Now that the 2026 NFL Draft has concluded, undrafted players are free to sign with any team. The Kansas City Chiefs, like every NFL franchise, will be furiously working the phones the next few hours to fill out the roster for the remainder of the offseason.
On Sunday, we brought you our annual consensus draft prospect ranking based on six lists from five sources: ESPN (Matt Miller and Jordan Reid), Pro Football Focus, CBS Sports, Pro Football Network and Draftek. Now that the draft is over, here are
the top 100 prospects still remaining.
Below the table, we will highlight some important information about undrafted free agents (UDFAs).
Top 100 Prospects (Thru Rd. 7, Pk 257)
Note: Oklahoma linebacker Owen Heinecke would have ranked 28th on our list. Heinecke has been removed due to pending litigation granting him an additional season of college eligibility.
One of the worst-kept draft secrets is that teams are negotiating potential UDFA contracts long before the seventh round finishes. Many players have made contingency plans with teams well in advance of the final selection. It is likely that most players on our list will have new homes reported before this piece publishes.
Many reports of undrafted signings, however, will come from unfamiliar sources. As such, the moves should be considered unofficial until confirmed by the team, which often takes days. Bad reports are often taken as the hard truth on social media.
UDFAs with similar names are sometimes mistaken for each other. It is also not uncommon for multiple teams to believe each has signed the same undrafted player.
Very frequently, tryout offers to players at a team’s rookie minicamp will be erroneously reported as formal signings in the mad dash news cycle.
While undrafted players technically have a choice in which team they join, these players are often forced to make one of the most important decisions of their lives in mere minutes. For most UDFAs, the sole consideration in choosing a team is where the clearest path exists to making the 53-man roster.
Nominally, every UDFA will sign a three-year contract worth $3.1 million (with some receiving a small additional signing bonus generally in the tens of thousands of dollars). That number means little unless a player actually makes a 53-man roster. For accounting purposes, all entry-level NFL contracts must be for three years. The minimum salaries will exist on paper as $885,000 for 2026, $1,050,000 for 2027 and $1,165,000 for 2028.
Few UDFAs will ever see much (if any) of that salary.
Agents for some UDFAs will leak flashy guaranteed-salary figures. Such earnings, however, are almost always subject to offsetting payment rules that include practice squad salary with any team. We will see many reports of a UDFA receiving, for example, $250,000 in guaranteed money. Rather than as active-roster security, such guarantees are better interpreted as a team betting that a player will very likely be on a practice squad in 2026.
Focus quickly turns to the biggest names who go undrafted, many of whom were expected to hear their names early on Day 3 at the latest. Lesser-known UDFAs who offer immediate value on special teams, however, frequently make active rosters over some of their more famous peers.
Last year for the Chiefs, linebacker Cooper McDonald made the active roster out of training camp as a UDFA and appeared in all 17 games as a rookie. Another UDFA signing, tackle Esa Pole, was claimed off waivers by the New York Jets. Pole later returned to the Chiefs and started the season’s final five games.
