RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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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.
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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.
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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&#...
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