Fantasy football draft season is in full swing and, if you want to win a championship, playing it safe standardly gets you a ticket straight to a third-place finish. To build a roster that actually dominates, you have to be willing to plant your flag on bold outcomes before the rest of your league catches on.
Every summer, consensus ADP tells a story that feels like that’s exactly how the season is going to play out. But football is wild, roles change overnight, and the players who deliver league-winning performances are usually the ones that only a few saw coming – hello, Jaxon Smith-Njigba in 2025.
Below are five scorching-hot fantasy football takes for the 2026 season. These aren’t just wild guesses pulled out of thin air – they’re backed by usage trends, roster shifts, and scheme fits. Let’s dive in.
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Five Scorching-Hot Fantasy Football Takes for 2026
5) David Montgomery Finishes Top-5 In Total RB Carries This Season
There are a lot of people who have seemingly already written David Montgomery’s career off as being over and done, which feels ridiculous to me.
Yes, he lost substantial work in 2025 – just 158 carries in 17 games – as Jahmyr Gibbs became the focal point of this backfield, but there are a lot of RBs in the NFL that would have taken a back seat to Gibbs.
Instead of holding onto the 29-year-old RB as valuable depth, which they easily could have done, Detroit shipped off Montgomery to the Houston Texans this offseason for a hefty price: OL Juice Scruggs, a 2026 4th, and a 2027 7th.
Montgomery’s presence fixes a massive need for the Texans, which is reliability at the RB position for a team that has the ability to lean on the ground game because of the state of their defense.
Woody Marks’ deficiencies as a pure running back last season – along with Nick Chubb at this stage of his career – showed up routinely and it cost this team dearly in the postseason.
CJ Stroud needed a proven asset to help take the pressure off of him in 2026 and he got just that with a darn good RB in Montgomery.
He’s not going to be the flashiest player, that was never his game, but he can shoulder a heavy workload and he can punch the ball in near the goal line. On a one-year rental contract, why wouldn’t Houston simply load up the veteran with carries as they work to make a deeper run in the playoffs this season?
The fantasy football community is wildly underrating the talented veteran and that’s reflected in his ADP.
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4) Jalen Hurts Ends The Year Outside of the Top 12 QBs
We have now seen a startling trend emerge over the past year for one of fantasy football’s darling QBs, Jalen Hurts.
An annual leader in terms of red zone rush attempts at the QB position, Hurts saw his opportunity in that key area of the field crash down in 2025.
The Philadelphia Eagles QB had 43 red zone rush attempts in 2023 and 49 attempts in 2024. However, in 2025, that number cratered to just 26 attempts.
The Tush Push being less effective certainly was a factor in that number decreasing and it’s directly correlating to his fantasy football performances. Did you know that Hurts finished as the QB9 last season?
Add in now for 2026 a new offensive system (which could possibly be better overall – but a poorer fit for Hurts’ skillset), AJ Brown’s departure, and an offensive line that is going to be learning under a new coach other than Jeff Stoutland, it could get ugly.
I’ve never been the biggest believer in Hurts as a true passing threat. If he doesn’t have the guaranteed floor of rushing touchdowns, like what we saw from him two and three years ago, there’s a world where this crashes down to earth…hard.
Fantasy Football Sleepers for 2026 >>>
3) Luther Burden Winds Up Being A Top-5 WR In Points Per Game
If you’ve been reading my work at all over the past few months – or following along on the YouTube Channel – you know that I’m a big believer in Luther Burden taking a massive leap forward this season in Chicago.
It took a little bit for him to make the adjustment to the NFL game and become a routine part of the passing attack, but once he did…we saw a WR that possesses immense upside.
Last season, the rookie wideout finished in the top-5 of Yards Per Route Run against zone coverage last season with 2.98. This was only behind Puka Nacua, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and Rashee Rice.
It’s a smaller sample size, but that’s the purpose of a Yards Per Route Run metric. It’s meant to show us where players are standing out in smaller samples, whereas it might not show up in the overall yardage rankings.
This offense in Chicago is going to take a significant leap forward under Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams in year two. DJ Moore is no longer a member of this team and that opens things up for Burden to step into a substantial target workload in 2026.
Add in his Yards After the Catch ability and Burden could go nuclear, but his ADP is still in the low-end WR2 range – which does not make sense to me at all.
It’s bullish to say he’ll finish top-5 at the position, which is elite company, but I think he has the talent level to do just that.
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2) Isaiah Likely Finishes as a Top-5 TE
The more the offseason rolls along, the more I find myself drawn to hitting the draft button on Isaiah Likely later on in my drafts if I don’t wind up snagging a player like Colston Loveland in the earlier rounds.
We’ve seen flashes from Likely in the past, and he’s been the subject of more waiver wire articles than I can count, but Mark Andrews’ presence in Baltimore has always held him back.
This offseason though, Likely followed John Harbaugh over to the New York Giants in free agency and he now has a chance to inherit a massive amount of targets this season.
Malik Nabers avoided the PUP list, which is excellent news, but we still have no idea what his full status is going to be for this season as he recovers from that injury.
Aside from that, Darius Slayton, Darnell Mooney, Malachi Fields, or Odell Beckham Jr. is going to be the WR2 for this franchise in 2026…which means that someone like Likely could wind up seeing over 100 targets.
It doesn’t take a whole lot to finish as a top-5 TE in fantasy football. If Likely becomes the clear No. 2 target in this passing game, and he’s the main red zone threat because of his size, there’s an easy chance this happens.
And yet, fantasy managers continuously are passing by Likely for someone like Travis Kelce at this stage of his career – or even Dallas Goedert in Philadelphia.
He’s unproven in a larger sample, yes, but that’s where the buy window is created for smarter fantasy managers.
1) Omarion Hampton Leads The League In Rushing Touchdowns
Omarion Hampton is another player that I haven’t been able to stop talking about this offseason.
It was a disappointing rookie season – for a lot of reasons – and that seems to have a lot of fantasy managers skeptical of what the former UNC product can do in 2026.
But this is an entirely new situation in Los Angeles. The offensive line is back and healthy and Mike McDaniel is in as offensive coordinator.
We’ve seen what McDaniel’s scheme has been able to do for players like Raheem Mostert, Jeff Wilson, De’Von Achane, etc. in the past and Hampton has an argument that he’s more talented than all of them.
For a team with a QB like Justin Herbert, the Chargers are going to be in the red zone a whole heck of a lot in 2026. That means scoring opportunities for Hampton, who has the size to be a true factor in this condensed area of the field.
It’s not rocket science. He’s a talented RB, playing in an awesome system, that’s going to see a ton of opportunities to score touchdowns. Draft Hampton wherever you can.
