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 fantasy football draft landmines our experts avoid.
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2026 Fantasy Football Draft Advice: Wide Receivers to Avoid
Malik Nabers (WR – NYG)
Malik Nabers‘ 2025 season was essentially lost to injury — he played just 4 games before tearing his ACL. In that small sample, he averaged 12.0 PPG (WR14 in PPG) on a 24% target share and 68 receiving yards/game. The question with Nabers isn’t about his talent on the field; it’s about his return from a complicated knee injury. He tore his ACL in September and underwent surgery a few weeks later. He then needed a second surgery to remove scar tissue. We’ve seen guys come back quickly from ‘clean’ ACL tears, but that doesn’t seem applicable here. It appeared more likely than not that Nabers would be placed on the PUP list, missing the first few weeks of the 2026 season. The offseason is when every team is optimistic, so any pessimism needs to be taken seriously.
Obviously, a lot has changed with Nabers’ health since the earlier portion of the offseason. He’s practicing and most recently participated in team drills at the Giants’ training camp. Good chance he plays in Week 1.
So after Nabers seemed like a strong fade, the conversation has changed. But so has his ADP, which continues to rise with the positive reports. However, I don’t think Nabers is now completely risk-free.
There is still very much a probable ramp-up period with his production. It’s still possible he doesn’t return to elite Nabers until 2027.
Also keep in mind the offensive ecosystem.
This will be a new Giants offense (potentially run-first) for Nabers under the uninspiring retread OC Matt Nagy. Doesn’t help Nabers either that he has missed valuable reps with his second-year QB, Jaxson Dart, whom he played one game last year (the game he also got hurt in).
Simply put, WRs over the last 11 years coming off at least 10 games missed go on to massively underperform their next-year ADP (roughly 2/3 of the group). And this effect has been getting stronger in recent years on average.
I don’t knock anybody for taking the swing on Nabers with his health looking better. Upside wins championships, and a healthy Nabers is exactly that.
When I first did my rankings for 2026 back in January…Nabers was my WR8. Then he settled in at the WR11/12 before the injury news got worse. So given the optics have changed given his injury…I do think moving him back into this range is appropriate.
But based on the historical data of WRs who played fewer than 10 games with an ADP of WR12 or higher the following season…(9 WRs), three met expectations, whereas the other 6 WRs were either small or big misses.
Keenan Allen is the interesting test case as he missed half of his third season, then nearly all of his fourth season with a torn ACL injury (mega bust). But in Year 5…he rebounded tremendously.
I also ran some ADP comparisons to WRs who finished top-10, and then played fewer than 10 games. How did they do in their return? Among those 12 WRs…WR15 (Odell Beckham Jr.) was the best-case finisher. Of the WRs that all made comebacks….none finished top-12.
“Look at every wide receiver in the last decade who had a Top-10 fantasy season, then played fewer than 10 games the following year due to injury. Not one of them returned to Top-12 status in their first year back.”
Interestingly enough, Jets WR Garrett Wilson also falls into the same category.
Nabers has youth on his side, so that does help separate him. But the other factors at play regarding the Giants’ offense aren’t being discussed enough.
Meanwhile, his counterpart for the Jets, Garrett Wilson, is coming off a much less severe season-ending injury. Potentially playing with the best QB of his career in Geno Smith.
Over the first five games of the season (before a brutal Denver matchup and his too-quick return from injury), Wilson was the WR6 in PPG (15.7 half-PPR/game), averaging a career-high yards per route run.
Entering last season, Wilson had finished no worse than 6th in total targets (156 targets per season) in his three healthy NFL seasons. Even in a truncated season last year, Wilson averaged 8.4 targets per game (11th and good for a 143-target pace).
– Andrew Erickson
Rashee Rice (WR – KC)
It’s easy to understand the appeal of Rashee Rice in fantasy football. Over the last two years, he’s averaged 6.4 catches and 71.6 receiving yards per game, with eight touchdowns in 12 regular-season games.
There are indications that RB Kenneth Walker III will be involved in the Chiefs’ screen game. Rice has made a lot of hay in the screen game in recent years, and screens to Walker are screens that Rice isn’t getting.
Rice has terrible personal judgment. He was involved in a high-speed street-racing incident in Dallas in 2024 that caused a multi-car crash, resulting in injuries. He pleaded guilty to third-degree felony charges of collision involving serious bodily injury and racing on a highway causing bodily injury.
In May, Rice violated the terms of his probation by testing positive for marijuana and was ordered to serve 30 days in jail. He recently had cleanup surgery on his knee and had to do his rehab in a Texas jail.
There were drafts in which I took the discount on Rice last year, when everyone knew he would have to serve a six-game suspension at the start of the season. He had a late-sixth-round ADP, and I got him cheaper than that in a couple of home leagues.
Now, Rice has an ADP of WR12 (30th overall). I’m fleeing at that price.
– Pat Fitzmaurice
Davante Adams (WR – LAR)
The FantasyPros ECR is pricing Davante Adams as a low-end fantasy football WR2. But last year was actually a red-flag season disguised as an elite one; he posted a career-low catch rate of 53%, his YAC per reception hit a career low, and the bulk of his production was TD-dependent with 15 scores (three coming in a game without Puka Nacua). That kind of touchdown volume is notoriously hard to replicate year over year.
Even though Matthew Stafford is back under center in LA, he may not force-feed Adams in the end zone as he did in 2025 en route to an MVP award (career-high 7.7% TD rate will almost certainly come down). It was comically obvious that was how the Rams wanted to approach the red zone. But in 2026, they might lean more on their running backs to ensure their QB is healthy for a Super Bowl. Let’s face it: the Rams QB is a major health risk at his age (38) with his history of back injuries. On top of that, Adams is no spring chicken (33) and dealt with a lower-body tissue injury in 2025 that sidelined him; at his age, that’s not something you just brush off.
When you look at the totality of Adam’s optics, the age, the injury, the TD regression risk, the declining efficiency numbers- it’s easy to recognize that Adams is far more likely to fall off than to replicate what he did last year. Obviously, the pro argument is that he has an elite-level ceiling if Nacua misses time. But the fantasy football ROI has not always been kind to those paying the premium for the more expensive real-life WR2s in the draft room.
– Andrew Erickson
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