Every year I put together the Rotoworld Top 200 Rankings by forcing myself, Patrick Daugherty, and Denny Carter to sit down and rank every single player. Inevitably, we find players who put one of us on an island. These are those players. For each player, I will also include where the outlier ranked them.
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QB StandsDenny: Jordan Love, QB8I’m on record, for better or worse, in saying Matt LaFleur and the Packers are ready to let Love cook. Maybe not fully cook -- maybe not Burrow or Mahomes or Allen cook -- but cook more than he has over the past two seasons in a stubbornly run-first Green Bay offense.
Only Brock Purdy and Josh Allen have a better adjusted EPA per drop back than Love since the start of the 2024 campaign. Love ranks ninth among all QBs in fantasy points per dropback over the past two years. He’s good, and even if his spreadsheet efficiency fades a bit with increased pass volume, his accuracy at every level of the field makes him more than capable of supporting a few fantasy-viable Green Bay pass catchers.
With Josh Jacobs facing potential discipline for his disturbing off-the-field domestic violence allegations and LaFleur pledging to “start from scratch” with the Packers offense, I think we should see Love’s dropbacks ramp up in 2026. It’s why I see him as a steal in both one-QB and superflex formats this summer.
Pat: Jared Goff, QB13Goff has finished in the top 10 each of the past two seasons. He has one of the league’s very best skill corps. He plays more than half his games in domes and has averaged 4,551 yards over the past four years. There is no real reason to expect him to finish outside the top 12, and yet he is treated like an also-ran. Although it’s understandable some may want to aim higher in the QB9-12 range, most anti-Goff bets end up missing their mark.
Kyle: Kyler Murray, QB14Murray did fantasy managers dirty last year by playing poorly enough to get benched after a month. While it was a catastrophe in fantasy and for the Cardinals, Murray wasn’t all that bad. He out-performed Jacoby Brissett by EPA per play and, most importantly, posted 34.6 yards per game. That was the fourth-highest mark in the league. With better weapons and a top-flight player-caller in Minnesota, Murray is poised to rebound.
QB FadesDenny: Jaxson Dart, QB15If Dart continues cashing in rushing touchdowns at his rookie year pace, this ranking will look silly bordering on criminal. But it’s tough not to expect some regression for a QB who scored a touchdown on 11 percent of his rushing attempts.
Dart wasn’t spectacular as a passer in 2025, and now he gets dinosaur re-tread Matt Nagy as his offensive coordinator. He ranked 27th out of 42 qualifying quarterbacks in adjusted yards per attempt, 28th in accuracy, and 31st in adjusted completion rate. At 20 percent, Dart posted one of the league’s highest pressure-to-sack rates -- a potential problem for the entire New York offense.
I’m worried about the Giants offense with Nagy calling plays. Reports about the offense being “disjointed” are hardly surprising. Dart’s reliance on rushing scores makes me cool to his chances of exceeding ADP this season.
Pat: Trevor Lawrence, QB17Going on 27 after five years in the league, Lawrence is still looking for his first 30-score campaign through the air. He’s notched more than five rushing touchdowns once, last year’s nine. That seemed like a fluke. Lawrence’s continued inability to reach 30 doesn’t. That’s not a cardinal sin in a more run-focused NFL, but if Lawrence was ever going to cross the 30 threshold, it should have been last season, when he finished fourth in red-zone pass attempts. Lawrence doesn’t gel with his No. 1 down-field weapon in Brian Thomas Jr., and he’s neither surgical nor explosive enough that I am comfortable projecting another fantasy step forward. I will believe last year’s goal-line rushing usage repeating itself when I see it. I would rather place different upside bets at this part of the board.
Kyle: Caleb Williams, QB12Williams put up QB1 numbers in 2025, but he didn’t play like a QB1. He finished the season at 19th in EPA per dropback and 29th in CPOE. Pro Football Focus charted him with their 19th-best passing grade. Brock Purdy and Trevor Lawrence outplayed him in the spreadsheet and outscored him in the fantasy football context. The price on Williams is more hype than substance at this point.
RotoPat’s Preseason Rankings: The top RBs, WRs, QBs and TEsThe top players for 2026 at running back, wide receiver, quarterback, and tight end with explanations for every rank. RB StandsDenny: D’Andre Swift, RB17The primary back in a hugely run-first offense should be going higher than he is in redraft leagues. While Swift wasn’t a fantasy matchup-tilting option in 2025, he was solid and very much usable as an RB2 in 12-teamers.
Kyle Monangai was quietly awful in his 2025 rookie campaign, though he could vulture some touchdowns from Swift since he’s the bigger-bodied of the two. I should note that Swift saw nearly 60 percent of the team’s inside-the-five rushes last season. Swift last year averaged 0.18 missed tackles forced per carry, much higher than Monangai’s 0.10 rate. Swift also had a lower stuff rate and a higher success rate.
