When preparing for your fantasy football drafts, knowing which players to target and which to avoid is important. The amount of information available can be overwhelming, so a great way to condense the data and determine players to draft and others to leave for your leaguemates is to use our expert consensus fantasy football rankings compared to fantasy football average draft position (ADP). In this way, you can identify players the experts are willing to reach for at ADP and others they are not drafting until much later than average. Let’s dive into a few players our fantasy football experts love to draft.
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2026 Fantasy Football Draft Advice
Here are players our experts love to pick in fantasy football drafts.
Javonte Williams (DAL)
Last year, Javonte Williams was a massive surprise in fantasy football to everyone, including me. I was very bullish on his 2025 outlook, but I was hoping, at best, for a volume-driven RB2 in an explosive offense. Well, Williams crushed even my expectations as the RB11 in fantasy points per game, finishing with a career high 1,201 rushing yards and 13 total touchdowns. Among 49 qualifying backs, he ranked 16th in explosive run rate and third in yards after contact per attempt (per Fantasy Points Data). His season was also a tale of two halves as he faded some down the back half of the year. In Weeks 1-8, he averaged 18.5 touches, 90.7 total yards, and scored nine total touchdowns as the RB8 in fantasy points per game. In Weeks 9-17, he averaged 17.4 touches, 76.5 total yards, and scored only 4 touchdowns, finishing as the RB25 in fantasy points per game. Much of his fantasy stock’s drop was related to the fall in touchdown production, which could simply be variance. His deeper analytics back up the fact that his play didn’t fall off from a per-touch efficiency standpoint. In Weeks 1-8, he had a 4.8% explosive run rate, an 11% missed-tackle rate, and 3.52 yards after contact per attempt. That yards-after-contact-per-attempt mark is otherworldly. In Weeks 8-17, he posted a 5.5% explosive run rate, a 13% missed-tackle rate, and 2.33 yards after contact per attempt. He improved his marks down the stretch in two of those three categories. If Williams can post production as he did over the first half of the 2025 season for an entire year, he is a locked-in top-10 back with top-5 upside. At his floor, he looks like a low-end RB1 or top 15 fantasy back.
Check out all of DBro’s top fantasy football draft picks to target
Bucky Irving (TB)
It seems as if everyone in the fantasy community is fading Bucky Irving.
I’m buying.
After a terrific rookie season in 2024, Irving sustained foot and shoulder injuries in 2025 and played only 10 games. When he was able to play, he was far less effective than he had been as a rookie.
Irving had shoulder surgery in February, and Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles recently said Irving would be back on the field “sometime in the summer or fall.”
Irving doesn’t have to play tackle football next week. By the time training camp arrives, he’ll have had about five months to recover. If Bowles’ curious choice of the word “fall” is causing panic… good. It’s creating a buying opportunity.
In 2024, from Week 10 through the Buccaneers’ playoff loss to the Commanders, Irving averaged 111.6 yards from scrimmage and six touchdowns over nine games. That stretch included a game in which Irving played only 10 offensive snaps because he got banged up. Otherwise, he played at least 44% of the offensive snaps in all of those games.
Irving hit a 44% snap share in only one of his first nine games that year, but the Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator at the time, Liam Coen, realized the offense was better with Irving on the field than with Rachaad White.
Irving finished his rookie season with 1,514 yards from scrimmage and eight touchdowns. He averaged 5.4 yards per carry. He averaged 3.93 yards after contact per carry (tops among all backs with at least 60 carries).
In his injury-plagued 2025 season, Irving averaged 3.4 yards per carry. He averaged only 2.33 yards after contact per carry. His percentage of breakaway runs went from 34.9% as a rookie to 13.4%.
Not only was Irving banged up last year, but the Buccaneers’ offensive line was hit hard by injuries. It impacted Tampa Bay’s offensive line performance. The Buccaneers ranked second in adjusted line yards in 2024. They ranked 22nd in adjusted line yards in 2025.
A lot of people are convinced Irving will be a committee back this season.
Yes, Sean Tucker might get goal-line carries because he’s bigger than Irving. Yes, Kenneth Gainwell might play on third-and-long because he’s a better pass blocker than Irving.
Tucker got the goal-line work last season, and Rachaad White got the third-down work, but Irving still averaged 20.3 touches per game. That’s workhorse usage by modern standards.
Gainwell averaged 6.7 carries a game for the Steelers last year — and that was a career high. The numbers suggest that Irving is a better pass-catcher than Gainwell. Irving has averaged 1.56 yards per route run in the NFL. Gainwell has averaged 1.19 yards per route run. Irving had more receptions in his best college season than Gainwell did against better competition.
It’s odd that so many people are forgetting just how good Irving was over a fairly large sample size of games over the second half of his rookie season.
Buy the dip.
Check out all of Fitz’s top fantasy football draft picks to target
James Cook (BUF)
James Cook led the NFL in rushing yards in 2025 (1,621). He finished as the RB6 in PPG and RB6 in total points scored. At 26 years old, the Bills RB is in his Uber Prime. He is improving every single season, and he has yet to be fully unlocked as a receiver despite being heavily touted as a pass-catcher coming out of Georgia. If Cook gets unleashed on all three downs under new HC Joe Brady, he could flirt with an overall RB1 status as the engine of the Bills’ offense. The Bills’ offensive line is still in great shape (although they remained very healthy last season).
The 200-pound back has a 44-catch, 445-yard receiving season on his resume, which only Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs, Christian McCaffrey, and De’Von Achane hit last season, with 1,000 rushing yards to boot. Buffalo also hired Pete Carmichael as the new OC, who spent seven years calling plays with Alvin Kamara as his starting RB in New Orleans.
So far throughout training camp, there have been reports about Cook and the other RBs being more involved as pass-catchers. Aligns with Brady’s comments about Cook taking another step in his game this season after silencing all haters with 18 TDs (led league) in 2024 and 1,621 rushing yards in 2025.
Check out all of Erickson’s top fantasy football draft picks to target
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