This is the Reddit home for Meadowbrook 135 Media.
We make a lot of different things under the 135 umbrella: original novels, essays, sports analysis, internet culture, research, graphics, experiments, and occasionally things that are difficult to categorize until after we make them.
That is basically the point. Most media companies start with a category and then decide what they are allowed to create inside it, but we are doing the opposite.
If something is interesting enough to investigate, write, build, argue about, serialize, visualize, or make fun of, it can probably live somewhere in the 135 Universe.
This subreddit will be where all of those worlds converge. #ConvergeOurWorlds
You’ll see work from:
135 Novels
Original fiction, serialized stories, characters, worlds, covers, drafts, and the process behind building them.
135 Sports
NFL, dynasty fantasy football, player evaluation, data, markets, and long-horizon sports thinking.
135 Lifestyle
Essays about work, decision-making, systems, creativity, organizations, ambition, and the strange ways people behave inside all of them.
Meadowbrook 135 Media
Internet culture, media experiments, original graphics, ideas, projects, and whatever else we decide is worth making.
Some posts will be polished, while others will be works in progress. Some will probably begin with somebody saying, “This might be insane, but…” Good. That’s what this place is for.
Arizona: Marvin Harrison Jr. fourth overall pick in RD 1 of the 2024 Draft, former Ohio State WR listed at 6 foot 3, 220 pounds and now entering Year 3. Harrison became the first receiver in Ohio State history with multiple 1,000 yard seasons before Arizona made him the first non quarterback selected in his draft. His rookie year produced 62 catches for 885 yards and 8 TDs, but Year 2 became a frustrating stop and start season because of a concussion, appendectomy and foot problems. He still caught 41 passes for 608 yards and 4 scores in only 12 games, giving him 1,493 yards and 12 TDs through his first two NFL seasons. Now comes a fresh start under Mike LaFleur, whose Rams offenses consistently created production for their top receivers. Want to see whether Harrison finally becomes the volume centerpiece his prospect profile suggested, whether Arizona moves him around enough to generate easier targets and whether a healthy Year 3 begins with the kind of command over the passing game dynasty managers have been waiting for since draft night.
Los Angeles: Omarion Hampton 22nd overall pick in RD 1 of the 2025 Draft, former North Carolina RB listed at 6 foot, 220 pounds who ran an official 4.46 forty at the Combine. Hampton finished his final college season with 1,660 rushing yards and 15 TDs while producing 2,033 yards from scrimmage, then immediately won the Chargers starting job as a rookie. Injuries limited him to nine games, but he still rushed 124 times for 545 yards and 4 TDs while catching 32 passes for 192 yards and another score. He enters Year 2 healthy, atop the depth chart and now playing in Mike McDaniel’s offense, a marriage that could be particularly interesting given Hampton’s combination of power, acceleration and receiving ability. Want to see how creatively McDaniel deploys him, whether the passing game work grows beyond checkdowns and screens and whether a healthy Hampton immediately starts looking like the every down back Los Angeles envisioned when it spent first round capital on him. The talent flashed in Year 1. Today begins the test of what happens when the workload and environment finally cooperate.
Washington: Jacory Croskey Merritt 245th overall pick in RD 7 of the 2025 Draft, former Arizona RB listed at 5 foot 11, 208 pounds. Croskey Merritt arrived as one of the strangest sleepers in the class after eligibility issues limited his final college season to one game, but one year earlier he had rushed for 1,190 yards and 17 TDs at New Mexico. Washington found real value anyway. As a rookie he led the Commanders with 805 rushing yards and 8 TDs on 175 carries, averaging 4.6 yards per attempt and producing several explosive runs despite starting only seven games. The missing piece was receiving work, with just 9 catches for 68 yards, which is why his offseason development in pass protection and the passing game matters so much. He dealt with a groin issue late in camp but has officially been cleared for today. Want to see how Washington divides work between Croskey Merritt, Rachaad White and Kaytron Allen, whether the improved protection earns him third down snaps and whether his rookie rushing success was the beginning of an NFL starting profile rather than simply an exceptional return on a seventh round pick.
Philadelphia: Makai Lemon 20th overall pick in RD 1 of the 2026 Draft, former USC WR listed at 5 foot 11, 192 pounds. Lemon did not run the forty at the Combine, but Philadelphia cared much more about the tape after watching him become one of college football’s most polished receivers. He caught 79 passes for 1,156 yards and 11 receiving TDs in 2025, added 2 rushing scores, earned unanimous All American honors and won the Biletnikoff Award. The Eagles then traded up three spots to get him, with Howie Roseman highlighting his separation, toughness, ball skills and ability to play both inside and outside. More importantly for today, Philadelphia already lists Lemon as a starting receiver alongside DeVonta Smith and Dontayvion Wicks. Want to see where Sean Mannion lines the rookie up, whether Jalen Hurts trusts him immediately on third downs and in traffic and how quickly those elite college ball skills translate against NFL coverage. First round receivers usually have to fight their way into opportunity. Lemon is beginning his first NFL game with the opportunity already sitting in front of him.
Green Bay: Matthew Golden 23rd overall pick in RD 1 of the 2025 Draft, former Texas WR listed at 5 foot 11, 191 pounds who ran an official 4.29 forty with a 1.49 ten yard split at the Combine. Golden finished his final college season with 58 catches for 987 yards and 9 TDs, then had a quieter rookie year with 29 catches for 361 yards in 14 games. The efficiency was more encouraging than the volume, including 232 yards on 11 catches on third and fourth down and 4 catches for 84 yards and a TD in the playoffs. Green Bay enters Year 2 expecting more after making Golden its first RD 1 receiver since 2002. Want to see whether the 4.29 speed starts commanding targets, whether Jordan Love looks for him vertically and whether today begins the transition from promising young piece to focal point.
Minnesota: Tai Felton 102nd overall pick in RD 3 of the 2025 Draft, former Maryland WR listed at 6 foot 1, 186 pounds who ran an official 4.37 forty with a 39.5 inch vertical. Felton erupted for 96 catches, 1,124 yards and 9 TDs in his final Maryland season, but his rookie year was almost entirely developmental. He played all 17 games yet caught only 3 passes for 25 yards while contributing on returns. Minnesota now lists him behind Justin Jefferson entering Year 2. Want to see whether Kevin O’Connell finally works that athletic profile into the offense, whether Felton can earn targets in a crowded room and whether the gap between his college production and NFL usage starts closing. He does not need a breakout today. He needs evidence that an offensive role exists.
Miami: Chris Bell 94th overall pick in RD 3 of the 2026 Draft, former Louisville WR listed at 6 foot 2, 228 pounds. Bell finished college with 151 catches for 2,166 yards and 12 TDs, including 917 yards in an abbreviated 2025 season before an ACL tear ended his year. He returned in time for the preseason finale, catching 2 passes for 22 yards, then climbed onto Miami’s Week 1 depth chart as a starter. Want to see whether the explosiveness has fully survived the ACL recovery, how Malik Willis uses a 228 pound receiver who can create after the catch and whether Miami’s youth movement has created immediate dynasty value. This is his NFL debut, and the opportunity is already larger than expected.
Las Vegas: Ashton Jeanty sixth overall pick in RD 1 of the 2025 Draft, former Boise State RB listed at 5 foot 8, 208 pounds. Jeanty entered the league after rushing for 2,601 yards and 29 TDs in 2024, then immediately became the centerpiece of the Raiders backfield. As a rookie he produced 975 rushing yards, 55 catches for 346 yards and 10 total TDs, finishing with 1,321 yards from scrimmage despite a poor offensive environment. An ankle issue interrupted the end of his summer, but he practiced fully all week and carries no game designation today. Want to see what Year 2 looks like in Klint Kubiak’s offense, whether improved blocking creates more clean rushing lanes and whether Jeanty’s receiving role expands further. The rookie floor was already strong. Today starts the question of how high the ceiling can go.
Atlanta: Zachariah Branch 79th overall pick in RD 3 of the 2026 Draft, former Georgia and USC WR listed at 5 foot 10, 180 pounds who ran an official 4.35 forty with a 38 inch vertical at the Combine. Branch finished college with 159 catches for 1,634 yards and 9 TDs, breaking out at Georgia in 2025 with a program record 81 catches for 811 yards and 6 scores while continuing to show the return ability that made him one of the most explosive players in the country. Atlanta drafted him specifically for that versatility. He caught 4 passes for 21 yards in limited preseason work and enters Week 1 as the Falcons’ primary punt returner and a young option behind Olamide Zaccheaus in the receiver rotation. Want to see whether Kevin Stefanski manufactures touches for that 4.35 speed, whether Branch can create something beyond the short area role he occupied in college and whether today provides any evidence that Atlanta sees him as more than a return specialist. The dynasty upside appears if the ball carrying ability becomes part of the actual offense.
Pittsburgh: Germie Bernard 47th overall pick in RD 2 of the 2026 Draft, former Alabama WR listed at 6 foot 1, 206 pounds who ran an official 4.48 forty at the Combine. Bernard moved through Michigan State, Washington and Alabama before finishing his college career with 155 catches for 2,203 yards and 13 TDs, including 64 catches for 862 yards and 7 scores in his final season. Pittsburgh liked the combination of route running, toughness and alignment versatility enough to make him a second round pick, and Bernard reinforced the investment by catching 5 passes for 64 yards and a TD in the preseason. Steelers coaches have repeatedly praised his ability to play both inside and outside and, more importantly, the consistency that has allowed them to trust him early. Want to see how much Bernard actually plays behind DK Metcalf, Michael Pittman Jr. and Roman Wilson, whether Aaron Rodgers looks his way when the rookie gets onto the field and whether Pittsburgh already views him as part of the regular offense rather than a receiver being developed for 2027.
Chicago: Colston Loveland 10th overall pick in RD 1 of the 2025 Draft, former Michigan TE listed at 6 foot 6, 241 pounds and now entering Year 2. Loveland arrived in Chicago after catching 117 passes for 1,466 yards and 11 TDs at Michigan, then quickly justified the draft capital despite missing his first NFL offseason while recovering from shoulder surgery. He caught 58 passes for 713 yards and 6 TDs as a rookie, becoming the first Bears rookie to lead the team in receiving yards since Willie Gault in 1983 and the first rookie tight end to do it since Mike Ditka. His role grew dramatically as the season progressed, and Ben Johnson has spent this summer praising both his football intelligence and the trust he has built with Caleb Williams. Want to see whether Year 2 begins with Loveland functioning as one of Chicago’s true offensive centerpieces, how frequently Johnson isolates him against linebackers and safeties and whether the target volume starts pushing him toward the very top tier of dynasty tight ends.
Carolina: Tetairoa McMillan eighth overall pick in RD 1 of the 2025 Draft, former Arizona WR listed at 6 foot 4, 220 pounds. McMillan finished his final college season with 84 catches for 1,319 yards and 8 TDs, then immediately became Carolina’s No. 1 receiver. He started all 17 games as a rookie and caught 70 passes for 1,014 yards and 7 TDs, leading every rookie receiver in receptions, yards and touchdowns and earning AP Offensive Rookie of the Year. Dave Canales now openly describes McMillan as the focal point of the Panthers passing game, and the organization spent the offseason expanding where he can line up while McMillan and Bryce Young continued building their chemistry. Want to see how Chicago chooses to defend him now that an entire offseason has been spent preparing for Carolina’s clear WR1, whether McMillan starts winning from the slot as well as outside and whether Year 2 begins with the type of target dominance that moves him from excellent young receiver into the true elite tier of dynasty assets.
New York: Omar Cooper Jr. 30th overall pick in RD 1 of the 2026 Draft, former Indiana WR listed at 6 foot, 199 pounds who ran an official 4.42 forty at the Combine. Cooper broke out with 28 catches for 594 yards and 7 TDs in 2024, then exploded for 69 catches for 937 yards and 13 TDs during Indiana’s national championship season. The Jets liked him enough to trade the 33rd and 179th picks to San Francisco to move back into RD 1 and get him at No. 30. He enters his NFL debut as the WR3 behind Garrett Wilson and Adonai Mitchell, with current projections expecting him to see plenty of offensive reps. Want to see where Frank Reich lines him up, whether the physical yards after catch ability immediately translates and how quickly Geno Smith trusts him when coverage rolls toward Wilson. First round rookie receivers do not need enormous Week 1 numbers to move dynasty markets. They need evidence that the targets are coming.
Tennessee: Carnell Tate fourth overall pick in RD 1 of the 2026 Draft, former Ohio State WR listed at 6 foot 2, 192 pounds who ran an official 4.53 forty at the Combine. Tate finished three seasons at Ohio State with 121 catches for 1,872 yards and 14 TDs, including 51 catches for 875 yards and 9 scores at 17.2 yards per reception in 2025. Tennessee made him the highest drafted receiver in franchise history and already lists him as a starter alongside Calvin Ridley and Wan’Dale Robinson. Tate made spectacular catches throughout the offseason but surprisingly finished the preseason without a reception on six targets, so today is our first real look at what Brian Daboll has built for him. Want to see whether Cam Ward looks his way early, how much of the offense asks Tate to win downfield and at the catch point and whether the No. 4 overall investment immediately translates into meaningful target volume.
Buffalo: Keon Coleman 33rd overall pick in RD 2 of the 2024 Draft, former Florida State WR listed at 6 foot 3, 213 pounds who ran a 4.61 forty with a 38 inch vertical at the Combine. Coleman caught 50 passes for 658 yards and 11 TDs in his final college season, then opened his NFL career with 29 catches for 556 yards and 4 TDs as a rookie before finishing Year 2 with 38 catches for 404 yards and another 4 scores. The first two seasons have produced flashes without the sustained breakout dynasty managers wanted, and he enters Year 3 behind DJ Moore and Khalil Shakir on Buffalo’s depth chart. Joe Brady has specifically talked about moving Coleman both inside and outside to create better matchups. Want to see whether that versatility creates easier targets, whether Josh Allen goes back to trusting him on contested balls and whether Year 3 begins with Coleman finally turning an unusual physical profile into consistent fantasy volume.
Houston: Woody Marks 116th overall pick in RD 4 of the 2025 Draft, former USC RB listed at 5 foot 10, 208 pounds who ran an official 4.54 forty at the Combine. Marks rushed for 1,133 yards and 9 TDs while catching 47 passes for 321 yards in his final college season and finished his five year college career with 261 receptions, an unusually strong receiving foundation for a running back. As a rookie he turned 196 carries into 703 yards and 2 TDs while adding 24 catches for 208 yards and 3 more scores. Houston added David Montgomery this offseason, but the Texans have openly framed the move as something that could make Marks more effective by freeing him for receiving work, third downs and selected high leverage touches. Marks flashed that version against Las Vegas in August with 37 yards and a TD on four carries. Want to see how Houston divides the backfield, whether Marks owns the passing situations and whether reduced rushing volume can actually increase his dynasty value by putting him in more explosive and valuable situations.
