Winning a fantasy football championship usually comes down to hitting on late-round sleepers or mid-round breakouts. But just like I talked about recently with running backs, you can easily lose your season before October if you miss in the early rounds on some key wide receivers.
Let me be clear right at the top: “fading” a receiver doesn’t mean I think these guys are suddenly bad at football. It simply means that at their current ADP (Average Draft Position), managers are pricing them at their absolute ceiling. All while completely ignoring their realistic floor.
With that in mind, here are three wide receivers I’m pumping the brakes on for fantasy football drafts in 2026.
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Avoid These Three Wide Receivers In Fantasy Football
Nico Collins, Houston Texans
Let me start by saying, Nico Collins is an incredible talent at the WR position. When he’s healthy – and his QB is locked in – there are very few players at the position that I would prefer from an actual NFL standpoint if I were building a team as a GM.
Unfortunately for fantasy football, the path for Collins to return top-10 value – where he’s going in drafts right now – is going to be very difficult.
On some platforms, Collins is going as early as the WR8, which is drafting him at his ultimate ceiling – in my opinion – given the state of this team in Houston.
If Collins were playing in New Orleans with Kellen Moore, or with Matthew Stafford in Los Angeles in place of Puka Nacua, he very well may be my overall WR1 in fantasy football.
However, the Texans have spent this entire offseason signaling to everyone what they intend to be on offense: they’re going to run the football more, lean on their defense, and take the ball out of C.J. Stroud’s hands as much as they can.
This defense is elite. Quite simply one of the best in the NFL and potentially one of the best we’ve seen in recent history.
This coaching regime understands that this is how they’re going to win football games, especially witnessing how much Stroud has regressed since his stellar rookie campaign in 2023.
In his rookie year, Stroud threw for an impressive 274 yards per game and averaged 8.2 Yards Per Attempt. Since that point though, his numbers have come tumbling down each year.
In 2024, Stroud averaged just 219 yards per game and his YPA came down to a paltry 7.0. And in 2025, the trend continued with 217 yards per game and a YPA of 7.2.
Add in the abysmal performance in the playoffs this past season and the Texans needed to make changes to avoid needing to rely on Stroud’s production as a passer to make a deeper run in the playoffs.
They added in David Montgomery – and not by a cheap trade – to carry the load for this offense out of the backfield. Additionally, they added in Wyatt Teller and Braden Smith to the offensive line in free agency and drafted Keylan Rutledge in the first round to help establish a more prominent run game.
All this signals that the Texans would love to end each game with around 20 total pass attempts, which would bring the overall volume for Collins way down.
Additionally, Jayden Higgins figures to be a more integral part of the passing attack in year two for him. Tank Dell is working his way back onto the practice field and could command targets at some point this year.
Jaylin Noel is back on the field after being activated from the NFI list and he has the talent to move into a larger role in the offense this season, too.
Collins is an amazing talent, but at WR8 – over some other very talented players in better situations – it’s a price that I’m unwilling to pay. He sits currently at WR11 in my latest rankings sweep and I’m drafting AJ Brown, Chris Olave, and George Pickens over him this year.
Rashee Rice, Kansas City Chiefs
When Rashee Rice is on the field, he’s dominant for fantasy football. Not necessarily anything super particular to his talent level, aside from his yards after the catch ability, but the role in this Kansas City Chiefs offense is what leads to absurd production.
In 2025, Rice only played in eight games but he was the WR4 for fantasy in terms of Points Per Game with 12.1. He outperformed players like Ja’Marr Chase, George Pickens, Drake London, and others once he returned from his injury recovery in Week 7 last year.
Heading into 2026 now though, Rice is coming off of a turbulent offseason, to say the least. He underwent a cleanup procedure on his knee that he needed to recover from…while in jail for violating his probation.
And monitoring training camp reports and seeing videos of him running routes that are being posted by beat reporters, I’m officially concerned about Rice’s 2026 outlook.
He is struggling to create separation, he looks to be laboring in his running style, and the offense has plenty of its own questions surrounding it with Patrick Mahomes’ own injury recovery and Kenneth Walker’s addition.
With a WR11 ADP, there are enough variables and paths for this to go terribly wrong that I’d prefer to look elsewhere with one of my premium picks. He sits at WR13 in my latest rankings update.
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Zay Flowers, Baltimore Ravens
I don’t love betting against a player like Zay Flowers. With his individual talent level, plus the fact that he’s Lamar Jackson’s WR1, there are easily ways that this could backfire.
However, Flowers sits in an incredibly interest section of ADP at the WR position that makes hitting the draft button on him difficult.
The shifty Baltimore wideout sits currently at WR14 in ADP Consensus, which is higher than the following list of players:
- Tee Higgins
- Emeka Egbuka
- Tetairoa McMillan
- DeVonta Smith
- Garrett Wilson
- Luther Burden
- Jameson Williams
- Ladd McConkey
- Davante Adams
- Terry McLaurin
- DJ Moore
- Jaylen Waddle
There’s an argument to be made that – aside from one or two of those players – that this is one giant tier of wideouts and they could be placed in any order based on preference.
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Yes, Flowers should soak up targets this season in Baltimore and he figures to be a more featured part of the offense given his hefty contract extension that he was given just a few weeks ago.
However, he has one aspect of his game that could push him further down towards the bottom of this tier of wideouts instead of the top: red zone targets.
Flowers is just 5’9 and 183 pounds, which is a limiting factor when playing in the condensed area of the field. Larger body types with contested catch proficiency are usually the ones that get the targets when down in the red zone, which will go to Mark Andrews, Ja’Kobi Lane, and Elijah Sarratt on this team.
Last season, in 17 games, Flowers had just 10 red zone targets. This was less than players like Jalen Nailor, Wan’Dale Robinson, and Malik Washington.
To outperform the players like Tee Higgins, Tet McMillan, DeVonta Smith, etc. he’s going to need to be near the league lead in terms of total targets to offset the lack of touchdowns. That’s not a bet that I want to make at this point of my drafts.
Flowers is all the way down at WR19 in my rankings.
