We’re a week past the conclusion of the 2026 NFL Draft, and we’re starting to get some concrete movement on which players are rising up draft boards and which ones are falling. With not much news post-draft outside of undrafted free agents, this article will continue to focus on fantasy football players impacted by the draft.
Let’s dive into players who are trending up and, conversely, those who are trending down after the NFL Draft.
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Fantasy Football Players Trending Up & Down
Fantasy Football Players Trending Up
Chris Olave (WR – NO)
Entering his fourth season in 2025, we saw glimpses of Chris Olave’s potential: An analytical profile that saw him average 2.05 yards per route run (YPRR) across all three seasons and targets per route run (TPRR) no worse than 23% in each season. His 2025 season brought everything together, making him one of the best receivers in football.
Olave earned 151 targets and parlayed them into 100 receptions, 1,163 yards and nine touchdowns as a true focal point of the Saints’ offense. Even better, there’s finally reason for optimism with Tyler Shough at quarterback to help support Olave with some consistency.
Not to mention the Saints drafting wide receiver Jordyn Tyson in the first round, which will help boost the overall offensive environment. It’s been a while since we’ve been excited about a New Orleans offense; at least since Drew Brees still quarterbacked this team.
More touchdowns for this offense will no doubt boost the top playmakers, and Olave is front and center as the major beneficiary, with attention also going to Tyson and tight end Juwan Johnson, not to mention free-agent signee Travis Etienne Jr.
Defenses are going to have BIG TIME problems…
facing a starting trio of:
Chris Olave
Jordyn Tyson
Bryce LanceWhile also accounting for Oscar Delp's speed.
The Saints are killing this draft.
— Derek Brown (@DBro_FFB) April 25, 2026
DeVonta Smith (WR – PHI)
Right now, DeVonta Smith is the No. 2 WR in Philadelphia, but if (or when) A.J. Brown is traded, it’s Smith who will assume that top target status and run with it over rookie Makai Lemon and tight end Dallas Goedert. Smith has always been a solid, dependable fantasy receiver and could be much more than that in 2026 if (or when) the Brown move is made.
If, for some reason, the trade with Brown doesn’t happen, Smith will be what he’s always been: An interchangeable receiving cog with Brown in a highly condensed Eagles passing game. The reason he’s trending up in early drafts is because of the high likelihood that the Brown trade will be made after June 1st.
Harold Fannin Jr. (TE – CLE)
Hear me out on this one.
The fact that Harold Fannin Jr. earned 104 targets in 2025, in possibly the worst quarterback room ever assembled, was crazy enough.
Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel were the second-worst and third-worst quarterbacks in the NFL last season in adjusted expected points added (EPA) per play out of 45 qualifying quarterbacks with at least 150 snaps. If Fannin can do what he did — finish as fantasy’s TE6 in 2025 — then why can’t he meet or exceed that in 2026?
No tight end impacted the position more than the rest of the rookies impacted their positions quite like Harold Fannin Jr. did last season. It was a bit of a lackluster year for immediately impactful players, yet Fannin was picked up from the waiver wire in the first couple of weeks of last season when he was getting over 60% of the routes each game.
Fanning finished in the top 12 of tight ends in both weeks. He was a force at the tight end position, but there’s a lot of meat on the bone.
Fannin led all NFL tight ends in TPRR last season, as he was targeted on one of almost every four routes he ran (23.8%). He trailed only Trey McBride in first-read target rate, so plays are being drawn up with him in mind as the first target in the offense.
Harold Fannin vs. Jerry Jeudy from weeks 1-16 (pre-groin injury)
Fannin
Targets: 102
Yards: 701
TPRR: 0.26
YPRR: 1.77Jeudy
Targets: 91
Yards: 531
TPRR: 0.18
YPRR: 1.06Monken on Fannin this offseason: "He's a little like Brock Bowers…" https://t.co/NycGrOBBle
— Ryan Heath (@RyanJ_Heath) April 24, 2026
This season, Fannin looks like he’s head and shoulders above the competition as the proven target-earning option over rookies KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston, plus holdovers Jerry Jeudy and Cedric Tillman. Can we get this team a quarterback upgrade?
Even if it comes in-house in the form of *gulp* Deshaun Watson, even not being a bottom-three worst quarterback in the league represents at least some kind of upgrade.
I’m not worried about Concepcion or Boston getting an immediate target-earning role. I’m also not worried about Jeudy, who has run hot and cold during his NFL career, being a consistent threat to Fannin’s target share. Drafting tight ends this season feels somewhat difficult, but having the safety and security of Fannin in the middle rounds makes him a comfortable click.
Fantasy Football Players Trending Down
RJ Harvey (RB – DEN)
With RJ Harvey becoming a solid fantasy option late in the season with four top-12 finishes in his last six games, you’d think that the Broncos would want to give their second-round pick a little more to chew on in his second reason.
What’s that? Is that Sean Payton’s music? Who are those men on either side of him?
Those men would be J.K. Dobbins and Jonah Coleman, the latter a fourth-round rookie slated to help divide a rushing workload pie into three pieces. That’s never a good sign for Harvey, who may see even less of a workload this season.
This is Payton’s modus operandi: Multiple backs taking different roles. We’ve seen it for two decades from his time in New Orleans, and he’s going to live and die with that running back philosophy.
We should read into this in terms of RJ Harvey’s fantasy value. The Broncos were linked to all free agency RBs, then they select one early in Round 4. I don’t think Sean Payton trusts him after how jumpy he was as a rookie.
— Hayden Winks (@HaydenWinks) April 25, 2026
If the Broncos were so enamored with Harvey, you likely wouldn’t bring in the back you were originally splitting the workload with last season in Dobbins. You also wouldn’t use early Day 3 draft capital to bring in another back like Coleman. Even if Coleman is Dobbins insurance, it’s still multiple backs and smaller slices of the pie.
Even drafting Harvey after the first five rounds of a fantasy draft feels bad, despite being on a good offense that will score quite a bit. I don’t want to trust an offense that requires multiple injuries to hope a player gets a full workload. The public sentiment is down on Harvey as a sleeper running back, as the juice just doesn’t seem worth the squeeze.
Mason Taylor (TE – NYJ)
This one is pretty easy here with Mason Taylor, as he didn’t exactly jump off the page in his rookie season.
Despite being a second-round selection in the 2025 NFL Draft, Taylor could only muster 62 targets, bringing in 44 balls for 369 yards and one touchdown. That inspired enough confidence in Taylor that the team went back to the well and drafted a tight end in the first round, Kenyon Sadiq.
Nothing crushes a player’s value quite like having the team go back to drafting the same position the next year with a higher draft pick. That’s the kiss of death for a player like Taylor, who was on the fringes of late-round fantasy value as it is.
Now, it’ll take a Sadiq injury to even be relevant; whatever that means on the New York Jets, whose offensive environment is one of the worst in football as is. No thanks.
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Kevin Tompkins is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Kevin, check out his profile and follow him on Bluesky @ktompkinsii.bsky.social