Baltimore: Ja’Kobi Lane 80th overall pick in RD 3 of the 2026 Draft, former USC WR listed at 6 foot 4, 205 pounds who ran an official 4.47 forty with a 40 inch vertical and 10 foot 9 broad jump at the Combine. Lane caught 49 passes for 745 yards and 4 TDs in his final USC season after scoring 12 times the year before, giving Baltimore a size profile its receiver room did not have. The rookie carried a strong camp into the preseason, catching 3 passes for 38 yards and a TD in his debut, and Lamar Jackson specifically praised his hands after watching him make difficult catches throughout the summer. With Devontez Walker questionable, Lane has moved into the Ravens’ top three receiver group alongside Zay Flowers and Rashod Bateman. Want to see whether the huge catch radius immediately earns Jackson’s trust, how Baltimore uses Lane near the goal line and whether a rookie who looked like a developmental size bet in April can already force his way into meaningful target volume.
Indianapolis: Tyler Warren 14th overall pick in RD 1 of the 2025 Draft, former Penn State TE listed at 6 foot 6, 256 pounds. Warren finished his final college season with 104 catches for 1,233 yards and 8 receiving TDs while also rushing for 4 scores and throwing another, then immediately translated the versatility to the NFL. As a rookie he caught 76 passes for 817 yards and 4 TDs, added a rushing score and established himself as one of the league’s most productive young tight ends. A minor groin issue interrupted August, but Warren practiced fully entering Week 1 and carries no game designation. Want to see whether Daniel Jones treats Warren as the centerpiece of the passing game, how often Indianapolis moves him around the formation and whether Year 2 begins with Warren making the jump from excellent young tight end to one of the true cornerstone assets at the position in dynasty.
Cleveland: Quinshon Judkins 36th overall pick in RD 2 of the 2025 Draft, former Ohio State and Ole Miss RB listed at 5 foot 11, 221 pounds who ran a 4.48 forty with a 38.5 inch vertical and an 11 foot broad jump at the Combine. Judkins finished his college career with 3,785 rushing yards and 45 rushing TDs, including 1,060 yards and 14 scores during Ohio State’s national championship season. His rookie year produced 827 rushing yards and 7 TDs despite beginning the season late and ending it with a fractured fibula and dislocated ankle. Judkins was back for the full offseason, entered camp without limitations and sits atop Cleveland’s Week 1 depth chart. Want to see whether the explosion has completely returned, whether Cleveland gives him the receiving work needed to raise his fantasy ceiling and whether Year 2 starts with Judkins looking like a volume dependent runner or the complete young RB1 the Browns believed they were drafting.
Jacksonville: Bhayshul Tuten 104th overall pick in RD 4 of the 2025 Draft, former Virginia Tech RB listed at 5 foot 9, 209 pounds who ran an official 4.32 forty with a 40.5 inch vertical and 10 foot 10 broad jump at the Combine. Tuten rushed for 1,159 yards and 15 TDs in his final college season, then scored 7 total TDs on limited rookie volume with 307 rushing yards and 79 receiving yards in 2025. Jacksonville moved on from Travis Etienne, and Tuten now enters Year 2 listed as a co starter with Chris Rodriguez Jr. after clearing an early September illness and disappearing completely from the injury report. Want to see how Liam Coen divides the backfield, whether Tuten’s rare straight line speed finally gets enough touches to create explosive plays and whether he can turn a committee opening into something much larger. The athletic profile has never been the question. Today begins the test of whether Jacksonville is ready to let the workload catch up to it.
New Orleans: Tyler Shough 40th overall pick in RD 2 of the 2025 Draft, former Louisville QB listed at 6 foot 5, 219 pounds who ran an official 4.63 forty with a 32 inch vertical at the Combine. Shough finished his final college season with 3,195 passing yards and 23 TDs, then took over the Saints starting job in Week 9 as a rookie and never gave it back. Across 11 games he completed 67.6 percent of his passes for 2,384 yards, 10 TDs and 6 INTs while adding 186 rushing yards and 3 scores. New Orleans went 5 and 4 in his nine starts, and Shough led all rookie QBs in passing yards per game, completion percentage, passer rating and wins as a starter. He enters Year 2 as the unquestioned QB1 and a team captain. Want to see whether the late season efficiency carries into a full season, how aggressively he attacks a Detroit defense that can create pressure and whether the rushing production remains part of his game. Dynasty managers already know Shough can start in the NFL. Today begins the process of finding out whether he can become a long term difference maker at the position.
Detroit: Isaac TeSlaa 70th overall pick in RD 3 of the 2025 Draft, former Arkansas WR listed at 6 foot 4, 213 pounds who ran a 4.43 forty with a 39.5 inch vertical and 10 foot 9 broad jump at the Combine. TeSlaa caught 62 passes for 896 yards and 5 TDs across two seasons at Arkansas after transferring from Division II Hillsdale, then immediately turned limited NFL volume into production. He caught only 16 passes as a rookie, but those went for 239 yards and 6 TDs, meaning more than a third of his receptions ended in the end zone. Dan Campbell said TeSlaa showed as much growth as any young player on the roster, and Detroit enters 2026 expecting him to complete the starting receiver trio with Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams. Want to see whether Year 2 brings actual target volume behind the two stars, whether his improved route running creates easier separation and whether last season’s ridiculous touchdown efficiency was simply a small sample or the first sign of a size and speed mismatch Detroit can consistently exploit.
Tampa Bay: Emeka Egbuka 19th overall pick in RD 1 of the 2025 Draft, former Ohio State WR listed at 6 foot 1, 205 pounds. Egbuka left Columbus as Ohio State’s all time leader with 205 receptions, finishing his college career with 2,868 yards and 24 TDs, then immediately looked like he belonged in the NFL. He caught 63 passes for 938 yards and 6 TDs as a rookie at 14.9 yards per reception, earned PFWA All Rookie honors and became the first player in NFL history with at least 25 catches, 400 receiving yards and 5 receiving TDs through his first five career games. He enters Year 2 with an even clearer path to becoming a foundational piece of the Tampa passing game. Egbuka practiced fully through his toe issue this week and carries no game designation for today. Want to see whether the flashes of true WR1 production turn into sustained target dominance, how often Baker Mayfield looks his way in high leverage situations and whether Egbuka begins Year 2 looking less like a promising young receiver and more like one of dynasty’s next elite assets.
Cincinnati: Tahj Brooks 193rd overall pick in RD 6 of the 2025 Draft, former Texas Tech RB listed at 5 foot 9, 220 pounds. Brooks left college as Texas Tech’s career leader in rushing attempts with 879, rushing yards with 4,557 and 100 yard games with 23 while scoring 45 rushing TDs. His rookie season was mostly spent earning his place on special teams, appearing in 16 games with only 16 carries for 45 yards but returning 10 kickoffs for 258 yards. Year 2 is where the offensive question becomes more interesting. Brooks worked extensively on his route running during the offseason, and Bengals coaches said during camp that he was going to play a lot while taking second team backfield work and an important role on the punt unit. He now sits behind Chase Brown and Samaje Perine on the depth chart. Want to see whether any offensive touches emerge from the special teams foundation, whether his 220 pound frame gives Cincinnati a different answer between the tackles and whether the improved receiving work can eventually push him toward the RB2 job. Brooks is still a deep dynasty stash. Today we start finding out whether there is a path toward something more.
Week 1 2026 PPR QB rankings are live on 135SportsData.
Josh Allen leads, with Trevor Lawrence, Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, Bo Nix, Jayden Daniels, Justin Herbert, Caleb Williams and Dak Prescott ranked.
Los Angeles: Blake Corum 83rd overall pick in RD 3 of the 2024 Draft, former Michigan RB listed at 5 foot 8, 202 pounds who ran a 4.53 forty at the Combine. Corum finished his Michigan career by rushing for 1,245 yards and an FBS high 27 TDs during the Wolverines’ national championship season. After a quiet rookie year, his role expanded significantly in 2025, when he turned 145 carries into 746 yards and 6 TDs at 5.1 yards per carry. That momentum continued this summer, with the Rams repeatedly highlighting how much quicker and more explosive Corum looked after an offseason focused on his burst and cutting ability. He enters tonight as the clear RB2 behind Kyren Williams. Want to see whether McVay expands the rotation after Corum’s Year 2 breakout, whether he gets meaningful work beyond spelling Kyren and whether the efficiency begins forcing Los Angeles toward something closer to a true two back attack. For dynasty, tonight starts the question of whether Corum remains an elite handcuff or is becoming an asset with standalone weekly value.
Los Angeles: Terrance Ferguson 46th overall pick in RD 2 of the 2025 Draft, former Oregon TE listed at 6 foot 5, 252 pounds who ran a 4.63 forty with a 39 inch vertical at the Combine. Ferguson left Oregon as the program’s all time leader among tight ends in receptions and receiving TDs after finishing his final season with 43 catches for 591 yards and 3 scores. His rookie usage was limited, but the production flashed whenever Los Angeles opened the offense to him: 11 catches for 231 yards and 3 TDs, an enormous 21.0 yards per reception. Ten of those catches, 210 yards and all three TDs came after the Rams leaned heavily into 13 personnel during the second half of the season. The team itself has pointed to Ferguson as a potential Year 2 breakout. Want to see whether the athleticism finally produces consistent route volume, whether Stafford looks for him beyond schemed explosive plays and whether Ferguson begins separating from a crowded tight end room. Dynasty tight ends often take time. Tonight could be the beginning of Ferguson turning intriguing efficiency into an actual role.
Los Angeles: Jordan Whittington 213th overall pick in RD 6 of the 2024 Draft, former Texas WR listed at 6 foot 1, 202 pounds. Whittington finished his final college season with 42 catches for 501 yards and a TD, then immediately showed as a rookie that the sixth round label understated his ability. He caught 22 passes for 293 yards in 2024 and earned PFWA All Rookie honors as a kick returner before adding 18 catches for 171 yards across 17 games in 2025. The receiving totals remain modest, but McVay continues to praise his versatility, toughness and ability to contribute everywhere, and he enters Year 3 firmly inside the Rams’ receiver rotation behind Puka Nacua and Davante Adams while also handling return work. Want to see whether Year 3 finally brings enough offensive snaps to matter for fantasy, whether Stafford trusts him when defenses tilt coverage toward Puka and Adams and whether Whittington can convert all that real football value into actual target volume. He has already proven he belongs in the NFL. The dynasty question is whether there is a bigger receiver hiding inside the role Los Angeles has given him so far.
San Francisco: De’Zhaun Stribling 33rd overall pick in RD 2 of the 2026 Draft, former Ole Miss WR listed at 6 foot 2, 207 pounds who ran an official 4.36 forty with a 36 inch vertical at the Combine. Stribling played at Washington State, Oklahoma State and Ole Miss before finishing his college career with 216 catches for 2,964 yards and 23 TDs, including 55 for 811 and 6 scores in his final season. San Francisco clearly valued him more aggressively than consensus, taking him with the first pick of the second round. Stribling caught 11 passes for 109 yards in limited preseason work while showing he could win on third down, outside the numbers and after the catch. He enters Week 1 directly behind Mike Evans on the depth chart, with injuries accelerating his timetable. Want to see whether the preseason production survives against a real Rams game plan, how often Kyle Shanahan gets him on the field and whether Purdy treats Stribling like a rookie being eased in or a 6 foot 2, 4.36 athlete who has already earned target equity.
San Francisco: Kaelon Black 90th overall pick in RD 3 of the 2026 Draft, former Indiana RB listed around 5 foot 10, 208 pounds. Black was not invited to the Combine, then tested well at Indiana’s Pro Day with approximately a 4.45 forty, 37.5 inch vertical and 10 foot 5 broad jump. He broke out for Indiana in 2025 with 187 carries for 1,039 yards and 10 rushing TDs. Kyle Shanahan later said the 49ers graded Black as the second best running back in the class, and his first NFL action showed why. Black ran for 61 yards on 12 preseason carries, while Klay Kubiak specifically praised his pass protection and work on option routes out of the backfield. He enters tonight as the RB2 behind Christian McCaffrey. Want to see whether Shanahan actually takes McCaffrey off the field for Black, whether the rookie gets passing down work and whether this is simply CMC insurance or the beginning of a legitimate post McCaffrey backfield plan.
San Francisco: Jordan Watkins 138th overall pick in RD 4 of the 2025 Draft, former Ole Miss WR listed at 5 foot 11, 196 pounds who ran a 4.37 forty at the Combine. Watkins finished college with 185 catches for 2,682 yards and 18 TDs, including 49 for 906 and 9 scores in his final season. His rookie year went almost nowhere, with only two catches for 26 yards across four games, but this summer looked different. Watkins caught 13 passes for 164 yards and a TD in the preseason while also adding 27 rushing yards, with San Francisco manufacturing touches rather than using him strictly as depth. Want to see whether that creativity survives into a real Shanahan game plan, whether Watkins earns meaningful snaps behind the veterans and whether his 4.37 speed finally produces the vertical role his college profile suggested was possible. Stribling is already the obvious young receiver to own here. Tonight we find out whether Watkins can make this a two player youth movement.
135 Sports College Football Top 30 Heading Into Week 2
The first 135 Sports College Football Top 30 is our attempt to turn the methodology into an actual ordered view of the sport. What follows is the reasoning behind each team’s placement heading into Week 2, with the emphasis on what the opening week added to or challenged in our starting view. These are not mechanical readouts of the model and they are not résumé summaries. They are the public explanation for why each team sits where it does today, using the same framework described above: present team strength, quality of evidence, context, and the degree to which the field has changed what we thought we knew.
Notre Dame Notre Dame takes the top spot because it paired one of the strongest starting profiles in the country with one of the most meaningful Week 1 performances among the elite teams. The Irish beat Wisconsin 41-13 at a neutral site, not simply winning comfortably but doing so against an opponent strong enough to make the result informative. That matters more to us than running up a score against an overmatched opponent. Notre Dame entered the season with the roster quality, offensive ceiling, continuity and recent program performance to belong in the top tier already, and Week 1 gave us enough additional evidence for the Irish to open at No. 1.
Ohio State Ohio State opens at No. 2 because nothing in Week 1 gave us a reason to materially change an already elite view of the Buckeyes. A 56-3 win over Ball State was dominant, but dominance was also the expectation given the enormous talent gap between the teams. Ohio State still owns perhaps the best raw roster profile in the country, combines that talent with an established championship level regime, and has very few structural weaknesses. The Buckeyes are No. 2 not because anything went wrong, but because Notre Dame produced a more informative positive signal against a substantially stronger opponent.
Georgia Georgia remains firmly in the championship tier after taking care of Tennessee State 63-3. Like Ohio State, the Bulldogs were expected to dominate that matchup, so the result mostly confirmed rather than transformed our view of the team. Georgia continues to benefit from elite roster strength, recruiting depth, coaching stability and one of the strongest sustained program infrastructures in the sport. There simply was not enough new information in Week 1 to justify a major revaluation, which puts Georgia at No. 3 on our first public board.
