We are days away from the 2026 NFL season, and while I recently gave you my Fantasy Football Players I Am Drafting in 2026,
these are … well, NOT those players. I am not drafting these players, and I shouldn't say under ANY circumstances, because there are always situations that you should be open to drafting these players. In fact, the FIRST player on this list is somebody Andrew Cooper and I drafted in a Big Gorilla $350 draft recently after he fell two rounds below his ADP.With that said, the SPIRIT of this article is that these players are ones I am not actively targeting or putting in my queue to draft. Let's take you through the players I am not drafting this season.
QB Drake Maye, New England Patriots
I will preface this by saying that I love everything about Maye, the player.
I just don't love Maye, the 2026 fantasy football player.
Maye will be a worthwhile NFL quarterback and fantasy football asset well into the next decade if he continues his current trajectory. With that said, the depth at quarterback this season is staggering, and when you can get pretty similar archetypes at quarterback rounds later, why wouldn't you draft other positions and wait on quarterback?
It stinks because Maye now gets A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs as his top receivers this season. We saw what he did with a 32-year-old Stefon Diggs as his top target in 2025, as Maye peppered him with over 100 targets.
Maye has rushed for over 400 yards in the last two seasons and threw for almost 4,400 yards last season while throwing 31 touchdown passes to just eight interceptions. I just don't want to pay the absolute premium in middle rounds for that production when I can solidify most of the other positions in my lineup and come back to pretty attractive options like Trevor Lawrence, Justin Herbert, Dak Prescott, Brock Purdy, Patrick Mahomes and so on.
RB Saquon Barkley, Philadelphia Eagles
After a huge 2024 season where he averaged 22.2 fantasy points per game as the overall RB2, Barkley came crashing back to Earth from his unsustainable 2024 season to finish RB14 with 1,140 rushing yards and nine total touchdowns. Playing in his age-29 season, it is fair to say the massive upside for Barkley does not exist anymore, but volume and the Eagles scoring a ton of touchdowns will give him the value he needs in fantasy.
Is RB8 a good price in the middle of the second round? I would rather have multiple running backs with receiving upside and more explosiveness than Barkley, like De'Von Achane, Chase Brown, Kenneth Walker III and Omarion Hampton. Barkley is the name brand, but he is not as bankable a fantasy asset as he once was.
WR George Pickens, Dallas Cowboys
Last season, I paid a pretty solid price for what I thought was mispriced upside in George Pickens in his first season as a Cowboy. I was rewarded with a top-five fantasy receiver in the fifth round with 93 receptions, 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns.
This season, Pickens is playing on the franchise tag, and he is the only player doing so this season after Kyle Pitts, Breece Hall and Daniel Jones all got new contracts with their respective teams. He is also playing with a healthy CeeDee Lamb and now has to replicate or come close to replicating his 2025 season if he wants to pay off his end-of-the-second/beginning-of-the-third-round ADP.
I love the Cowboys' offense for fantasy, but I don't know if I want to pay that kind of draft-day price right around players like A.J. Brown, Drake London, Chris Olave, Nico Collins and Malik Nabers; all of whom have much higher ceilings as the top pass-catchers in their offenses.
WR DJ Moore, Buffalo Bills
Ahh, DJ Moore, our old friend. I feel like I wrote the book on Moore not too long ago, but let's Spark Notes this, shall we?
After starting his career as an excellent fantasy receiver with the Carolina Panthers, Moore had his best season with the Chicago Bears, finishing as the WR6 in 2023. Last season, Moore's per-route metrics fell off in a huge way, cratering to a career-low 1.22 yards-per-route-run and a rock-bottom 14.3% targets-per-route-run.
Those are precipitous drops in efficiency for Moore, and it is something we have to factor in for 2026, as he moves to the Bills in a trade. That trade from Chicago positions Moore as the Bills' top wide receiver for new head coach Joe Brady, who was Moore's offensive coordinator for the Panthers in two of his seasons in Carolina. A return to form for Moore would justify his lofty ranking as a third-round fantasy receiver if Moore is more like Stefon Diggs when he joined Buffalo in 2020. However, Diggs was still very much in the prime of his career with the Bills and was just 27 years old, and he put up four straight seasons of 25%+ TPRR, at least 149 targets and finished no worse than WR9. Moore has finished better than WR15 just once (2023).
