The Most Overvalued Players In 2026 Fantasy Football Drafts

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We are rounding the corner to training camp for all 32 NFL teams, and we can start getting the fantasy football machine calibrated and running at full speed with content and discussions! With that comes undervalued and overvalued players. We covered the undervalued players last week, so now we’ve come to the overvalued players for fantasy football.

Of course, the concept of fantasy football players being undervalued is subjective, but there are any number of factors that go into why players are drafted in the rounds they are. One thing is for certain: finding the diamonds in the rough can be what turns a good fantasy football team into a juggernaut.

Let’s go through a few of the overvalued players for fantasy football this season in detail and why they are being labeled as such.

Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders​

This one is difficult, especially for quarterbacks and especially when you look at the average draft position (ADP) for the position. The prices up and down for quarterbacks are honestly efficient with no real eye-opening draft-day price. With that said, Daniels sticks out like a sore thumb the most among the elite quarterbacks.

After finishing as the QB5 in 2024 with 25 touchdowns, 3,568 passing yards and 891 rushing yards, his 2025 was every bit as disappointing as his rookie season was awesome. Limited to just seven games thanks to knee and ankle injuries, Daniels’ yards per attempt dropped from 7.4 to 6.7, his sack rate (8.74%) stayed much higher than the league average and his completion percentage cratered to just 60.6% - down from a very nice 69% in his rookie campaign.

It is certainly possible the Commanders flew into the sun a bit in 2024, as their skill-position players are still lacking outside of wide receiver Terry McLaurin. Who is their WR2? Maybe it is rookie third-round pick Antonio Williams? Could it be tight end Chig Okonkwo, who was picked up in free agency this past March? Washington also added Rachaad White at running back, so he could catch some passes out of the backfield. Ultimately, the fact that we have so many questions here about Daniels’ pass-catchers adds another layer of uncertainty to his fantasy profile in 2026.

We cannot expect Daniels to play hero ball as he did in 2024. All of the quarterbacks around him in quarterback ADP have far fewer questions about surrounding talent than Daniels does. While Daniels could just run to another top-five finish, it is a much thinner bet than we would like when we’re spending prime draft capital on a fantasy signal-caller in 2026.

Alec Pierce, Indianapolis Colts​

There is no doubt that Pierce is explosive and efficient, as he showed last season with his first 1,000-yard receiving season on just 47 targets. But there lies the rub with Pierce. He secured a hefty long-term deal with the Colts, making him the top wide receiver in Indianapolis - especially with Michael Pittman Jr. now in Pittsburgh. This is Pattern Matching 101 with Pierce, which is to say some will assume that with one highly targeted player gone and the other full-time receiver making big money, the latter will earn more targets and “go brrr”, as the kids say.

The presumption is that with a long-term contract under his belt, Pierce is going to open up more volume within the Colts’ passing game. We know Pierce has been insanely efficient, as we’ve seen over the past two seasons. Pierce has put up 12.5 and 12.1 yards per target over the last two seasons on an incredibly deep average depth of target (aDOT) of 22.8 and 20.1 yards, respectively.

Just because of his “better in best ball” archetype of splash play and spike-week scoring at wide receiver, Pierce will be one of the hardest players in seasonal redraft fantasy football leagues to slot into your lineup with any sort of confidence unless he can definitively show he can earn targets. Last season’s 5.5 targets per game were a career high for Pierce, right alongside names like Quentin Johnston, Tre Tucker, Elic Ayomanor and Khalil Shakir, among players who played around the same number of games Pierce did in 2025. Amongst the top 30 wide receivers in raw fantasy scoring, only Jameson Williams had a lower targets per route run (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.

Big plays are boom-or-bust just by their very nature, and that’s the very thing NFL defenses are looking to stop. Defenses are relying on the two-high safety look as often as they ever have recently, which has been fairly effective in forcing offenses to nickel-and-dime their way down the field. Now, teams are looking for different ways to attack defenses, whether it is multiple tight end looks (see the Los Angeles Rams’ 13 personnel usage last season) or using running backs to extend vertically past the line of scrimmage.

If Pierce is going to be an excellent redraft pick this season, you need to bring the aDOT down closer to the 14- or 15-yard range, where Pierce can still get vertical and use his deep-ball skills, but also work closer to the line of scrimmage and out into the intermediate range of the field. That’s also the same part of the field where Downs (7.5 career aDOT) and Warren (5.9-yard aDOT in 2025) operate, so that’s going to be a tough sell for me for Pierce because of where he typically operates and how that is unique among his teammates. It also means that outside of best ball leagues, I will likely be passing on Pierce and letting somebody else handle the headache of wondering when to start him.