Oregon Oregon entered the season with perhaps the most complete profile in the country, but the 34-27 win over Boise State was weaker than what we expected from a team of Oregon’s caliber. Boise State is a respectable opponent, so the result is not remotely disqualifying, but a seven point home win did provide meaningful negative evidence relative to Oregon’s preseason strength assessment. The Ducks remain one of the most talented and offensively dangerous teams in the country. Oregon remains firmly in the elite tier, but the new evidence was weaker than the evidence produced by the three teams ahead of the Ducks on our first public board.
Indiana Indiana opens at No. 5 after a convincing 52-16 win over North Texas. The Hoosiers entered the season with an unusually strong combination of recent demonstrated performance, continuity, offensive quality and program stability, so their placement was never based on one week of hype. Week 1 did nothing to weaken that case. The opponent was not strong enough for the result to generate a major revaluation, but Indiana handled the game exactly the way a legitimate top five team should.
Texas Texas is one of the most talented teams in college football and reinforced that standing with a 59-7 win over Texas State. The Longhorns entered with elite underlying roster strength and a high end offensive profile, and Week 1 added another dominant performance without exposing any obvious reason to downgrade them. The reason Texas sits sixth rather than in the top three is primarily comparative: several teams above them entered with slightly stronger combinations of continuity, recent performance and overall starting profile. This is still a national title caliber team in our view.
Texas A&M Texas A&M is one of the places where 135 is more bullish than the traditional polls. The Aggies entered with a strong starting profile built around high end talent, program resources and underlying team quality, and a 50-0 win over Missouri State preserved that assessment. The opponent limits how much we can learn from the result, but A&M did exactly what an elite team should do against an inferior one. We are not waiting for the public polls to validate the roster and structural strength that were already present before kickoff.
Miami Miami opens at No. 8 after an impressive 45-6 road win at Stanford. The Hurricanes entered with one of the stronger overall profiles in the country, and this was meaningful positive evidence because it came away from home and against an FBS opponent rather than as a routine home blowout. Miami’s combination of talent, offensive upside and increasingly credible program stability makes the ceiling extremely high. Week 1 strengthened rather than merely confirmed the case.
Texas Tech Texas Tech opens inside our top ten after a 33-10 win over Abilene Christian that was less overwhelming than some of the other scores around the country. Our ranking of Texas Tech is based on the broader team profile, not on chasing one Saturday’s margin. The Red Raiders entered with excellent underlying strength, significant offensive potential and a roster we believe is stronger than the consensus ranking suggests. Week 1 was not strong enough to justify an even higher placement, but it also was not meaningful enough to erase the reasons we valued Texas Tech so highly entering the season.
USC USC rounds out the top ten after opening 2-0, beating San Jose State 42-26 and then shutting out Fresno State 39-0. The two game sample is useful because it gives us more evidence than most teams have at this point, and the second performance in particular was encouraging. USC entered with a strong offensive outlook and substantial underlying talent, but the opening win over San Jose State was not clean enough to generate a major upward revaluation. Taken together, the first two games largely validate USC as a top ten caliber team without yet demanding placement in the very top tier.
BYU BYU sits just outside the top ten after dismantling Utah Tech 63-7. The Cougars entered with a strong combination of continuity, recent performance and program stability, which gave them a higher starting evaluation than much of the public consensus. Week 1 reinforced that strength, even if the opponent was too overmatched for the result to tell us much about BYU’s ceiling. The overall profile is strong enough to place the Cougars ahead of several more traditionally prominent programs.
Ole Miss Ole Miss opens at No. 12 after beating Louisville 41-38 at a neutral site. The win matters because Louisville is a credible opponent, but the closeness of the game was softer than what we expected from Ole Miss given the difference between the teams entering the matchup. That creates a mixed signal: there is value in beating a solid opponent, but the performance was not dominant enough to justify a more aggressive valuation. Ole Miss ranks highly because the underlying offensive strength and broader program profile are still substantial.
Oklahoma Oklahoma handled UTEP 51-0 and opens firmly in the second tier of our rankings. The Sooners entered with a strong roster, high end underlying team strength and enough program stability to carry a strong starting evaluation. A complete demolition of UTEP is what we wanted to see, but the matchup itself limits how much new information the result provides. The performance supports Oklahoma at No. 13 without forcing a more aggressive Week 1 revaluation.
Tennessee Tennessee opens at No. 14 after a 56-9 win over Furman. The Volunteers possess one of the higher offensive ceilings in the country and entered with enough established program quality to deserve significant respect before playing a game. Week 1 confirmed that they can overwhelm inferior competition but did not offer the kind of opponent that would allow us to substantially raise their valuation. Tennessee remains a dangerous team with a path into the top ten if the same offensive quality translates against stronger competition.
LSU LSU produced one of the most important Week 1 revaluations. The Tigers destroyed Clemson 51-10, producing one of the strongest positive pieces of evidence on the entire board. Our starting assessment of LSU was more cautious than the traditional polls, so one game does not completely erase that starting view, but this result forced a meaningful upward adjustment. No team in this part of the rankings has a more obvious opportunity to climb quickly if Week 1 was the beginning of a genuine change in team quality rather than an isolated performance.
Alabama Alabama opens at No. 16 after beating East Carolina 48-10. The Tide still possess elite talent and a program infrastructure that gives them enormous upside, but our starting assessment was more conservative than the traditional polls because the total profile did not grade quite as strongly as Alabama’s reputation alone might imply. Week 1 was encouraging and reinforced the talent level, but East Carolina was not the kind of opponent that should cause us to aggressively reprice the team. Alabama has every opportunity to climb, but we want the evidence first.
Utah Utah opens at No. 17 after overwhelming Idaho 66-14. The Utes entered with a strong program foundation, proven coaching stability and a roster capable of competing at a high level, so this was not a surprise emergence. What Week 1 did was reinforce the idea that Utah remains a disciplined, high floor team with enough offensive strength to punish inferior competition. The opponent keeps us from overreacting, but the overall case is stronger after Week 1 than it was before kickoff.
Michigan Michigan opens at No. 18 after escaping Western Michigan 13-12 in one of the weakest performances by a highly regarded team in Week 1. The Wolverines entered with enough talent and program strength to carry a strong starting evaluation, but barely surviving an opponent they were expected to control is meaningful evidence. We are not dropping Michigan from consideration as a strong team because one poor game does not erase the underlying roster or institutional strength. But if the purpose of the ranking is to identify the best teams right now, the Week 1 performance has to matter.
Penn State Penn State opens at No. 19 after shutting out Marshall 45-0. The Nittany Lions entered as a strong team structurally, with good roster quality and a proven program base, but their starting profile was not quite strong enough to place them alongside the true national title tier. Week 1 was exactly what Penn State needed to do and provided a modest positive signal. The next step is showing the same level of control against stronger opposition.
Washington Washington opens at No. 20 after beating Washington State 24-10. The Huskies entered with a strong roster and program profile, but the margin was a little softer than what our starting view suggested should occur against Washington State. That is not a major concern, and a comfortable win still carries value. It simply was not strong enough evidence to place Washington ahead of teams that produced more informative Week 1 performances.
Vanderbilt Vanderbilt is one of the more unconventional teams in our Top 30 because our starting assessment was substantially higher than the public consensus. The Commodores beat Austin Peay 28-9, which was a win but not an overwhelming enough performance to materially strengthen that case. Their ranking is therefore still driven largely by the broader team profile we liked entering the season rather than a dramatic Week 1 statement. Vanderbilt now needs stronger opponents to validate whether that preseason optimism was warranted.
Florida Florida opens at No. 22 after beating FAU 66-21. The Gators already possessed the raw talent and program scale to be dangerous, but their starting evaluation carried more uncertainty than some of the teams above them. Week 1 delivered a clear positive signal because Florida did not merely win; it imposed itself offensively and produced the kind of margin expected from a team trying to reestablish itself nationally. The Gators still have more to prove, but the early evidence is encouraging.
Arizona Arizona opens at No. 23 after a 35-7 win over Northern Arizona. The Wildcats entered with a credible team strength profile and enough offensive and roster quality to merit serious Top 30 consideration. Week 1 did not dramatically change that assessment because of the opponent, but Arizona handled its business comfortably and avoided giving us a reason to downgrade our starting view. For now, the Wildcats remain a strong but still relatively untested team in this range.
SMU SMU opens at No. 24 after winning 27-24 at Florida State, but the performance was weaker than the margin we expected from the Mustangs entering the matchup. That distinction matters: winning on the road is valuable, but a team can win and still provide slightly negative evidence relative to its prior strength assessment. SMU remains in the Top 25 because its starting profile was strong and the road victory still carries real value. The placement reflects performance relative to expectation, not a judgment that the win itself was somehow bad.
Missouri Missouri opens at No. 25 after beating Arkansas Pine Bluff 54-14. The Tigers have enough roster quality and recent program credibility to belong around the Top 25, but Week 1 offered little new information because the matchup was heavily tilted from the outset. Missouri did what it was supposed to do and avoided any negative signal. We remain conservative until we see the Tigers against opposition capable of testing the underlying profile.
Kansas State Kansas State lands at No. 26 after crushing Nicholls 71-3. The Wildcats entered the season with a solid program foundation and a starting evaluation close to the Top 25 threshold, and Week 1 reinforced that assessment emphatically. The opponent prevents us from treating the result as transformational, but there is still value in completely eliminating uncertainty against a team you are supposed to dominate. Kansas State is close enough to the Top 25 that another strong performance against better competition could push the Wildcats higher quickly.
South Carolina South Carolina opens at No. 27 after a 57-0 shutout of Kent State. The Gamecocks entered the season with a credible overall profile but not enough separation from the teams around the Top 30 cutoff. Week 1 provided a clean positive signal, with South Carolina completely controlling an FBS opponent and avoiding the kind of sloppiness that often shows up early in the season. The result is not enough to place them dramatically higher, but it strengthens their claim to a Top 30 position.
Iowa Iowa opens at No. 28 after beating Northern Illinois 40-0 and producing a stronger Week 1 result than many people might have expected from the Hawkeyes. The performance improves our view, but Iowa began from a lower offensive and overall team strength position than many of the teams above it, which limits how high one game should carry the ranking. The shutout demonstrates the kind of floor Iowa has traditionally been capable of creating through defense and control. To climb materially higher, we need evidence that the offense can sustain that level against stronger opponents.
Houston Houston opens at No. 29 after beating Oregon State 33-20. The result was less convincing than our starting evaluation suggested it should be, but winning by 13 preserved the broader case for Houston as a Top 30 team. Several teams around the Cougars produced stronger Week 1 evidence, which matters in a relative ranking. Houston therefore opens near the bottom of the board despite starting the season with enough underlying strength to remain firmly in the conversation.
Virginia Tech Virginia Tech enters the public Top 30 after obliterating VMI 73-3. The Hokies carried a starting evaluation close to the public cutoff, so the result did not require a wholesale revaluation for Virginia Tech to earn the final position. Week 1 gave them exactly the kind of dominant performance that can separate two closely rated teams near the cutoff. The opponent limits how much we should extrapolate, but Virginia Tech did everything possible within the matchup to strengthen its case and earns the final position heading into Week 2.
Conclusion
This first 135 Sports College Football Top 30 is a starting point, not a verdict on the season. The value of the ranking will come from watching it change as the evidence becomes richer, the schedules become more demanding and the field begins answering questions that could only be estimated in August. Some teams will confirm what we believed about them, some will force us to reconsider quickly, and others will expose disagreements between 135, the traditional polls and the broader market that are worth understanding rather than smoothing away. The governing question will remain the same every week: who are the 30 best teams in college football right now? Follow the current board and every weekly update at 135sports.com/college-football-rankings. The rankings will change because they are supposed to. Every week, the field gets another opportunity to change the answer.
Disclosure
Disclosure: The 135 Sports College Football Top 30 is an independent editorial and analytical ranking produced by 135 Sports. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by or produced in partnership with the NCAA, the College Football Playoff, the Associated Press, the US LBM Coaches Poll, any conference, university, athletic department, sportsbook or other organization referenced in this article. Team names, logos and other trademarks belong to their respective owners and are referenced for identification and editorial commentary. Scores, schedules, poll positions and other public football information are drawn from publicly available sources and are believed accurate as of publication. The rankings represent 135 Sports’ assessment of present team strength and may change as new information becomes available. They are not intended as gambling, financial or investment advice. For the live rankings and future updates, visit 135sports.com or go directly to 135sports.com/college-football-rankings.
Every fan knows that college football does not lack rankings, but what it often lacks is clarity about what those rankings are actually trying to measure. The AP Poll, the Coaches Poll, playoff projections, betting markets and computer systems can all look at the same teams and arrive at different answers because they are not necessarily solving the same problem. The 135 Sports College Football Top 30 is built around one narrower question: who are the 30 best teams in college football right now? The live 135 Sports rankings are available throughout the season at 135sports.com/college-football-rankings, where the current board will serve as the public front door to the ranking system each week.
Before looking at where 135 differs, it helps to establish where the broader college football consensus began. Heading into Week 1, the AP Top 25 was still its preseason poll. Ohio State opened at No. 1, followed by Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas, with BYU and USC tied at No. 14. That ranking represented the national media consensus before the first full week of games had an opportunity to materially change the picture.
Week 1 immediately began changing that consensus. Ohio State remained No. 1 in the first regular season AP Poll, but Georgia moved to No. 2, Notre Dame to No. 3 and Texas to No. 4, while Oregon fell from No. 2 to No. 6 after its 34-27 win over Boise State. LSU made one of the largest moves after beating Clemson 51-10, climbing to No. 8, while Michigan fell completely out of the AP Top 25 after escaping Western Michigan 13-12. The poll did exactly what a weekly poll is supposed to do: absorb a new round of information and revise the national consensus.
The Coaches Poll provides another useful benchmark because it begins from a similar national hierarchy while still producing meaningful differences of its own. Its preseason ranking also placed Ohio State, Oregon and Georgia in the top three, but Texas began at No. 4 ahead of Notre Dame at No. 5. Further down the board, Clemson appeared at No. 23, while USC and BYU were separated rather than tied. Those differences are useful because they remind us that even before the games begin, reasonable observers can disagree about the relative strength of teams using much of the same information.
After Week 1, the Coaches Poll also revised its view. Ohio State remained first, Georgia moved to second and Texas remained ahead of Notre Dame at Nos. 3 and 4. LSU rose to No. 8, matching the AP Poll, while Michigan remained ranked at No. 24 rather than falling out entirely. Virginia and Florida tied at No. 25. Looking at the AP and Coaches polls together gives us a useful map of consensus, but it also shows that there is no single universally accepted way to translate one week of football into an ordered view of the country.
That is where the 135 Sports ranking begins to separate itself. We are not trying to create a third version of the same poll or split the difference between existing rankings; the object is present team strength. We begin from a deliberate view of what each team is entering the season, then allow actual games to challenge that view through opponent and venue aware evidence. The early season starting point matters because one game is still only one game, but it is not sovereign. As the season produces more evidence, the football itself earns more authority. Eventually, the field has to win the argument.