Pat: Derrick Henry, RB7Henry arrived in Baltimore in 2024. He has 371 more yards rushing than any other player over that timespan. He has 40 percent of the 1,500-yard rushing campaigns over the past two years. He remained elite from an efficiency perspective last season, finishing third in average rush yards over expected. Now he has a reinvigorated offense and coaching staff. Time comes for us all. It’s just having a hard time finding Henry. Believe his long-foretold decline when you see it.
Kyle: Bhayshul Tuten, RB20Tuten was a backfield consolidator in college, logging Dominator Ratings of 79, 81, and 94 percent. For reference, Jeremiah Love peaked at 64 percent and Ashton Jeanty topped out at 79 percent. Tuten struggled with minor injuries as a rookie, but the team already soft-launched his role as a goal line back with carries inside the five compared to nine for incumbent Travis Etienne when both were active. Tuten scored four times while Etienne scored twice. Maybe Chris Rodriguez takes that role, but I don’t think it’s a given. Tuten was also a capable pass-catcher in college, giving him multiple outs to high-value touches.
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RB FadesDenny: Isaiah Pacheco, RB56Pacheco, who now has a lengthy injury history and is currently dealing with an MCL issue, is seen in some fantasy circles as a replacement for David Montgomery in Detroit. I would agree with that if Pacheco had checked any important running back metrics box over his final two seasons in Kansas City. He didn’t though. Pacheco was among the league’s worst in breaking tackles, in creating yards after contact, and was inefficient as a pass catcher out of the backfield. Look past his feet-stomping gimmick and there’s not much to see.
Pat: Jacory Croskey-Merritt, RB48Croskey-Merritt is a talented between-the-tackles runner who simply has too much to overcome to provide reliable FLEX value in 2026. He’s a two-down back in one of the league’s most crowded backfields. He has an awful offensive line, one that just lost its left tackle. The best overall runner on the team is the quarterback. Although the Commanders should be better than last season, it’s not an elite offensive environment. All of it is conspiring to keep a player who deserves better just outside the ring of relevance in fantasy football.
Kyle: Keaton Mitchell, RB46Volume is the name of the game at running back and Mitchell is likely going to struggle to earn opportunities, especially high-value touches. He is being viewed as a pass-catching specialist by his backers, but Mitchell has never caught more than two passes in an NFL game. Since entering the NFL in 2023, Mitchell has not earned a single goal-line attempt. I expected his role to change in LA, just not enough to pay off his ADP.
Rotoworld Fantasy Football Draft Central 2026: Rankings, strategy, sleepers, and moreYour one-stop-shop for all of Rotoworld’s preseason content leading into fantasy football drafts. WR StandsDenny: Ladd McConkey, WR12I’m all in on the guy who was top ten in yards per route run as a rookie, and who gets a massive upgrade in offensive play caller this season after former OC Greg Roman used him in all the wrong ways last year.
McConkey has been highly efficient on the kind of pass routes that feature prominently in Mike McDaniel’s offense, including crossers and posts. That McConkey ran cold last year -- with one of the NFL’s lowest catchable target rates -- means a bounce back is in the works, I think. I see him as a WR1 you can draft as your WR2.
Pat: Adonai Mitchell, WR59All I’m really saying is — Adonai Mitchell should have an ADP. A barely-there WR6 in summer best ball drafts, Mitchell frequently goes undrafted in more traditional re-draft formats. Still only 23 years old with proven big-play ability, Mitchell’s inconsistency means he’s unlikely to ever develop into a WR2/3. He’s also held back by a grotesque overall offensive environment. He’s nevertheless an ideal WR4/5 because he has the kind of skill-set that can flip weeks on only 2-3 targets. Who cares if he only catches two passes if one of them is a 59-yard touchdown. Although he boasts a classic “better in best ball” profile, Mitchell is actually the kind of player you should want on your re-draft bench if you are looking for the kind of upside and variance that might decide a matchup.
Kyle: Luther Burden, WR15Burden is dealing with a groin injury right now but is expected to be available for Week 1. I was higher on him before this news and think I wind up being less concerned than the average drafter. Burden was hyper-efficient as a rookie, averaging 2.2 yards per route including the postseason. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Burden was a phenom in college, accounting for nearly 40 percent of his team’s passing output in back-to-back seasons to close his collegiate career. Routes were the biggest issue for Burden as a rookie, and the team has paved the way for a breakout by getting rid of Olamide Zaccheus and DJ Moore in the offseason.