On the other hand, Moore assimilating into the rest of the pass-catchers in Buffalo rather than standing out above them is certainly in the range of outcomes this season, too. Think Amari Cooper in his mid-season trade to Buffalo. It was not great! But that is a realistic outcome, whether we like it or not. At cost, I would rather take the end of the running back tiers that fall in the fourth or fifth round, as well as fellow receivers like Parker Washington, Jameson Williams, Mike Evans, Rome Odunze and DK Metcalf.
WR Alec Pierce, Indianapolis Colts
Pierce secured "the bag" with the Colts, getting a long-term deal to stay with Indianapolis and presumably become the team's top wide receiver with Michael Pittman Jr. now in Pittsburgh. We know the drill: player gone, big money to new player, more targets, "go brrr." More and more are saying this.
However, to say that Pierce's offseason has been eventful is putting it mildly. While he just came off the PUP list for his ankle injury, he has not participated in offseason team activities or minicamp practices. He received a PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injection after last season and then underwent surgery once the injection didn't alleviate his issue. It has been a long, strange trip, but we are finally days from real football being played.
With that said, Pierce is a difficult click to make in leagues where you are setting your lineups.
Do we know if Pierce can earn targets? He has never had a TPRR north of 17.4% in his four seasons as a pro. He has also never earned more than 83 targets or exceeded 47 receptions (both last season), and he hasn't been a top-24 fantasy wide receiver once.
Last season's 5.5 targets per game were a career high for Pierce, right alongside luminaries such as Quentin Johnston, Tre Tucker, Elic Ayomanor and Khalil Shakir ‐ among players who played around the same number of games Pierce did in 2025. Among the top 30 wide receivers in raw fantasy scoring, only Jameson Williams had a lower targets-per-route rate (16%) than Pierce's 17.4% last season. Pierce wasn't even in the top three on his OWN TEAM last season! He was distanced by Pittman, Josh Downs and Tyler Warren, who each earned a target on 20% of routes or better.
Pierce is a much better real-life NFL player than fantasy asset, because the skill Pierce possesses in threatening defenses downfield with explosives is something that is coveted in today's NFL. However, unless Pierce's entire archetype changes in his fifth NFL season, he is going to be a "better in best ball" fantasy player, rather than one you know when to start in managed leagues.
TE Dalton Kincaid, Buffalo Bills
It is abundantly clear that Kincaid is talented, and his efficiency spiked up massively in his third season in 2025. After posting a YPRR of 1.46 and 1.62 in his first two seasons, Kincaid's YPRR shot up to a huge 2.79 mark that paced the entire tight end position in 2025 among all players with at least 200 routes. Kincaid, however, also played much fewer snaps and routes than he has in his career, thanks in part to injuries that limited him to 12 games, but also to his surrounding teammates in his tight end room. Both Dawson Knox (58% snaps) and Jackson Hawes (43%) were on the field more than Kincaid (38%), even if Kincaid did run 50% routes across the full season.
This is Kincaid's huge limiting factor, as for top tight ends in fantasy football, we want them to be at about 70% routes per dropback to be able to have enough opportunity to accumulate stats, targets, touchdowns, etc. Kincaid never got above 63% routes in any game in 2025. That low route total only got him to 49 targets in 2025, by far the lowest of any top 20 tight end in fantasy.
Huge efficiency comes down to route volume, as it is hard to maintain such a lofty efficiency over the course of 500-600 routes. That is what makes players like Puka Nacua and Jaxon Smith-Njigba such outliers, and Kincaid was only behind those two players in YPRR in 2025 across all receivers and tight ends.
With numerous pass-catchers scattered across the Bills' offense, I can't imagine things being much different with the personnel and rotational nature of the tight ends and wide receivers in 2026, considering the man who coordinated the offenses for the last season and a half, Joe Brady, is now the head coach. I will draft Kincaid with another floor tight end later in drafts, but the lack of route volume and absence of a definitive path to more ‐ outside of injury ‐ makes Kincaid's floor shockingly low for such a talented pass-catcher.
TE Isaiah Likely, New York Giants
I want to tell you something shocking about the borderline top 12 tight end you are reading about as a potential sleeper. I am so sorry to be the bearer of such bad news:
Likely has never had more than 56 targets or 42 receptions in any of his four NFL seasons.
Shocking, right? Maybe not to some, as Likely was a part-time player with the Baltimore Ravens and stashed firmly behind Mark Andrews since Likely was drafted in the fourth round in 2022. Even with Likely flashing at times in a part-time role, you would want to see much more of a target-earning history from him, and that just has not been the case. Only in his rookie season (2022) did Likely post a targets-per-route-run rate of 20% or better. (For tight ends, around 18% is a solid number as the position is not as hyper-targeted as a wide receiver is.)