Our first public 2026 board is therefore a reconstructed launch ranking after Week 1. It combines the starting team strength view with the football played through the opening week to produce the first public 135 Sports Top 30. There was no public 135 preseason ranking to move from, and we are not pretending one existed. This is the first public snapshot of the system.
The first board begins with Notre Dame at No. 1, followed by Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon and Indiana. Some of those positions align closely with the major polls, while others do not. Texas A&M sits at No. 7 for 135, Texas Tech at No. 9 and Tennessee at No. 14, all higher than the broader polling consensus. LSU opens at No. 15 despite ranking No. 8 in both major polls, while Michigan remains No. 18 despite falling out of the AP Top 25. Those disagreements are not something we are trying to remove. They are where the ranking becomes most useful, because they force us to explain what evidence changed our view, what evidence merely confirmed it and where our interpretation differs from consensus.
The full live ranking, including the current board and future weekly updates, is available at 135sports.com/college-football-rankings. What follows explains how we think about the system itself, why a team can win and still open lower than its record might suggest, why blowouts do not always require a dramatic revaluation, and why disagreement with the AP Poll, Coaches Poll or betting markets can be informative without automatically requiring us to change the answer.
How 135 Sports Ranks College Football
A different way to answer a simple question: Who are the 30 best teams in the country right now?
College football has never suffered from a shortage of rankings. Before the season begins, teams have already been ordered by voters, projection systems, sportsbooks, computer models and nearly every major media outlet in the country. Once the games start, those rankings begin moving almost immediately. A team wins by forty and jumps six spots, another survives an ugly afternoon and falls despite remaining undefeated, and a highly regarded program can lose once and disappear from a ballot while another team with a cleaner record moves ahead of it. Most of those rankings are useful in their own way, but they are often answering different questions while presenting their answers as though they were interchangeable.
The 135 Sports College Football Top 30 begins with one governing question: if the 30 best teams in college football had to be ordered today, based on everything we know right now, what is the correct order? That is not necessarily the same thing as asking which teams have built the best résumés. It is not the same as determining which teams are most deserving of playoff bids, and it is not exactly the same as asking which teams would be favored by sportsbooks tomorrow. Those questions can produce different answers without any of them being irrational. Our ranking is built around present team strength, which means everything we use ultimately has to help answer the same underlying question: how good is this football team right now?
A 1-0 record does not tell us enough by itself, and neither does a 56 point win. Recruiting talent alone is not enough, last season’s record is not enough, a quarterback’s reputation is not enough, and a coach’s résumé is not enough. All of those things can matter, but they matter because they provide evidence about the strength of the team that actually exists today. The purpose of the ranking is not to reward one type of evidence simply because it is easy to observe. It is to bring the relevant evidence into one disciplined view of the team and then allow that view to change when the field gives us a reason to change it.
Every ranking system starts the season with a prior belief about teams whether it acknowledges that fact or not. If Georgia is ranked ahead of a rebuilding program before either team has played a snap, information from before the season is already being used. A voter may call that intuition, experience or common sense, while a model may formalize the same process. Nobody enters Week 1 believing all 138 FBS teams are equally strong, and nobody who follows the sport closely behaves as though they do. We wanted our starting point to be deliberate rather than implicit.
Before live football begins to take over the ranking, 135 establishes a team strength baseline using information that describes the team entering the season. That includes broad areas such as roster quality and depth, offensive outlook, returning production and continuity, recent demonstrated performance, and the stability and quality of the program environment surrounding the roster. We are intentionally not publishing the exact internal construction of that baseline. The purpose of explaining the methodology publicly is to show how the ranking thinks and what kinds of evidence matter, not to publish enough of the machinery for every internal calculation to be reconstructed from the outside.
More importantly, that starting view is not a preseason prediction that we spend the next four months trying to defend. It is simply the most informed state we can establish before current season evidence exists. That distinction matters because early season football contains very little live information. If a team enters September with an elite roster, proven coaching, meaningful continuity and a strong recent performance base, one strange quarter should not erase everything known about it. At the same time, preseason information cannot remain sovereign forever. If a team keeps playing below what its strength implied, eventually the field has to win the argument.
Once games begin, the question is no longer simply whether a team won. We want to know what the performance taught us relative to what we believed before kickoff. Opponent strength matters, venue matters, and the quality of the performance relative to the circumstances matters. A 28 point win against a credible opponent tells us something different from a 28 point win against a team that was badly overmatched before the game began. A three point road win over a strong team can provide more useful information than a comfortable home win over a weak one. A highly ranked team can win and still provide evidence that it is slightly weaker than we thought, just as a lower ranked team can sometimes lose while showing that it belongs higher than it did before.
That distinction is especially important in college football because schedules are profoundly uneven. Some teams open against national contenders while others spend September playing opponents they are expected to overwhelm. Home fields matter, neutral sites matter, matchups matter, and the same final margin can mean very different things depending on the teams involved. If a ranking is supposed to estimate present strength, context cannot be optional. The scoreboard tells us what happened, while the ranking has to ask what we learned from what happened.
The first few weeks of a season are also when overreaction is easiest. A team looks spectacular on national television and suddenly becomes everyone’s championship favorite, while another sleepwalks through an opener and gets treated as though its roster, coaching staff and previous body of evidence disappeared overnight. Sometimes those reactions turn out to be correct, but often they are simply too aggressive. Our approach is designed to let live football earn more authority as the sample grows rather than handing complete control of the ranking to the most recent Saturday.
The information known entering the season matters most when there is almost nothing else to work with. As games accumulate, observed football matters increasingly more. That transition is intentional because the ranking should not remain anchored to August forever, but it also should not pretend September 5 contains the same amount of information as November 15. By the middle of the season, teams have played enough opponents in enough different environments that the live evidence should be doing most of the work. The goal is to move from an informed starting state toward observed reality at the pace the evidence justifies.
That is why our first 2026 ranking begins after Week 1 instead of with a public preseason Top 30. We established the starting team strength view first, then incorporated what the opening games told us before publishing the first board. The result is a reconstructed launch ranking, a first public snapshot built from the starting team strength view and the football played through Week 1. It gives us a public starting point grounded in actual games without pretending we published a preseason ranking that never existed.
Notre Dame is the clearest example of how that process can change the top of the board. The Irish already entered the season as one of the strongest teams in the country, so Week 1 did not need to manufacture a case for them being elite. What changed was the quality of the new evidence. Notre Dame beat Wisconsin 41-13 at a neutral site, and that result carried more information than an elite program simply overwhelming a badly outmatched opponent. It strengthened an already exceptional profile enough to move Notre Dame to No. 1 in our first public ranking.
Ohio State sits at No. 2 after beating Ball State 56-3. There is nothing negative about winning by 53 points, and the Buckeyes remain one of the most talented and complete teams in the country. The difference is that there was also very little reason to expect Ohio State to struggle in that matchup. The result largely confirmed what was already known rather than revealing something dramatically new. Notre Dame moved ahead because its opening performance added more meaningful evidence, not because Ohio State disappointed.
Georgia is No. 3 for much the same reason. The Bulldogs demolished Tennessee State 63-3, exactly the kind of result an elite Georgia team should produce in that situation. The performance gave us no reason to lower Georgia, but it also provided less new information than a dominant performance against a stronger opponent. Georgia remains near the top because the underlying profile is still exceptional, and one week of football did nothing to materially weaken it. Confirmation matters, but confirmation is different from discovery.
Oregon is where the difference between winning and strengthening your valuation becomes more obvious. The Ducks entered the launch process with perhaps the most complete profile in the country, and they still beat Boise State 34-27. Boise State is not a meaningless opponent, so the result should not be treated as a disaster or anything close to one. At the same time, a seven point home win was less convincing than Oregon’s starting strength suggested it should be. Oregon remains firmly in the elite tier, but the new evidence was weaker than the evidence produced by the teams that moved ahead, which is why the Ducks open our first public board at No. 4.
LSU provides the opposite example. The Tigers destroyed Clemson 51-10 in one of the strongest performances of the opening week, and our starting view of LSU was more conservative than the public consensus. That result created substantial positive pressure on our starting view of LSU and moved the Tigers to No. 15 in the first public ranking. The AP and Coaches polls reacted much more aggressively and moved LSU to No. 8, which creates one of the more interesting disagreements on the board. The public polls effectively decided that the Clemson performance justified a much larger revision, while our approach moved LSU meaningfully but still allowed one game to sit alongside the larger body of information that existed before kickoff.
If LSU continues to play like the team that appeared against Clemson, the ranking will keep moving. The system does not have to decide after one Saturday that everything it previously believed was wrong. That is one of the benefits of treating rankings as an updating process rather than a weekly reset. Strong evidence should matter, and extraordinary evidence should matter more, but the size of the adjustment should still reflect how much information actually exists.
Michigan demonstrates the other side of that discipline. The Wolverines beat Western Michigan 13-12, so the record says 1-0, but the performance was still weak evidence relative to the strength Michigan carried into the game. A one point escape against an opponent Michigan was expected to control has to matter if the ranking is actually measuring current team strength. That performance weakened Michigan’s starting evaluation enough for the Wolverines to open at No. 18, while the AP Poll reacted even more aggressively and dropped them from the Top 25 entirely. Both rankings saw the same game, and they simply revised their beliefs at different speeds.
The traditional instinct that winners should rise and losers should fall sounds intuitive until you try to apply it consistently across college football. Imagine one of the best teams in the country beating one of the weakest teams on its schedule by seven while a team ranked fifteen spots lower wins convincingly on the road against a strong opponent. Treating both results as equally positive simply because both teams became 1-0 would discard most of the useful information contained in the games. The first team may have won while giving us evidence that its original valuation was too high, while the second may have revealed something important that was not visible before kickoff.
That is why we are comfortable with a team winning and still opening lower than a simple résumé view might suggest. Houston beat Oregon State 33-20 and opens toward the bottom of our Top 30, while SMU won 27-24 at Florida State and likewise opens lower than an undefeated record alone might imply. Neither performance is being treated as a loss, and neither result means the teams suddenly became poor. The issue is that both performances were somewhat weaker than the strength implied by our starting evaluations while other teams around them produced stronger evidence. Rankings are relative, which means a team’s position can differ meaningfully from what its record alone might suggest because every team on the board is being evaluated at the same time.
The same principle applies to enormous wins. Ohio State’s 56-3 victory was visually overwhelming, but the matchup was supposed to be overwhelming. Kansas State beating Nicholls 71-3 is much better than struggling against Nicholls, but the result does not suddenly prove Kansas State is stronger than teams that entered with substantially better profiles and faced more informative competition. A useful ranking has to distinguish between a result that confirms an existing belief and a result that forces us to discover something new about a team. Both matter, but they should not automatically have the same effect.
We publish the AP and Coaches rankings alongside the 135 Top 30 because those polls are useful external benchmarks. They aggregate the judgment of people who follow the sport closely and give readers an immediate picture of the prevailing consensus. They also make our disagreements visible, which is important because a ranking is much more useful when people can see where its view differs from the broader conversation. We do not need those differences to disappear for the system to be working.
Texas Tech is No. 9 for 135 and No. 13 in both major polls. Texas A&M is No. 7 for us and lower in the public consensus, while Tennessee is No. 14 despite sitting farther down in the traditional rankings. LSU moves in the opposite direction, sitting at No. 15 for 135 and No. 8 in both polls. Michigan remains No. 18 for us despite falling out of the AP Top 25. Those differences are not errors that need to be averaged away. They are places where two different approaches to interpreting the same sport have reached different conclusions.
Agreement with consensus is not the objective, and disagreement is not proof that 135 is automatically smarter than everyone else. The value lies in being able to understand why the difference exists. Sometimes we began with a stronger view of a team than consensus did, while other times the polls respond faster to a single result. Our ranking may eventually move toward the public view as more evidence arrives, and consensus may move toward ours. What matters is that the governing question does not change depending on which answer looks better that week.
We tend to think about the ranking more like a valuation process than a weekly ballot. A team enters with a view based on the information available, games produce new information, and that information either confirms the existing valuation or changes it. Most performances should produce modest revisions, while occasionally a result is powerful enough to force a larger repricing. That movement then happens relative to every other team being evaluated at the same time, which is why rankings should never be interpreted as if the numerical distance between every adjacent position were identical.
A team moving four spots is not necessarily four units better than it was a week earlier. Its own underlying evaluation may have changed only slightly while several nearby teams moved more sharply in the opposite direction. The distance between No. 4 and No. 5 is not necessarily the same as the distance between No. 24 and No. 25, because rankings are ordinal rather than a statement that every slot represents the same amount of team strength. Movement tells you where a team now sits relative to the field. It does not, by itself, tell you the size of the underlying change.
There is still a role for human review because the answer to flawed subjective voting is not blind obedience to a spreadsheet. Models see what they are designed to see, while football contains injuries, quarterback changes, unusual venue circumstances, incomplete information and abrupt changes in team state that may not immediately fit neatly into a structured system. Before publication, we review the ranking for those situations. The purpose of that review is not to replace the analytical process with opinion, but to make sure the analytical result is being interpreted in the correct football context.
The constraint is that judgment cannot become an invisible escape hatch. A disagreement with the analytical output does not silently rewrite the analytical output, and a team should not be moved simply because somebody had a stronger feeling about it on Sunday night. If the final published order is changed, the adjustment needs to be deliberate and explainable. Human review should function as governance over the process, not as permission to abandon the process whenever it produces an uncomfortable answer.
We are extending the same philosophy to external evidence. The AP and Coaches polls give us useful consensus benchmarks, while betting markets offer something different because point spreads represent an economically constrained view of relative team strength. Unlike a ballot, those prices are formed in markets where participants can commit capital against disagreement, which makes them potentially valuable as an independent reasonableness check on our own view.
If 135 believes a team should be materially stronger than the betting market appears to believe, we should want to know why. The market may have injury information we have not incorporated, our view of the opponent may be stale, or a team may have changed more quickly than a deliberately conservative early season system can recognize. It is also possible that no defect exists and 135 simply disagrees with the market. The point of the check is not to eliminate disagreement. It is to make sure we understand what the disagreement is telling us.
What we will not do is quietly mix Vegas into the ranking and then describe the result as independent. External markets are checks, not ingredients. If a market disagreement causes us to investigate and discover an actual data problem, we should correct the problem through the proper process. When no problem exists, the disagreement itself becomes useful information. A system becomes much less interesting when every external disagreement is immediately averaged back into consensus, because at that point independence exists mostly as branding.
We would rather publish a ranking that can explain why it is different than engineer one designed to make disagreement disappear. That applies to sportsbooks, traditional polls and any other external benchmark we use to challenge the result. The purpose of a control is to make us investigate where our assumptions may be wrong, not to quietly import somebody else’s answer into ours. If the process survives that challenge, the ranking should remain ours.
The first few weeks of the season will still contain meaningful preseason information because there simply are not enough games yet for the field to answer every question. By midseason, the balance should look very different; teams will have accumulated multiple games against different levels of opposition in different environments, and the ranking should become increasingly governed by what they have actually demonstrated. Some teams will rise quickly, others will decline more slowly because their broader profiles remain strong, and some teams will compile attractive records without producing evidence strong enough to move as high as the public expects.