WR FadesDenny: Emeka Egbuka, WR18I admit this one could make me look silly in the end. Egbuka was miserable on the spreadsheets for most of his rookie season though. After getting away with it early in the year thanks to an unsustainable touchdown rate, Egbuka fell off an efficiency cliff. Whether that was due to injuries or Baker Mayfield once again playing through a major injury, I don’t know.
Egbuka’s 37 percent air yards conversion rate was among the lowest in the NFL among wideouts who had at least 40 targets in 2025. Egbuka was 104th out of 110 qualifying wideouts in ESPN’s open score, which measures how much separation a pass catcher gets. Xavier Legette and Adam Thielen were among the receivers with a higher open score than Egbuka. That, I think, is concerning.
Pat: Ladd McConkey, WR24McConkey proved his upside as a rookie. The same was true of his downside as a second-year pro. The bounce-back potential is real. This is an uber-talented wideout now playing for one of the league’s best play-callers. There are just too many variables to be comfortable drafting him like 2025 never happened, including his new boss, re-stocked backfield, extremely crowded skill corps, and his own durability question marks. I might miss the boat. I just think too many others are taking it for granted that it will make it across the North Atlantic unscathed.
Kyle: Christian Watson, WR34The Packers have to find someone to take over Romeo Doubs’ role of soaking up intermediate At WR28, Watson is being priced as if he’s going to do something he has never done before: Earn underneath targets. Meanwhile, the team has other options to handle those looks.
Watson’s 18.6 aDOT ranked second in the NFL last year, behind only Alec Pierce. It was his second year in a row with a target depth above 18. The aforementioned Pierce is the only player in the past decade to top 900 yards with a aDOT over 18. Matthew Golden had a near-identical target depth to Doubs last year and Reed was closer than Watson as well. Reed has also been the most productive of the three to this point in their career.
TE StandsDenny: Greg Dulcich, TE20Target volume is going to be hard to come by for any Miami pass catcher in 2026. That includes Dulcich. But the consistent drumbeat of hype for Dulcich from Dolphins coaches and beat writers hints that he will be a big part of an offense that doesn’t have a single decent receiver.
Dulcich’s 2.7 yards per route run (in limited action) last season was among the highest in the NFL. In the Dolphins’ final three regular season games, Dulcich saw a target on 27 percent of his pass routes -- an absurd rate for a tight end. He’s someone to monitor for those who fade tight end until late.
Pat: Chig Okonkwo, TE18Even with Stefon Diggs now aboard in D.C., this is a target-starved offense. Of course, even though the depth is almost nonexistent behind a past-their-prime Diggs and Terry McLaurin, the quality of passing will be much higher with Jayden Daniels back under center. Okonkwo was productive for his entire Titans career. It was just difficult to be prolific in one of the league’s worst offenses. In his prime with a tailor-made PPR skill-set, Okonkwo has the kind of setup and profile that should “surprisingly” hang around the TE1/2 borderline.
Kyle: Travis Kelce, TE9I don’t get any joy out of drafting Kelce anymore, but I do get fantasy points. Even as his efficiency declined once again, Kelce finished as the TE3 on the back of a 19 percent target share. The Chiefs did not add a single pass-catcher of note in the offseason. I still have Kelce falling six spots from his 2025 finish, baking in another step down from the former superstar. That still leaves me ahead of my colleagues and ahead of Kelce’s ADP.
TE FadesDenny: Kenyon Sadiq, TE26Sadiq never actually produced or checked any critical boxes during his time at Oregon. He is fast and strong though, so he was a first-round pick. I don’t think there’s any chance he sees anything close to a full route rate in 2026, especially after missing a chunk of training camp while recovering from hernia surgery.
Mason Taylor, listed as TE1 on the depth chart, will likely operate as the Jets’ No. 1 tight end for much or all of 2026. I don’t think Sadiq should be rostered in 12-team formats.
Pat: Mark Andrews, TE17Sometimes the lights just go out. Although this is an offense headed back in the right direction, Andrews’ career has only been going one way: Down. Now he’s another year older and coming off his very worst campaign. Yes, Isaiah Likely is out and Declan Doyle is in, but can we really treat a 30-year-old who just mustered all of 422 yards in 17 games as a TE1? Tight end career arcs have a way of going differently than expected, but this is a player I have not enjoyed watching play for several years now, let alone draft. I will let someone else place the bounce-back bet.
Kyle: Tucker Kraft, TE8Kraft was on pace for a historic 2025 in the YAC department, racking up 10.6 yards after every catch on average. Among tight ends with at least 50 targets, that is now the record for the past decade. That is also where my concern lies. He has to be the best YAC producer in recent history because he isn’t an elite target-earner. His 19.8 percent target rate ranked 15th among tight ends in 2025. If a torn ACL inhibits any of his ability after the catch, we’re looking at a low-end TE1, not the top-five fantasy option he is currently being drafted as.
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