Likely will get his shot with the Giants this season as they brought him into the fold in free agency to reunite with former Ravens head coach John Harbaugh. It is not a lock that Likely sees a full route share in New York either, as they will also use incumbent Theo Johnson quite a bit as well. It is not a slam-dunk that Likely is automatically the guy, especially with Malik Nabers trending towards returning for the Giants in Week 1. There are more prominent tight ends I want at or around his ADP, like Juwan Johnson and even Dalton Schultz.
Honorable Mentions
QB Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens
Is Jackson a bounce-back candidate? The rushing part of the equation scares me, as he is coming off the lowest output of his career in that regard. Jackson managed just 67 carries for 349 rushing yards and two rushing touchdowns. In the previous seven seasons, Jackson averaged 145 carries for 881 rushing yards.
I am not saying his career is over or anything, but I don't want to find out he is going through a full backslide in his rushing ability by drafting him as the QB2 or QB3. Let somebody else find out.
RB Woody Marks, Houston Texans
I can't imagine the Texans made the move to trade for David Montgomery because they were so happy with Woody Marks' play last season. Of 48 qualifying running backs last season, Marks was:
- 45th in yards after contact per attempt (2.9)
- 33rd in RYOE (+31)
- 47th in YPC (3.6)
- 43rd in success rate (35.2% - % of runs that resulted in positive EPA)
- 45th in Elusive Rating (PFF)
- 36th in Breakaway % (PFF)
The Texans seem intent on using Marks in more of a pass-catching role, which seems fine until you realize that Marks wasn't good there either (0.86 YPRR), but he was one of the few running backs used past the line of scrimmage in the receiving game with a 2.1-yard aDOT, so maybe there is hope after all? I just don't want to draft him in the same area where I collect my Keaton Mitchell and Jonah Coleman shares.
WR Courtland Sutton, Denver Broncos
In 2026, Sutton feels very much like a trap play or an I.Q. test. He is a high-floor, low-ceiling player entering his age-31 season, and after the Broncos acquired Jaylen Waddle via trade, settles into a secondary receiver role. Sutton will still be solid for fantasy football, but the upside he once had is not likely to come back. While he has scored at least seven touchdowns in each of the last three seasons, he may only have 100-target upside at this stage of his career.
If you drafted a bunch of running backs, an elite tight end, a quarterback and are piece-mealing your wide receivers, Sutton makes sense in a build like that where you are getting a floor at the start of the season. Drafting him as a third receiver seems pretty volatile, however. I will let somebody else buy the name value this season.
WR Matthew Golden, Green Bay Packers
Golden's snaps and route participation will increase from his rookie season in 2025 to this season in 2026 as a projected starter, but if Golden cannot earn targets commensurate with his first-round draft capital, then he is going to be wildly inconsistent from week to week for fantasy football. It is as simple as that in an offense that let Romeo Doubs hit free agency and traded Dontayvion Wicks to give Golden the runway for an every-down receiver role.
It should be said that Golden has not been the most reliable target-earning receiver dating back to college, so that same path manifested itself in his 2025 rookie season with just a 15% TPRR and only 40 targets last season. If Golden can't earn targets this season, then the bust label will be applied to him and deservedly so.
TE Mark Andrews, Baltimore Ravens
Andrews has not eclipsed 70 targets in each of his last three seasons. (He would have surpassed that mark in 2023, but he only played 10 games.) He played 17 games in the last two campaigns, so we are likely starting to see the wheels falling off for Andrews. It is a shame, because we have seen him post some amazing seasons. With that said, Father Time comes for everybody.
Andrews has seen his yards after catch crater from 4.8-yard YAC per reception in 2023 to last season's 2.1 yards, as well as two straight sub-20% TPRR seasons after five straight seasons with 20% or better. One feather in Andrews' cap is that Isaiah Likely is no longer around this season, as he went to the Giants with former head coach John Harbaugh. The room was cleared out for Andrews to take hold of the receiving work, but I am just not sure that Andrews can properly take advantage of it at this point in his career. Drafters feel the same way, with Andrews ADP hovering around TE15. Maybe it is a nice price to see if there is a drop of gas left in the tank, but I don't think I want to take the plunge.
This article originally appeared on The Huddle: The Fantasy Football Players I Am NOT Drafting in 2026