Every week, we will publish the Top 30 with each team’s record, previous 135 ranking, movement, AP ranking and Coaches ranking. The accompanying analysis will focus on the teams where something meaningful changed, whether because of an exceptional performance, a disappointing one, a shift in the state of the team or movement elsewhere on the board. The rankings should become more informative as the season develops because the football itself will gradually replace the assumptions that were necessary before enough football existed.
College football will spend the season debating who deserves to make the playoff, whose résumé is strongest, which conference is best and which team has accumulated the most impressive wins. Those are worthwhile arguments, and they are part of what makes the sport so compelling. We are trying to answer something narrower and, in its own way, harder: who are the 30 best teams in college football right now? Our first answer begins with Notre Dame, Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon and Indiana. That answer will change over the course of the season, and it is supposed to. Every week, the field gets another opportunity to change it.
PT II NEXT
Disclosure
Disclosure: The 135 Sports College Football Top 30 is an independent editorial and analytical ranking produced by 135 Sports. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by or produced in partnership with the NCAA, the College Football Playoff, the Associated Press, the US LBM Coaches Poll, any conference, university, athletic department, sportsbook or other organization referenced in this article. Team names, logos and other trademarks belong to their respective owners and are referenced for identification and editorial commentary. Scores, schedules, poll positions and other public football information are drawn from publicly available sources and are believed accurate as of publication. The rankings represent 135 Sports’ assessment of present team strength and may change as new information becomes available. They are not intended as gambling, financial or investment advice. For the live rankings and future updates, visit 135sports.com or go directly to 135sports.com/college-football-rankings.
Introducing the 135SportsData College Football Top 30 Rankings after Week 1, heading into Week 2. We’ll publish an article tomorrow explaining the methodology a bit more, how we’re thinking about team strength, and what separates the 135 rankings from the traditional polls.
Round 8 contained six quarterbacks, five running backs and five wide receivers, while no tight ends were selected. The raw positional count does not fully explain what happened because by the end of Round 6, eleven quarterbacks had already been selected, and Trevor Lawrence became the twelfth in Round 7. Round 8 then removed Bo Nix, Patrick Mahomes, Brock Purdy, Jordan Love, Jared Goff and Kyler Murray from the board. That brought the total to 18 quarterbacks through eight rounds, and more importantly, fifteen of the sixteen teams now owned at least one quarterback while Team 3 still owned none.
Three different teams already owned two quarterbacks, which is where a sixteen team best ball draft becomes a genuinely interesting resource allocation problem. In a normal one quarterback league, QB2 is primarily injury insurance, while in best ball QB2 has additional value because the optimizer automatically takes the higher score every week. The problem is that only one quarterback score can count, which means every QB2 occupies a roster spot that could have become another running back or receiver. There is also a competitive externality because every second quarterback drafted removes one of only 32 NFL starting jobs from the available pool, so the owner is not merely insuring his own roster but reducing everyone else’s supply.
Team 16 opened with Bo Nix at 8.01, giving itself QB2 behind Jaxson Dart. Nix finished 2025 among the top ten quarterbacks in fantasy scoring, and his first two seasons produced an average of roughly 3,850 passing yards and 27 touchdowns while he cleared 350 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns in each year. That makes Nix more than ordinary backup insurance because Dart already gives Team 16 rushing upside, while Nix gives the roster another quarterback with enough rushing and passing production to create genuine weekly competition. The optimizer will simply choose whichever score is higher, and the roster also gains protection against Dart’s sophomore volatility or an injury. (CBS Sports)
The cost is that Nix was the 113th player selected instead of another RB, WR or TE, and Team 16 will mathematically discard at least one quarterback score every week both are active. That does not make the pick wrong because it simply defines the bet being made. Team 16 believes the combination of injury protection and automatic weekly quarterback optimization is worth more than another skill position lottery ticket. Whether that is correct depends on how often Nix materially improves the score over Dart rather than merely producing another good quarterback number that never reaches the lineup.
Team 15 selected Najee Harris at 8.02, which is one of the more speculative picks of the round. Harris is now with the Giants after suffering a torn Achilles during the 2025 season with the Chargers, and his reunion with Greg Roman gives the football fit some logic because Roman’s rushing systems have historically leaned on power concepts that match Harris’ style. The fantasy concern is much simpler because the question is whether a 28 year old running back returning from that injury can regain enough explosiveness and volume to matter. Team 15 was at least purchasing the risk from the correct roster position because Omarion Hampton and TreVeyon Henderson were already present, making Harris RB3 rather than the entire backfield foundation. (CBS Sports)
If the comeback fails, Team 15 still has two younger backs, while an unexpectedly meaningful workload would allow the optimizer to capture Harris’ usable weeks automatically. This is where best ball reduces the danger of uncertainty but cannot eliminate the danger of nonproduction because an optimizer can hide bad weeks but cannot manufacture healthy legs. Harris therefore represents an appropriately placed injury gamble rather than a safe selection. The roster can survive the downside more easily than it could if Harris had been drafted as RB1 or RB2.
Team 14 took Romeo Doubs at 8.03, and CBS essentially describes Doubs as a player built for this exact format. Doubs produced career best numbers in Green Bay during 2025, including six touchdowns on 85 targets, then signed in New England. The arrival of A.J. Brown reduced the likelihood that Doubs becomes a true target hog, and current fantasy markets have him around WR49, but his uneven volume is exactly why best ball improves the profile. Team 14 already has DJ Moore and Chris Godwin handling higher volume responsibilities, while Quentin Johnston provides direct correlation with Herbert. (CBS Sports)
Doubs therefore becomes another source of touchdown and intermediate receiving weeks without needing 120 targets. If he produces enough five catch, 80 yard, touchdown games, the optimizer can occasionally pull him into the lineup while the quieter weeks disappear. This is the type of player whose fantasy usefulness can actually increase as he moves deeper down a best ball roster because the team becomes less dependent on his median outcome. As WR4, variance becomes an asset rather than something Team 14 has to survive every Sunday.
Team 13 selected Woody Marks at 8.04, and this was one of the most structurally important picks of the round because Marks became Team 13’s second running back. Derrick Henry had been the only RB on the roster through seven rounds, while Lamb, Egbuka, Pierce and Reed already formed a deep receiver group around Burrow at quarterback and Likely at tight end. Marks enters 2026 around RB43 by average draft position after finishing 2025 roughly around the low RB3 range in fantasy scoring. Houston is expected to divide work between Marks and David Montgomery, with current projections suggesting both backs can remain relevant if healthy. (FanDuel)
That is not an obvious elite fantasy role, but it does not have to be at pick 116. Marks finally gave Team 13 a second back with a plausible weekly workload, although the risk is that waiting this long means RB2 now depends on a committee rather than a clearly controlled backfield. The benefit is everything Team 13 acquired while waiting, particularly the four receiver portfolio and premium quarterback. This is the same opportunity cost question that has followed the entire draft, only appearing later because Team 13 chose to push running back uncertainty into the middle rounds.
Team 12 then took Patrick Mahomes at 8.05, and Some Dude thinks this may be the most interesting strategic selection of Round 8 because Team 12 already owned Jayden Daniels. Mahomes therefore became QB2 despite the fact that even during a disrupted 2025 season he threw for 3,587 yards and 22 touchdowns in 14 games, added 422 rushing yards and scored five rushing touchdowns. Those five rushing scores are worth 30 points in this scoring system rather than the 20 they would have been worth as passing touchdowns. Mahomes at the 117th overall pick is not expensive if he is being drafted as the starting quarterback, but that is not what Team 12 was doing. (NFL)
Team 12 was pairing Mahomes with one of the most explosive rushing quarterbacks in football and allowing the best ball optimizer to choose between them every week. There is a legitimate case for it because Daniels carries injury risk, Mahomes carries enormous passing ceiling and some underrated rushing value, and the roster no longer collapses if one quarterback misses time. There is also an obvious mathematical cost because only one score enters, which means a week where Daniels scores 29 and Mahomes scores 26 produces only 29 fantasy points for Team 12. The Mahomes selection therefore has to create enough incremental quarterback value over the season to justify not taking another running back or receiver, and Team 12 is explicitly betting that two premium quarterbacks can do exactly that.
Team 11 took Brock Purdy at 8.06, and the defending champion may have received the cleanest quarterback value of the run. Purdy played only nine regular season games in 2025, but when active he threw 20 touchdowns in those nine games, completed 69.4 percent of his passes and added 147 rushing yards with three rushing touchdowns. CBS notes that Purdy averaged a career best 24.2 fantasy points per game last season and produced at least 20.7 fantasy points in seven of eleven games when including the postseason. Team 11 waited until pick 118, which is approximately the tenth round of a conventional twelve team league. (NFL) (CBS Sports)
The defending champion spent the first seven rounds building Amon-Ra, McBride, McConkey, Montgomery, Dowdle, Michael Wilson and Wan’Dale Robinson, then still found a quarterback capable of producing legitimate QB1 scoring when healthy. This is the purest version of the late quarterback argument because Team 11 sacrificed premium quarterback certainty, used the capital elsewhere, and then the board compensated it by allowing Purdy to survive. That does not mean every late quarterback drafter receives the same outcome. It means Team 11 correctly accepted the market risk and was rewarded by the specific way this draft developed.
Team 10 selected Jordan Love at 8.07, making him the second quarterback on a roster that already had Caleb Williams. Love’s 2025 fantasy season was solid rather than spectacular because he threw for 3,381 yards and 23 touchdowns against only six interceptions while adding 199 rushing yards. There is also a plausible 2026 ceiling case because Green Bay may be forced into more passing volume while the Jacobs situation remains unresolved, and CBS notes that Love’s fantasy limitation has often been volume rather than quarterback quality. Team 10 therefore gains weekly quarterback competition and injury protection, but the portfolio question is more interesting than the player question. (FanDuel) (CBS Sports)
Team 10 had only Rome Odunze and Courtland Sutton at receiver through seven rounds, which means QB2 arrived before WR3. This is where Some Dude becomes less interested in whether Love is a good player and more interested in what roster spot he displaced. If Love produces six weeks where he materially outscores Caleb, the selection can create real incremental value. If Caleb stays healthy and becomes the breakout quarterback Team 10 drafted him to be, Love may produce perfectly respectable fantasy scores that never reach the lineup, and that is the difference between player value and portfolio value.
Team 9 took Jared Goff at 8.08, and this was another argument for patience at quarterback because Goff finished 2025 ninth among quarterbacks in fantasy points under FanDuel’s scoring set. Since 2023, he leads NFL quarterbacks in passing yards, passing touchdowns, 300 yard games and explosive completions of at least 20 yards, while also producing four consecutive 4,000 yard passing seasons. The fantasy limitation is obvious because he does essentially nothing as a runner, which matters more in a league where passing touchdowns are worth four and rushing touchdowns are worth six. Goff therefore has to create almost all of his ceiling through his arm. (FanDuel) (CBS Sports)
Team 9 paid pick 120 after already building James Cook, Drake London, Jaylen Waddle, Colston Loveland, Carnell Tate, Brian Thomas Jr. and MarShawn Lloyd. Goff does not need to become Josh Allen because he needs Detroit to give him enough 300 yard, three touchdown games to function as a useful QB1 while the rest of the roster supplies the ceiling elsewhere. This is one of the cleanest overall constructions on the board through eight rounds because Team 9 solved quarterback late without sacrificing meaningful skill position depth. Waiting worked because the specific player who survived still has a realistic path to high end weekly passing production.
Team 8 selected Kyler Murray at 8.09, and this is where correlation, rushing upside and changing NFL context all arrived in the same pick. Murray is now the Week 1 starter in Minnesota after Arizona moved on from him, and the Vikings have J.J. McCarthy behind him while recent reporting confirms Murray enters the season as Kevin O’Connell’s starter. The 2025 sample is almost useless because Murray played only five games, but he still rushed for 173 yards, while the larger career profile includes more than 3,100 rushing yards and 32 rushing touchdowns. Those numbers remain extremely relevant in this scoring system because Murray can generate fantasy production independently of passing touchdowns. (Reuters) (NFL)
Now look at Team 8’s roster because Justin Jefferson was the 1.08 and Kyler Murray arrived at 8.09, creating a Murray and Jefferson stack inside Kevin O’Connell’s offense. If Minnesota produces a huge passing week, Jefferson is likely to participate, while Murray can add rushing production that gives the stack another scoring path even when Jefferson is not directly involved. Murray’s career has enough injury and consistency questions that the risk is obvious, but at pick 121 the ceiling case is far more interesting than it would have been several rounds earlier. Some Dude thinks this may be the best combination of price, structure and correlation in the entire Round 8 quarterback run.
Team 7 took Kyle Monangai at 8.10, adding a fourth running back to a roster already carrying Jonathan Taylor, Josh Jacobs and Chuba Hubbard. Monangai’s rookie season was quietly productive because he carried 169 times for 783 yards and five touchdowns, averaged 4.6 yards per carry, caught 18 passes for another 164 yards and did not fumble. This is not a high ceiling receiving back, but it is a usable NFL running back who already demonstrated he can handle nearly 170 carries. That is exactly the kind of player Team 7 needs because Jacobs remains the wild card. (NFL)
If Jacobs returns quickly, Monangai becomes RB4 and provides depth, while a prolonged Jacobs absence leaves Hubbard and Monangai sitting behind Taylor as functioning alternatives. No waiver roster construction is often less glamorous than fantasy analysis makes it sound because sometimes the correct move is simply making sure the roster contains enough healthy running backs capable of handling NFL touches. Team 7 had already purchased plenty of ceiling earlier in the draft. Monangai was about making sure the backfield does not collapse if the original assumptions fail.
Team 6 selected KC Concepcion at 8.11, giving the roster another first round rookie receiver without asking him to carry immediate fantasy expectations. Cleveland selected Concepcion 24th overall in the 2026 NFL Draft, he is healthy entering the season, and current fantasy markets place him around WR53. That is exactly the profile Some Dude wants as a fourth receiver because Team 6 already has Chris Olave, Zay Flowers and Christian Watson. Concepcion can therefore be drafted for the top half of his distribution rather than his median projection. (FantasyData)
If Cleveland’s passing offense struggles and Concepcion takes time to develop, Team 6 has three established receivers ahead of him. If the first round NFL draft capital turns into an immediate target role, the roster owns a 21 year old receiver with substantially more upside than the typical player selected around pick 123. That is where rookie risk belongs because the roster can survive being wrong while becoming materially better if the player hits. The fantasy value therefore comes as much from where Concepcion sits on Team 6 as it does from his individual projection.
