on Dallas's offense, like he's going to get a billion goal-line carries just by being in the right place at the right time. So Javonte smash pick at the end of the third round.
Same thing with Josh Jacobs. Obviously there's the uncertainty off the field, but when the Green Bay Packers are playing and Josh Jacobs is playing, he is the workhorse. Like he's a boring pick. I think I think people think of him as a boring pick, but when the season actually happens, you are super [expletive] happy to have him on your team cuz the dude just scores a touchdown every single game. When they are inside the 5-yard line, all they do is give the ball to Josh Jacobs. The biggest concern I would have with Jacobs and I don't think it like it didn't really deter him last year. He got hurt and I would even say that he was great up until when he got hurt and then almost the entire, you know, last quarter or half of the season was playing with a completely bum lower leg. But up until that point, he was great. Their offensive line is actually kind of problematic. They do not have a good offensive line. I think we saw that last year. They got very little push and it felt like Josh Jacobs was getting 18 carries a game that just went for two or three yards. We're going to see that again. He's going to get a lot of work, but I think he's good enough out of the backfield as a pass catcher. And of course, he's just got so much touchdown equity in that offense.
The last one I will throw out is the opposite of a high-floor guy, but that's Jeremiah Love. Number three pick. I'm surprised that he's dropping this far. I think in a lot of drafts he'll go at the end of the second round. If he drops into the bottom of the third round, this was not a player that I thought I'd be taking any sort of shares of. But if he does drop into the third round, I'm very very interested in Jeremiah Love just because of his pass-catching profile. The fact that Arizona is expected to win about four games per Vegas this year. They will once again be in a lot of catch-up mode type of situations here. I think Algier will definitely have a role there. Maybe even the goal-line role, unfortunately. But I think Love between his like breakaway plays, between his pass-catching ability, and between just like the overall workload floor he's going to have from being the number three overall pick in the draft is something that I'm like super on board with in round three.
Moving to round two, uh we just have like a grab bag of just workhorse running backs here. And my two favorites are Chase Brown and Kenneth Walker. Love Chase Brown. Have him for the last couple years. He was one of these guys on this list last year. Started off slow but then was as good as any fantasy running back over the second half of the year when Joe Burrow came back and was healthy. Similar to Javonte Williams, they had zero competition in that backfield. And I should also, you know, kind of rewind and say that for Josh Jacobs, like they just let Emmanuel Wilson walk. They didn't add anything to the backfield. Yes, Marshawn Lloyd is now healthy, but that's not an addition to the backfield. If anything, he's just the same as Emmanuel Wilson pretty much. Anyways, you look at guys who were in situations last year that performed great in very very plus+ plus offenses where no competition was added. So expecting different results feels idiotic. All right, so that's really my pitch for Chase Brown. He is the number three target in this offense. It's Ja'Marr, and it's Tee Higgins, and then it's Chase Brown. Is there a world where touchdown variance goes towards Chase Brown? This is an offense that's probably going to average, you know, 27, 28, 29 points per game, be very, very high scoring. What if Chase Brown ends up scoring 12 rushing touchdowns this year? I don't think that should surprise anybody. So, he'll get another 65 to 70 targets. He'll catch a bunch of passes. He'll get the majority of rushing workload and all they have behind him is like a 31-year-old Samaje Perine. So, yeah, I'm I'm all in on Chase Brown again. I think this is like a no-brainer pick in the second.
And I just love the upside of of Kenneth Walker. Like you you clearly need something else there in the Kansas City offense to take a little bit off the uh the weight of Patrick Mahomes's shoulders. I think, you know, the the biggest thing for KC over the last few years has been one, the defense has gone defenses in the NFL have gone so heavy into the cover two shell, so you can't take shots downfield and of course, they get rid of Tyreek Hill a bunch of years ago, and that completely like cratered the offensive success that this team has had via the passing game. And I think they've really, really struggled because they haven't had a running game. And when you add a dude like Kenneth Walker for the contract that they gave him, they're doing that with workhorse workload in mind. We've seen times where Kenneth Walker has looked like one of the best running backs in the NFL. And you know, we saw it at the end of last year into the Super Bowl. And that's why he grabs his contract. And again, I'm not going to go into the year scared drafting Kenneth Walker because he's been hurt before. If he has an ankle sprain at the end of August, yeah, he'll probably be off my board. But for right now, the situation is fantastic. The offense is fantastic. He's got Patrick Mahomes, who's coming back from the ACL tear, so they'll no doubt need to be leaning on the running back more. You got Andy Reid there. Like Kenneth Walker I think is a smash pick in the second.
And then we move to round one and I I don't know. There's nothing I could really say that you guys don't know about the round one players. Jahmyr Gibbs is my clear 101 there. So if that's a question for you guys, love Gibbs. I was off CMC last year stupidly for just being like a he's probably going to get hurt kind of thing. Not making that mistake again. Same situation. Should get a bajillion targets again. Happily drafting CMC in the first round. Love Amon-Ra St. Brown again if you're in like the mid to later part of the first round. And I really like James Cook. He's my RB4. So [expletive] is just sweet all over the the first round of uh of fantasy drafts. It just feels like kind of like a waste of time being like, "Yo, I really like Jahmyr Gibbs, bro." It's like [expletive] who amongst us. So I will wrap up there. I hope you guys enjoy this video. I hope you found it valuable and/or useful. As always, tell me how wrong I am and what I am wrong about in the comment section. You guys are elite at that. You did so in the last video at a very high volume, very impressive volume. Speaking of, if you missed that video, 10 players to let your idiot league mates draft in 2026, make sure you go watch it. It will be linked down below. And of course, as I mentioned, all of the new tools for the draft guide in the fantasy membership are available to you right now on bdge.co. Cheapest way to get it is by going through MGM, new users, deposit with code BDGE, play any slip, 10 bucks or more, and they'll hit you with that promo code for three free months to the BDGE membership. All right, I'm out of here. I love y'all. Smoochis. >> [music]