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Dalton Kincaid, Buffalo Bills​

In the words of one of my favorite late-2000’s bands, The Bravery, “give me something to believe.” No truer words have been spoken when it comes to the odyssey that is Kincaid and his fantasy value. Kincaid enters his fourth NFL season. He’s been a top-12 tight end just once – his 2023 rookie season - which saw him finish as TE11 with 73 receptions for 673 yards and two scores.

It is clear that Kincaid is talented, and his efficiency spiked massively in his third season in 2025. After posting yards per route run of 1.46 and 1.62 in his first two seasons, Kincaid’s YPRR shot up to 2.79. On the flip side, he also played fewer snaps and routes than he has in his career, thanks in part to injuries that limited him to 12 games, but also due 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 owned a 50% route share across the full season.

That’s the thing: for top tight ends in fantasy football, we want them to run routes about 70% of the time to have enough opportunity to accumulate stats, targets, touchdowns, etc. Kincaid never finished above 63% in any game in 2025. That low mark only got him to 49 targets in 2025, by far the lowest of any top 20 tight end in fantasy. Among those top 20 tight ends, Kincaid was:

• 19th in routes per game (17.1)
• 20th in snaps per game (25.2)
• 17th in targets per game (4.1)
• 17th in first-read target share (17.3%)
• 16th in WOPR (0.355) – WOPR being "Weighted Opportunity Rating, " a blended target share and air yards share metric conceived by Josh Hermsmeyer to give a composite score or rating of a player’s true opportunity with their offense.

BUT, in the efficiency metrics we look at, Kincaid was stellar on a per-route and per-target basis:

• 1st in yards per target (11.7)
• 1st (tied) in targets per route run (23.9%)
• 1st in yards per route run (2.79)
• 5th in RACR (1.220) – RACR being "Receiver Air Conversion Ratio, " which is a receiver’s efficiency at converting the passing yards thrown to them into actual receiving yards.

Not only is Kincaid behind the eight-ball with his own tight end room, but you also have to factor in new Bills head coach Joe Brady and his desire to run the ball as the primary engine of the offense with quarterback Josh Allen and running back James Cook. There is also a lot of target competition within the Buffalo offense, with new acquisition DJ Moore, plus Khalil Shakir, Keon Coleman, Joshua Palmer, Cook and other role players.

As just the baseline, we love efficiency with our fantasy football players, but if that efficiency isn’t going to lead to more time on the field, we have to move on to players with more opportunities to score points. Kincaid has shown he can be a difference maker, but if it is not even good enough to earn more time on the field as a featured passing-game target, then we cannot afford to wishcast much longer.

Honorable Mentions​

• Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers

A Packers team likely to keep running the ball and head coach Matt LaFleur’s insistence on keeping passing volume out of Love's reach make him an overvalued fantasy quarterback in 2026.

• C.J. Stroud, Houston Texans

Stroud needs to channel his rookie-season form, as he has regressed over the last two seasons. A “brand-name” quarterback rather than one with weekly fantasy upside.

• Kyren Williams, Los Angeles Rams

One running back role split between two players makes the more expensive Williams (compared to counterpart Blake Corum) a fade in 2026.

• Bucky Irving, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Tampa Bay brought in Kenneth Gainwell and kept Sean Tucker to divide what was expected to be his role even further. Irving may not have the upside he used to have.

• RJ Harvey, Denver Broncos

More split-backfield stuff, but at least it’s Sean Payton, who has been doing this for decades. Harvey will find it harder to pay off his top-30 running back ADP in 2026 with the team bringing back J.K. Dobbins and drafting Jonah Coleman.

• Davante Adams, Los Angeles Rams

Another year older, but still in a good spot in Los Angeles. Saw his targets per game dip to his lowest mark (7.9) since 2017. Still commands targets, but a clear WR2 behind Puka Nacua. I don’t want to buy further erosion at a premium price in 2026.

• DJ Moore, Buffalo Bills

Moore’s metrics cratered in 2025, with career lows in TPRR (14.3%), YPRR (1.22), targets per game (4.7) and first-read target share (17.5%). While his efficiency could bump up slightly in 2026, target competition and overall team environment likely see Moore blending into the system rather than standing out as the top target in 2026.

• Dallas Goedert, Philadelphia Eagles

Easy touchdown regression candidate (11 last season) as his per-route efficiency continues to fall back. Only on a one-year deal with Eli Stowers drafted, but still possible that Goedert could cede work and lose a full-time role, where the Eagles have provided fruitful and condensed fantasy production. Anything other than a full-time role renders Goedert obsolete.

• Mark Andrews, Baltimore Ravens

Now without Isaiah Likely, it’s unlikely that Andrews can capitalize on a more empty tight end room entering his age-31 season. With two straight seasons of sub-20% TPRR and by far Andrews’ lowest YPRR (1.23) and yards per target (6.5) of his career, the wheels may be falling off.

This article originally appeared on The Huddle: The Most Overvalued Players In 2026 Fantasy Football Drafts

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