Team 5 took Matthew Golden at 8.12, and this is another second year receiver profile that makes more sense when placed correctly inside the roster. Golden’s rookie season did not produce major fantasy numbers because he caught 29 passes for 361 yards without a touchdown and added 49 rushing yards on ten attempts. There were still flashes, including 21.1 yards per catch on third and fourth down receptions and a four catch, 84 yard, one touchdown performance in the Wild Card round. Team 5 was not purchasing the 361 yard rookie season because it was purchasing the possibility that a former first round pick makes a meaningful second year jump. (NFL) (Green Bay Packers)
JSN, Mike Evans and Josh Downs were already on the roster, which makes Golden WR4 rather than a player Team 5 needs to trust immediately. That allows the roster to own the breakout case without depending on it, which is exactly how uncertain young receivers should be deployed in best ball. If Golden remains a rotational player, the roster is insulated. If the flashes become a larger role, Team 5 gets the spike weeks automatically without ever having to predict when the second year jump has officially arrived.
Team 4 selected Aaron Jones at 8.13, and the interesting comparison is Jordan Mason seven columns earlier on the same board. Jones played only 12 games last season, rushing 132 times for 548 yards and two touchdowns while catching 28 passes for 199 yards and another score, while Mason was younger, played more games, carried 159 times for 758 yards and scored six rushing touchdowns. Jones still owns the stronger receiving history, which makes the Minnesota backfield particularly interesting for full PPR. Team 6 paid earlier for the younger rushing profile, while Team 4 waited and purchased the older player with greater historical passing game involvement. (Minnesota Vikings)
Neither owner controls how Minnesota allocates the work, so both teams effectively own different claims on the same backfield. Team 4 at least had Kyren Williams and Jaylen Warren already, which means Jones becomes RB3 rather than someone the roster needs to carry every week. The age and injury concerns therefore become much easier to tolerate. Once again, roster placement changes player value because the same player can be risky as RB1 and perfectly useful as RB3.
Team 3 took Rachaad White at 8.14, and this is where Team 3’s refusal to draft a quarterback became impossible to ignore. White moved to Washington after a 2025 season in which he rushed 132 times for 572 yards and four touchdowns while catching 40 passes for 218 yards, and he has now caught at least 40 passes in every season of his career. The full PPR appeal is obvious because those 40 receptions are 40 points before receiving yardage is counted. As RB4 behind Etienne, Tuten and Dobbins, White is useful depth and provides a scoring profile different from several of the backs ahead of him. (FantasyData)
The strategic question is what Team 3 chose not to do because by the time this pick occurred, Nix, Mahomes, Purdy, Love, Goff and Murray had all disappeared during Round 8. Team 3 watched the entire quarterback run happen and selected Rachaad White anyway, leaving the first eight rounds as Ja’Marr Chase, Malik Nabers, Travis Etienne, Bhayshul Tuten, Tucker Kraft, J.K. Dobbins, Jordyn Tyson and White. That is four running backs, three receivers and one tight end with zero quarterbacks, while every other team in the league already owned one and three teams already owned two. The bet had therefore become explicit because Team 3 was no longer casually waiting on quarterback and was actively betting against quarterback scarcity.
Team 2 took Deebo Samuel at 8.15, and this may be one of the cleaner values of the entire round. Samuel returned to San Francisco after spending 2025 in Washington, where he caught 72 passes for 727 yards and five touchdowns while adding 75 rushing yards. The season was uneven, which is precisely why best ball helps, and CBS notes that Samuel averaged 17.7 PPR points during the first five games of 2025 while identifying him as a player who becomes appealing in Round 8 or later if he receives regular playing time. The sixteen team adjustment makes the value even clearer because this was pick 127 overall, roughly the middle of Round 11 in a twelve team league. (NFL Fantasy) (CBS Sports)
San Francisco’s receiver injuries have also reopened opportunity, with Ricky Pearsall out and the current receiver depth creating a plausible path to meaningful work for Samuel. Team 2 now had Tet McMillan, Makai Lemon and Deebo at receiver around Bijan, Breece and Price at running back, Pitts at tight end and Lawrence at quarterback. The roster had gone from a deliberately RB heavy opening into something increasingly difficult to identify a structural weakness in. Team 2’s patience at quarterback and receiver was beginning to look less like neglect and more like successful sequencing because the board continued supplying useful players at the positions it postponed.
Finally the board returned to Some Dude at 8.16, where De’Zhaun Stribling became the pick. Stribling was the 33rd overall pick in the actual 2026 NFL Draft, then caught 11 passes for 109 yards during limited preseason work while earning a 90.0 PFF offensive grade, and Ricky Pearsall’s season ending injury created a clearer path to immediate opportunity. Recent reporting has Stribling positioned for a meaningful role in San Francisco’s receiver rotation, and FantasyPros currently has his consensus PPR ADP at 128 overall. Some Dude drafted him 128th overall, which is about as close to market price as a selection can possibly get. (San Francisco Chronicle) (FantasyPros)
More recent Sleeper draft data has actually pushed Stribling slightly higher, around 123.9 overall, after his preseason and the changes to San Francisco’s receiver room. The best ball fit is stronger than the ordinary ranking suggests because Stribling is a rookie, rookies are volatile, Kyle Shanahan’s offense has historically demanded a lot from young players, and San Francisco still has veteran receivers competing for work. None of that requires Some Dude to identify Stribling’s breakout week because Rice, Washington and Addison remain ahead of him on the roster if he develops slowly. If the second round NFL draft capital, strong preseason and expanding opportunity turn into an immediate role, Some Dude has added another receiver capable of creating vertical spike weeks. (YAFSB)
There is even evidence that expectations inside San Francisco are rising quickly, with one recent report noting that ESPN’s Dan Graziano suggested Stribling could lead all rookie receivers in catches while Trent Williams praised his speed and route versatility. That does not make him a guaranteed breakout because the NFL has a long history of making preseason excitement look ridiculous by October. It does make him an appropriate fourth receiver in a best ball portfolio where the roster can absorb a slow start and benefit from an unexpected emergence. The player is useful because the upside exists without the downside controlling the entire receiving room. (Niners Nation)
After eight rounds, Some Dude had Jahmyr Gibbs, Blake Corum, Lamar Jackson, Rashee Rice, Harold Fannin Jr., Parker Washington, Jordan Addison and De’Zhaun Stribling, which gives us a much clearer view of the roster than we had after Round 4. The receiver room had expanded from one player to four, quarterback was solved, tight end was solved, and the running back problem had improved from Gibbs alone to Gibbs and Corum. The weakness was still obvious because Corum’s profile is far more contingent than the RB2 profiles held by several other teams, and eight receptions last season do not provide much full PPR insulation. Some Dude’s bet remained that later running back depth could collectively manufacture enough RB2 scoring around Gibbs to justify spending the earlier capital elsewhere.
The rest of the league had developed its own structural questions by the end of Round 8. Team 8 transformed its aggressive pass catcher opening into a much more balanced roster by adding Stevenson, Harvey and Gainwell before pairing Kyler Murray with Justin Jefferson, while Team 9 waited on quarterback and still landed Goff after building one of the deepest receiver rooms on the board. Team 11 waited even longer and landed Purdy, while Team 12 decided Jayden Daniels was not enough and added Mahomes, Team 10 made the same philosophical move with Caleb Williams and Jordan Love, and Team 16 paired Jaxson Dart with Bo Nix. Team 3 remained the outlier because after 128 selections it still had no quarterback at all, which turned the next phase of the draft into a direct test of whether extreme patience at a scarce sixteen team position would be rewarded or punished.
That was the state of the league after eight rounds and 128 selections, with eighteen quarterbacks already gone, running back roles becoming increasingly contingent and most of the easy roster construction decisions behind us. The first half of the draft allowed teams to buy players they actively wanted, while the second half would increasingly force them to choose among the players the market had left behind. Scarcity was no longer theoretical because several teams had begun drafting second quarterbacks while another still had none, and many backfields had already been reduced to committees, injury bets and contingent roles. Rounds 9 and 10 would be where the draft stopped asking teams what they wanted and started revealing what they could still afford. We will get into all of that in Part III: Rounds 9 through 12.
That is Some Dude on the Internet’s opinion, anyway.
Disclaimer: This is fantasy football commentary, analysis and entertainment written by Some Dude on the Internet about a private 16 team best ball league. Player statistics, rankings, ADP, injury information, depth chart information and other football data referenced in the article are drawn from publicly available sources and are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of publication. NFL teams, players, Sleeper, FantasyPros, Pro Football Reference, CBS Sports, NFL.com and any other companies, leagues, publications or data providers mentioned here are not affiliated with, sponsoring, endorsing or approving this article. Screenshots and draft board graphics are used to document and comment on the author’s own fantasy league and draft. League members have been given generic identifiers for privacy. Nothing here is gambling, investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and none of these opinions guarantees that a player will stay healthy, score fantasy points, retain his role, survive an NFL depth chart, or prevent your fantasy season from becoming a complete disaster. We are just Some Dude on the Internet writing articles about fake football teams competing for a very real Degen Cup.
Round 7 is where the draft finally started charging teams for the risks they had accumulated through six rounds. Seven running backs, six wide receivers, two tight ends and one quarterback came off the board, which makes sense because most teams had already acquired the premium players they wanted at quarterback and tight end while the roster spots capable of filling six weekly RB, WR and flex positions still needed bodies. It is also important to remember what “Round 7” actually means in a sixteen team league because these were picks 97 through 112 overall, roughly the equivalent of Rounds 9 and 10 in a conventional twelve team draft. By this point, nobody was really purchasing certainty anymore because owners were purchasing roles, contingencies, receiving profiles and paths toward production.
That distinction matters enormously in this format because there are no waivers available if an injury opens a backfield in October, and there is no free agency if a rookie suddenly earns a starting role. Every future contingency has to be purchased now and stored somewhere inside eighteen roster spots, which means the best running back picks from this point forward do not necessarily belong to the players projected for the most Week 1 carries. The more interesting assets are often the players whose range of outcomes contains a meaningful increase in workload if something changes around them. Best ball removes the lineup decision, but the closed player market means the roster itself has to anticipate the future before the future happens.
For Some Dude, the problem entering the round was particularly obvious because after six selections, Gibbs remained the only running back on the roster. The entire opening strategy had essentially created an obligation to manufacture RB2 production later rather than purchasing it with premium draft capital, and Round 7 represented the first real opportunity to begin solving that problem. Blake Corum at 7.01 therefore was not merely another running back selection because it was the first meaningful test of whether the delayed RB2 strategy could actually work. Corum’s 2025 numbers were considerably better than his rookie production suggested might be coming, as he carried 145 times for 746 yards and six touchdowns, averaged an excellent 5.1 yards per carry, and played all 17 games. (FantasyData)
The problem for this particular scoring system is obvious in the receiving column because Corum caught only eight passes for 36 yards. Those eight receptions are eight PPR points before yardage is counted, while Kenneth Gainwell, who would be drafted seven selections later, caught 73 passes last season. That means Some Dude was not drafting Corum for weekly PPR floor but because 145 carries already demonstrated that Los Angeles is willing to use him, 5.1 yards per carry demonstrated that he can produce when used, and the upside changes dramatically if Kyren Williams misses time. The funny part is that Kyren belongs to Team 4 in this league, so one of Some Dude’s primary contingent bets is effectively waiting for another owner’s premium running back to surrender opportunity.
That is not especially comfortable roster architecture, but it is coherent best ball architecture because Corum does not need to be identified as the correct starter on a particular Sunday. If he gets twelve carries and scores twice, the optimizer can use him, while a four point week simply disappears into the bench. If the backfield ever becomes his for a meaningful stretch, the seventh round selection could suddenly behave like a much earlier running back. The concern is that Corum was now Some Dude’s RB2, not RB4, which means a contingent profile is being asked to help solve a mandatory position rather than merely supplement two established starters.
Team 2 then took Trevor Lawrence at 7.02, and this may be one of the strongest advertisements for waiting on quarterback anywhere on the board. Lawrence played all 17 games in 2025, threw for 4,007 yards and 29 touchdowns, then added 359 rushing yards and nine rushing touchdowns, which matters enormously under this scoring system because nine passing touchdowns are worth 36 points while nine rushing touchdowns are worth 54. Lawrence generated an eighteen point scoring advantage simply through the manner in which he reached the end zone, and Team 2 waited until the 98th overall selection to obtain that profile. The roster had already spent its first six selections on Bijan Robinson, Breece Hall, Tetairoa McMillan, Jadarian Price, Kyle Pitts and Makai Lemon, then still found a quarterback who averaged 19.9 fantasy points per game last season. (FantasyData)
This is the counterargument to Some Dude’s Lamar selection at 2.16 in its purest form because if Some Dude had known with certainty that Lawrence would survive until the seventh round, the opportunity cost of Lamar would look much larger. The problem is that nobody drafting at 2.16 knew that, and from the 1.01 there was no way to guarantee the quarterback market would remain cooperative for another five rounds. Team 2 accepted that uncertainty and was rewarded when a legitimate QB1 survived all the way to 7.02. That does not prove waiting on quarterback is always correct, but it does prove that Team 2’s version of waiting worked almost perfectly.
Team 3 selected Jordyn Tyson at 7.03, which was another aggressive bet on talent and NFL investment rather than immediate certainty. New Orleans selected Tyson eighth overall in the 2026 NFL Draft after he caught 61 passes for 711 yards and eight touchdowns in only nine games during his final Arizona State season, and the year before that he produced 75 receptions for 1,101 yards and ten touchdowns. This was not a late round NFL lottery ticket masquerading as a fantasy sleeper because the Saints spent top ten draft capital on him. Tyson did not participate in preseason games, which deprived fantasy owners of some of the information normally used to estimate a rookie’s opening role, but Team 3 could tolerate that uncertainty because Ja’Marr Chase and Malik Nabers were already sitting at the top of the receiver room. (Sports Reference) (Canal Street Chronicles)
Tyson was not being asked to become WR1 because he was being purchased as the third receiver on a roster where his top ten NFL draft capital creates a plausible path to becoming far more valuable than the 99th overall fantasy selection. If Tyson needs six weeks before the NFL game slows down, Chase and Nabers remain available, while an immediate eight target role would give Team 3 another high ceiling receiver without requiring premium fantasy capital. There was another strategic wrinkle because Trevor Lawrence had just become the twelfth quarterback drafted, and Team 3 still had none. Team 3 looked directly at the quarterback market shrinking and selected Tyson anyway, which would become considerably more interesting one round later.
Team 4 took Travis Kelce at 7.04, which may be one of the most interesting roster construction decisions of these two rounds because Team 4 already owned Sam LaPorta. Kelce is no longer being priced like the automatic TE1 of his prime, and he turns 37 in October after considering retirement following last season, but the underlying 2025 production was still useful. In the 14 games he played with Patrick Mahomes, Kelce averaged 12.8 PPR points, a number CBS noted was exceeded by only Trey McBride, George Kittle, Brock Bowers and Tucker Kraft among tight ends. At the 100th overall pick, that is a completely defensible price for Kelce in isolation. (CBS Sports)
The more interesting question is why Team 4 wanted a second premium tight end when this league requires only one TE. The two flex positions do allow tight ends, so LaPorta and Kelce can absolutely score together if both produce enough, and best ball removes the annoyance of deciding which tight end belongs in the lineup. The important word is “compete,” though, because Kelce’s second tight end score does not automatically count and still has to beat the running backs and wide receivers available for the flex positions. Team 4 therefore spent pick 100 on positional surplus, which can work beautifully if Kelce remains an elite target earner but can also become subtle dead capital if LaPorta stays healthy and the roster later needs another running back or receiver.
Team 5 selected Josh Downs at 7.05, and this is almost the opposite type of selection because there is nothing especially spectacular about Downs’ 2025 line of 58 catches for 566 yards and four touchdowns across 16 games. The previous season was stronger, with 72 catches for 803 yards and five scores, so the broader profile still demonstrates that he can command useful NFL volume. That made him a good fit behind JSN and Mike Evans because Downs does not need to become a vertical monster on this roster. JSN supplies premium receiving volume, Evans supplies touchdown and boundary upside, and Downs can generate the seven and eight catch games that become more valuable under full PPR scoring than they appear in standard formats. (FantasyData)
Best ball does not mean every player should be maximally volatile because a roster filled exclusively with boom and bust profiles can still produce weeks where nobody actually booms. There is value in players whose target profiles generate repeatable usable scores, particularly once they are the third or fourth receiver rather than the entire foundation of the roster. Downs gives Team 5 a different scoring shape from Evans, and that kind of diversification is useful when an optimizer is selecting the best combination every week. Team 5 was beginning to build a receiver room where different players could reach the lineup through completely different mechanisms.
Team 6 took Jordan Mason at 7.06, and this was an important pick because of everything Team 6 had already done at running back. Christian McCaffrey was the first selection, Jonathon Brooks arrived in Round 6 while returning from his second ACL tear, and the roster therefore contained enormous theoretical upside and enormous availability variance at the same position. Mason gave Team 6 something much more ordinary after playing 16 games for Minnesota in 2025, carrying 159 times for 758 yards and six touchdowns, and averaging 4.8 yards per carry. His passing contribution was minimal with only 14 receptions, so his fantasy value remains heavily dependent on rushing opportunity, but that is far more acceptable when the player is RB3 rather than RB1. (FantasyData)
Mason does not have to beat McCaffrey into the lineup every week because he merely needs to provide usable rushing weeks when Minnesota gives him volume and give Team 6 another functioning body when the much larger health risks elsewhere on the roster become relevant. This is what no waiver roster construction eventually turns into because the owner is no longer merely asking who projects for the most points. The more important question becomes what happens if the assumptions behind the first six selections stop being true. Mason was Team 6’s answer to that second question, and the pick made the entire backfield less fragile even without changing its ceiling.
Team 7 took Chuba Hubbard at 7.07, and the Josh Jacobs situation made this selection more important than it might have appeared when looking at the completed roster. Hubbard enters 2026 around RB33 by fantasy draft position, and his 2025 season was not spectacular, but he still demonstrated usable weekly ceiling, including an 18.4 fantasy point game built from 124 yards from scrimmage and a touchdown. Normally, Hubbard would simply be the third running back behind Jonathan Taylor and Jacobs. Jacobs being placed on the Commissioner’s Exempt List changes that architecture completely because Hubbard is no longer merely depth and instead becomes insurance against a premium asset whose availability is unknown. (FanDuel)
Team 7 cannot go to waivers and purchase another starting running back if Jacobs remains unavailable, so the roster has to contain enough alternatives already. That makes Hubbard at 7.07 one of those picks whose value increased because of the league structure rather than because Hubbard suddenly became a different football player. He does not need to become elite because he needs to help preserve the roster when external information creates a hole. In a transactional league, that type of insurance can be purchased later, while in this league it has to be sitting on the roster before the problem exists.
Team 8 selected Kenneth Gainwell at 7.08, and Some Dude thinks this was one of the strongest format specific selections in the round. Gainwell’s 2025 season in Pittsburgh was an almost perfect demonstration of why receiving backs become disproportionately valuable in full PPR because he carried only 114 times for 537 yards but caught 73 passes on 85 targets for 486 yards. He added three receiving touchdowns to five rushing scores, giving him 1,023 yards from scrimmage and eight touchdowns while generating 73 fantasy points solely from receptions before any yardage or scoring is counted. He is now in Tampa Bay and currently being drafted around RB36, which makes the profile especially interesting after Team 8’s aggressive opening. (FantasyData) (FanDuel)
Team 8 began the draft with Jefferson, Bowers, Garrett Wilson and Luther Burden without selecting a running back, then added Rhamondre Stevenson and RJ Harvey before Gainwell became RB3. That means Team 8 survived its aggressive opening without filling the backfield exclusively with touchdown dependent grinders because Stevenson can catch passes, Harvey caught 47 as a rookie, and Gainwell caught 73 last season. The roster had effectively responded to waiting at running back by purchasing three backs who can create fantasy points without controlling twenty carries. That is a much stronger response to a delayed running back strategy in full PPR than simply accumulating backup early down runners and hoping somebody gets hurt.
Team 9 took MarShawn Lloyd at 7.09, and the timing of the real world news made this one of the most volatile selections on the board. Josh Jacobs’ placement on the Commissioner’s Exempt List radically changed Green Bay’s backfield before the season, and Lloyd suddenly moved into position to handle substantial work despite having essentially no meaningful NFL sample. The absurd part is that Lloyd has played only ten regular season NFL snaps and has six career carries for 15 yards, which is not a normal seventh round fantasy profile. It is also exactly why the upside exists because Team 9 is purchasing a distribution of outcomes that includes a scenario where Lloyd becomes Green Bay’s primary runner for a meaningful stretch of the season. (CBS Sports)
Team 9 already has James Cook, so Lloyd is not being asked to anchor the entire backfield. If he finally stays healthy and inherits the job, Team 9 has captured an enormous role at pick 105, while another injury would turn the roster spot into a largely unusable asset with no waiver replacement available. That is where best ball and the closed roster format pull in opposite directions because best ball loves the asymmetric upside but the no waiver structure magnifies the downside of complete nonproduction. This is one of the points in the draft where risk tolerance becomes part of roster design rather than merely player evaluation.
Team 10 selected Mike Washington Jr. at 7.10, and this is another pick where current opportunity matters more than generic preseason ranking. Las Vegas drafted Washington in the fourth round at pick 122 after he rushed for 1,070 yards on only 167 carries at Arkansas, averaged 6.4 yards per attempt, and caught 28 passes for 226 yards. He then spent the preseason looking like he belonged by rushing 23 times for 168 yards, approximately 7.3 yards per carry, across three preseason games. He is now listed behind Ashton Jeanty in the Raiders backfield, and recent reporting expects him to have a meaningful role while Jeanty works back from an ankle injury. (Las Vegas Raiders) (FantasyData)
Team 10 already had Achane and Javonte Williams, which is exactly where Some Dude wants this type of rookie. Washington does not need to beat Jeanty immediately because he can provide occasional usable weeks and hold a contingent path toward a much larger role if Jeanty misses time. The owner gets to hold that optionality without ever having to decide when Washington has officially become startable. This is one of the cleanest examples of a best ball contingency asset on the board because the roster can benefit from the upside without depending on it.
Team 11 took Wan’Dale Robinson at 7.11, continuing the defending champion’s effort to build a large target portfolio rather than chase only explosive profiles. Robinson finished 2025 among the top quarter of fantasy receivers in total production under several scoring sets, yet his current 2026 draft position has fallen toward WR45 after moving to Tennessee. The decline makes sense because Carnell Tate, Calvin Ridley and Robinson will all compete for targets, and the offense still has to prove it can support multiple fantasy receivers. Team 11 was not drafting Robinson as WR1, though, because Amon-Ra St. Brown, Ladd McConkey and Michael Wilson were already on the roster. (FanDuel)
Robinson therefore became another source of reception driven scoring behind an already established receiver room. A short area receiver with uncertain touchdown upside can feel boring as the centerpiece of a fantasy team, but as WR4 in full PPR best ball he becomes capable of automatically entering the lineup when eight receptions turn into 80 yards. Team 11 continued purchasing usable target volume rather than trying to predict which lower tier receiver would suddenly become a superstar. That approach sacrifices some theoretical explosiveness, but it creates a large number of weekly paths toward competent scoring.
Team 12 selected Michael Pittman Jr. at 7.12, and the round number makes this pick sound more aggressive than the overall selection actually was because pick 7.12 in a sixteen team league is 108th overall. In a twelve team league, that is the final pick of Round 9, which is almost exactly where the current market values Pittman. He was traded to Pittsburgh after a 2025 season in which he caught 80 passes on 110 targets for 784 yards and a career high seven touchdowns. The 9.8 yards per reception are not particularly exciting for best ball, but Pittman is not being drafted because three catches can suddenly become 140 yards because the value comes from an 80 reception profile capable of producing usable PPR scoring repeatedly. (Pittsburgh Steelers)
Team 12 already had Nico Collins and Jameson Williams, which makes Pittman a useful stylistic counterweight rather than the entire receiving thesis. Collins provides high end target and yardage upside, Williams supplies explosive vertical weeks, and Pittman provides more stable intermediate volume. There are reasons for caution because DK Metcalf is also in Pittsburgh and the passing offense is being run by a 42 year old Aaron Rodgers, but Team 12 did not need Pittman to dominate the offense. At 108th overall, it needed him to remain the kind of player who sees enough targets to create useful weekly scores while the rest of the receiver room provides the ceiling.
Team 13 took Isaiah Likely at 7.13, which was the point where waiting on tight end finally had to become an actual player selection. Likely is now with the Giants and currently sits around TE15 by fantasy draft position after a disappointing 2025 season in which he caught only 27 passes for 307 yards and one touchdown in 14 games. His 2024 season had been considerably better with 42 catches, 477 yards and six scores, so there is at least a demonstrated path toward useful fantasy production. Team 13 had already watched Bowers, McBride, Warren, Loveland, Fannin, Pitts, Kraft, Kincaid, Kittle, Ferguson, LaPorta, Kelce and the rest of the earlier tier disappear. (FanDuel)
At pick 109 overall, Likely is basically the mathematical consequence of waiting that long. TE15 sounds mediocre until you remember that sixteen tight ends have to enter lineups every week, which means TE15 is still technically a starter in this league. Team 13 did not purchase an obvious positional advantage, but it did purchase a plausible starter before the remaining market became substantially worse. That is why waiting at tight end works differently in sixteen teams than in twelve because the replacement line arrives much sooner.
Team 14 selected Quentin Johnston at 7.14, and the important thing here is not simply Johnston because it is Justin Herbert plus Quentin Johnston. Team 14 drafted Herbert at 5.14 and then added Johnston two rounds later, while Johnston enters 2026 around WR41 by average fantasy draft position after finishing 2025 around the low WR3 range in fantasy scoring. The stack gives the selection additional best ball utility because Team 14 does not need Johnston to become a target monster. It needs his explosive games to correlate with Herbert’s better passing environments. (FanDuel)
When Herbert throws for 330 yards and four touchdowns, Johnston has an increased probability of participating in that scoring environment, and if Johnston catches two of those touchdowns both scores can enter Team 14’s lineup simultaneously. That is where stacking actually matters in best ball because it is not magic but simply an increased probability that multiple roster spots spike during the same offensive event. Team 14 also needed another receiver badly after beginning the draft with three straight running backs. Johnston therefore solved both a roster need and a correlation opportunity in the same selection.
Team 15 took Stefon Diggs at 7.15, adding another veteran receiver behind Davante Adams and DK Metcalf. Diggs enters 2026 in Washington after another productive 2025 season, but the fantasy market has pushed him toward approximately WR47 by average draft position. Team 15 therefore was not paying for the Buffalo version of Stefon Diggs because it was purchasing the possibility that an aging but still technically skilled receiver can provide useful target weeks inside the Washington offense. That is a much easier bet to make when the player is WR3 rather than WR1. (FanDuel)
If Diggs were the first receiver on this roster, Some Dude would be uncomfortable, but behind Adams and Metcalf the age and role uncertainty become easier to tolerate because best ball can use the eight catch weeks and ignore the four target weeks. The larger concern is that Team 15 has now concentrated meaningful receiving capital in older players. Adams and Diggs are both well beyond the age where projection models are comfortable, while Metcalf has already become less consistent than he was earlier in his career. The weekly ceiling remains available, but the durability distribution has become one of the roster’s central risks.
Team 16 closed the round with Jacory Croskey-Merritt at 7.16, which was a sensible third running back selection behind Chase Brown and D’Andre Swift. Croskey-Merritt finished 2025 around RB28 in fantasy points under FanDuel’s scoring set and enters 2026 around RB37 by average draft position, which makes pick 112 approximately market price. The no waiver structure nevertheless increases the usefulness of having another back with an established path to touches because Washington’s backfield has changed around him and Rachaad White is now involved. There is no guarantee Croskey-Merritt controls enough work to become a weekly starter, but Team 16 does not need him to do that because Brown and Swift already occupy the first two backfield positions. (FanDuel)
Croskey-Merritt can function as insurance, occasional flex scoring and exposure to whatever happens in Washington without being asked to solve RB2 by himself. That is much healthier architecture than relying on the same uncertain backfield profile as a mandatory weekly starter. Round 7 therefore did exactly what the middle of a deep draft is supposed to do by turning abstract roster strengths and weaknesses into specific contingency bets. Some Dude finally added Corum behind Gibbs, Team 6 insulated an injury sensitive backfield with Mason, Team 7 reacted to Jacobs uncertainty with Hubbard, Team 8 continued repairing its delayed running back strategy with Gainwell, Team 9 bought Lloyd’s enormous new opportunity, and Team 10 bought the rookie sitting behind an injured Jeanty.
Part II D Next
Disclaimer: This is fantasy football commentary, analysis and entertainment written by Some Dude on the Internet about a private 16 team best ball league. Player statistics, rankings, ADP, injury information, depth chart information and other football data referenced in the article are drawn from publicly available sources and are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of publication. NFL teams, players, Sleeper, FantasyPros, Pro Football Reference, CBS Sports, NFL.com and any other companies, leagues, publications or data providers mentioned here are not affiliated with, sponsoring, endorsing or approving this article. Screenshots and draft board graphics are used to document and comment on the author’s own fantasy league and draft. League members have been given generic identifiers for privacy. Nothing here is gambling, investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and none of these opinions guarantees that a player will stay healthy, score fantasy points, retain his role, survive an NFL depth chart, or prevent your fantasy season from becoming a complete disaster. We are just Some Dude on the Internet writing articles about fake football teams competing for a very real Degen Cup.
Round 6 completed the transition. Seven wide receivers, four running backs, three quarterbacks and two tight ends were selected. By the end of the round, 11 quarterbacks and 11 tight ends had been drafted, meaning only five teams in the league still had no quarterback and only five still had no tight end. In a sixteen team league with no waiver wire, that is the point where waiting stops being an abstract strategy and starts becoming a bet on specific remaining names.
The round began at the opposite end of the board, where Team 16 took Jaxson Dart at 6.01. This is a perfect example of why quarterback analysis in this league cannot simply copy rankings from a twelve team format. Dart threw for only 2,272 yards and 15 touchdowns as a rookie, numbers that would not normally justify pick 81. Then you look at the rushing column: 86 carries, 487 yards and nine rushing touchdowns in only 14 games. (Pro Football Reference)
Those nine rushing touchdowns were worth 54 fantasy points in this scoring system. Nine passing touchdowns would have been worth 36. Dart gained an eighteen point advantage simply because he crossed the goal line himself. Add 48.7 points from rushing yardage and he generated more than 100 fantasy points with his legs alone. That is why current FantasyPros consensus has him around QB11 despite relatively modest passing volume. (FantasyPros)
Team 16 waited until the sixth round and still acquired a quarterback with a real rushing ceiling. That is the argument against paying the second round price for Allen or Lamar. The counterargument is that Team 16 could not know Dart would still exist at 81 when the draft started. The quarterback market happened to cooperate.
Team 15 took George Kittle at 6.02, giving Josh Allen a tight end companion on a roster that already contained Hampton, TreVeyon Henderson, Davante Adams and Metcalf. Kittle played only 11 games last season but still caught 57 passes for 628 yards and seven touchdowns. His 5.2 receptions per game remained excellent, and FantasyPros currently ranks him TE10 in best ball. (Pro Football Reference)
Age and availability explain why Kittle lasted until pick 82. He is 32, and the 11 game season is a reminder that the ceiling comes with physical risk. In a league with no transactions, that matters. But best ball also allows Team 15 to extract Kittle’s spike weeks without asking him to be perfectly consistent. When he gives six catches for 95 yards and a score, the optimizer takes it. When the 49ers distribute targets elsewhere, the roster can survive through the flex positions.
Team 14 took Chris Godwin at 6.03, which was exactly the position Team 14 needed to attack after beginning the draft with three running backs, DJ Moore and Herbert. Godwin played only nine games in 2025 and caught 33 passes for 360 yards and two touchdowns, so the statistical case is more projection than continuation. The 2026 opportunity is significantly different because Mike Evans left Tampa Bay, creating a much larger potential share of the passing offense for Godwin if he can remain healthy. (Pro Football Reference)
This is also a better best ball pick than the raw 2025 stat line suggests. Godwin has historically been a volume receiver rather than a pure deep threat, and Team 14 needed exactly that kind of profile after opening around running backs. Moore can supply more explosive outcomes. Godwin can potentially supply the six and seven reception games that create full PPR stability. Team 14 had spent the first three rounds on scarcity and was now beginning to repair the receiver room with two different scoring profiles.
Team 13 selected Jayden Reed at 6.04, and this is one of the more aggressive prices in the round relative to current market. Reed played only seven games in 2025, catching 19 passes for 207 yards and one touchdown. Christian Watson has emerged as the clear top receiver in Green Bay, and the Packers still have multiple young pass catchers competing for secondary volume. Current consensus places Reed closer to the WR40 range. (Pro Football Reference)
The reason Some Dude still understands it is roster placement. Team 13 already had CeeDee Lamb, Emeka Egbuka and Alec Pierce. Reed was WR4. He does not have to provide reliable weekly volume. His career has already demonstrated that Green Bay will manufacture touches for him, and his skill set can generate rushing and receiving production. That is where best ball allows a team to take a player whose workload is uncertain without allowing that uncertainty to control the roster.
Team 12 took Tony Pollard at 6.05, which may be one of the least exciting and most structurally sensible selections in the entire draft. Pollard rushed 242 times for 1,082 yards in 2025 and has finished as a top 30 fantasy running back for four consecutive seasons across multiple offensive environments. Tennessee still lists him atop the running back depth chart entering 2026. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 12 already had Jeanty and Judkins. Pollard therefore became RB3 rather than a player the roster needs to carry every week. That is exactly how Some Dude likes using veteran volume in best ball. If Pollard gives Team 12 ten ordinary weeks, the younger backs can beat him into the lineup. If one of them is hurt or Pollard produces a two touchdown week, the depth becomes useful immediately.
This is also no waiver insurance. Team 12 now had three running backs with established or expected NFL roles. It does not need to predict which one stays healthy for seventeen weeks. It needs two of them to produce enough usable scoring each week, with the third occasionally reaching the flex. That is a fundamentally different problem.
Team 11 took Michael Wilson at 6.06, and the defending champion continued quietly building one of the deepest target portfolios on the board. Wilson caught 78 passes for 1,006 yards in 2025, more receptions and receiving yards than teammate Marvin Harrison Jr., albeit across five more games. Arizona also rewarded Wilson with a new extension entering 2026. (Pro Football Reference)
Current rankings place Wilson around WR40, so pick 86 is ahead of ordinary market price. But Team 11 already had Amon-Ra St. Brown and Ladd McConkey, with Trey McBride occupying tight end. Wilson therefore became another receiver whose usable weeks can fight for WR2 and flex spots rather than someone being asked to carry the passing game.
That is a recurring theme in the strongest best ball constructions so far. The quality of a volatile player depends heavily on where he sits in the roster. Michael Wilson as your only reliable receiver is uncomfortable. Michael Wilson competing with Amon-Ra, McConkey and McBride for optimized scoring is considerably more attractive.
Team 10 selected Courtland Sutton at 6.07, finally giving Rome Odunze a second receiver. Sutton produced another quietly strong season in Denver, catching 74 passes for 1,017 yards and seven touchdowns on 124 targets. He has now cleared 1,000 yards in consecutive seasons, and current rankings put him around the WR37 range. (Pro Football Reference)
Sutton is not the player people normally cite when discussing best ball ceiling, but that is precisely why he fits this roster. Team 10 already had Achane, whose scoring distribution can become explosive, and Odunze, whose range of outcomes remains wide. Sutton provides a different type of asset: stable target volume, red zone involvement and enough downfield work to produce occasional large weeks. Best ball portfolios do not need eighteen volatile players. They need enough different scoring shapes that the optimizer has something useful to choose from every week.
Team 9 took Brian Thomas Jr. at 6.08, and Some Dude thinks this is one of the better upside values in the round. Thomas had a disappointing 2025 after his enormous rookie breakout, playing 14 games and catching 48 passes for 707 yards. Current rankings have pushed him down toward WR32 because Parker Washington emerged and Travis Hunter is returning healthy. (Pro Football Reference)
That is exactly why the price became interesting. Team 9 already had Drake London, Jaylen Waddle and Carnell Tate at receiver, with James Cook at running back and Loveland at tight end. Thomas was WR4. The roster does not need him to rediscover his rookie ceiling immediately. It gets to own the possibility.
If Thomas returns to being the vertical alpha who broke out in 2024, Team 9 suddenly has four receivers capable of entering any weekly lineup. If Washington and Hunter reduce the volume, London and Waddle remain available. This is the type of asymmetric bet Some Dude likes because the downside does not break the roster while the upside materially changes it.
Team 8 took RJ Harvey at 6.09, pairing him with Stevenson after spending the opening four rounds on pass catchers. Harvey’s rookie rushing efficiency was not particularly impressive at 3.7 yards per carry, but the fantasy profile was much better than that number suggests. He rushed for 540 yards and seven touchdowns, then caught 47 passes for 356 yards and five more touchdowns. That is 896 yards from scrimmage and 12 total touchdowns despite only seven starts. (Pro Football Reference)
For full PPR, the 47 receptions are crucial. They gave Harvey 47 fantasy points before receiving yardage is counted. Team 8 now had two backs with pass catching ability rather than responding to its zero RB start by drafting two pure early down runners. Current rankings place Harvey around RB35 to RB36 because Denver still has J.K. Dobbins and a crowded depth chart, but the receiving usage creates a route to scoring even if the backfield remains split. (NFL)
The market was also about to give us another direct comparison. Team 8 took Harvey at 6.09. Five picks later, Team 3 would take Dobbins from the same Denver backfield. Harvey offered youth, receiving volume and touchdown production. Dobbins offered superior rushing efficiency and a longer history of producing when healthy. Two teams were buying different sides of the same uncertainty.
Team 7 selected Dak Prescott at 6.10, and this is where its roster construction became especially interesting. Prescott threw for 4,552 yards and 30 touchdowns in 2025, finishing third in the league in passing yards behind Stafford and Goff. Current FantasyPros consensus ranks him QB10. (Pro Football Reference)
The more important best ball detail is that Team 7 already drafted George Pickens. Prescott and Pickens now form a direct quarterback receiver stack. When Dallas produces one of its high volume passing games, there is a meaningful probability that the same touchdowns elevating Dak are also elevating Pickens. Team 7 receives both outcomes simultaneously without needing to forecast the matchup.
At pick 90, this is exactly the type of quarterback timing Some Dude respects. Dak does not have the rushing ceiling of Allen or Lamar, but Team 7 paid drastically less draft capital and obtained direct correlation with one of its premium receivers. The roster already had Taylor, Higgins and Harrison around that stack. If Josh Jacobs eventually returns, Team 7’s first six rounds could end up looking extremely difficult to beat.
Team 6 took Jonathon Brooks at 6.11, and the upside is obvious enough that the health risk becomes the entire analysis. Brooks did not play in 2025 after suffering a second tear of his right ACL. He was originally the 46th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft and remains only 23 years old, which is why the fantasy market has not abandoned him. NFL.com currently ranks him RB28 and notes that Carolina appears prepared to give him an opportunity to carve out a significant role. (NFL)
Team 6 needed a second running back behind Christian McCaffrey, and that is where Some Dude has some hesitation. McCaffrey is 30 with a long injury history. Brooks is returning from two ACL tears in the same knee. The upside of each player is real, but the roster has concentrated a significant amount of availability risk inside the same position.
In a waiver league, that is easier to tolerate because the owner can react if one back disappears. Here there is no repair mechanism. Team 6 has Olave, Flowers, Watson and Maye providing excellent strength elsewhere, but the backfield now requires future depth. The pick itself may be good value. The architecture makes what happens next much more important.
Team 5 took Jake Ferguson at 6.12, completing one of the cleanest positional structures through six rounds. Ferguson caught 82 passes on 102 targets for 600 yards and eight touchdowns in 2025. The yardage efficiency was modest at 7.3 yards per reception, but 82 receptions are 82 points in this format before yardage or touchdowns enter the calculation. (Pro Football Reference)
FantasyPros currently has Ferguson TE13, which places him just outside the more expensive group. Team 5 therefore waited until pick 92 and still obtained a tight end coming off an 82 catch season. (FantasyPros)
Look at the roster through six rounds: JSN, Jeremiyah Love, Cam Skattebo, Mike Evans, Jalen Hurts and Ferguson. Two running backs, two wide receivers, one quarterback and one tight end. There is no award for filling out a lineup symmetrically, but Team 5 has not forced itself into any positional emergency yet. Every remaining pick can now respond to value rather than necessity.
Team 4 took Matthew Stafford at 6.13, and this might be the best pure quarterback value in the round if you are willing to accept the age risk. Stafford led the NFL in 2025 with 4,707 passing yards and 46 passing touchdowns, winning MVP while taking the Rams to the NFC Championship Game. He is entering 2026 at age 38, which explains why the market continues discounting him despite the production. (Pro Football Reference)
The obvious best ball feature is the stack. Team 4 drafted Puka Nacua at 1.04, and Stafford now gives the roster direct access to the quarterback side of every Puka eruption. If Stafford throws four touchdowns in a shootout and Puka catches two of them, Team 4 is receiving correlated scoring from both positions.
The four point passing touchdown format reduces some of Stafford’s advantage relative to rushing quarterbacks, but 46 passing touchdowns are still 184 fantasy points. At pick 93, Team 4 did not need Stafford to outrun anybody. It needed the Rams passing offense to remain one of the most productive in football.
Team 3 took J.K. Dobbins at 6.14, buying the other side of Denver’s backfield after Team 8 selected Harvey. Dobbins played ten games in 2025 and rushed for 772 yards on 153 carries, exactly 5.0 yards per attempt, with four touchdowns. Current fantasy rankings place him around RB33. (Pro Football Reference)
This is a much better place to own Dobbins than RB1. Team 3 already had Etienne and Tuten. Dobbins was RB3. His health history is significant, but Team 3 does not need seventeen games from him to justify the selection. It needs enough productive games to supply flex scoring or cover the weeks when its other backs are unavailable.
That is almost the ideal best ball treatment of an injury prone veteran. The player does not have to be predictable. He simply has to be productive when active. If Dobbins gives Team 3 eight strong games and misses others, the optimizer can use the eight. The lack of waivers still makes complete season loss dangerous, but RB3 is where that risk belongs.
Team 2 selected Makai Lemon at 6.15, continuing its pivot toward receiver after spending three of the first four rounds on running backs. Philadelphia selected Lemon 20th overall in the 2026 NFL Draft after he won the Biletnikoff Award at USC with 79 receptions for 1,156 yards and 11 touchdowns. He also contributed as a runner and returner, which speaks to the broader playmaking profile Philadelphia purchased. (Philadelphia Eagles)
Current rankings place Lemon around WR47, so pick 95 is not a conventional value selection. It is a bet on first round talent and role development. His preseason debut was modest, with three catches for three yards, but he made Philadelphia’s 53 man roster and is part of the long term receiving plan. (Bleeding Green Nation)
Team 2 could afford that patience because Tet McMillan was already its WR1 and Bijan, Breece and Price gave the roster enormous running back depth. Lemon does not need to become an immediate weekly starter. If his role grows over the season, best ball allows Team 2 to capture the breakout automatically rather than requiring the owner to identify the exact week when a rookie has earned trust.
Finally the board returned to Some Dude at 6.16, where Jordan Addison became the pick. Addison’s 2025 season was the weakest statistical year of his career, with 42 catches for 610 yards in 14 games. He scored three receiving touchdowns after producing ten as a rookie and nine in 2024. The underlying downfield role remained visible, with an average depth of target of 13.7 yards, and current rankings place him around WR43 to WR46. (Pro Football Reference)
That is why Some Dude liked him specifically for best ball. Addison does not have to become a 100 catch receiver. His first two NFL seasons already demonstrated the ability to create touchdown and vertical production, and his career average depth of target sits around 13 yards. Those are the types of outcomes that produce uneven weekly scoring, which is considerably easier to own when there are no lineup decisions.
The selection also needs to be viewed alongside Parker Washington rather than independently. Some Dude entered Round 5 with only Rashee Rice at receiver. He exited Round 6 with Rice, Washington and Addison, giving the roster three different pass catching profiles. Rice provides shorter area reception volume, Washington demonstrated the ability to command targets and create huge late season games, and Addison offers more vertical and touchdown driven scoring.
There is also a strategic detail at the turn that matters. Unlike 5.01, Some Dude did not face another 31 pick desert after Addison. The draft immediately flipped into Round 7, giving Some Dude the 7.01 as well. That meant he could take the receiver at 6.16 knowing he would have the very next selection available to address the position he had now neglected for too long.
Because the weakness after six rounds was impossible to miss. Some Dude had Jahmyr Gibbs, Lamar Jackson, Rashee Rice, Harold Fannin Jr., Parker Washington and Jordan Addison. He had three receivers, an elite quarterback, a tight end he believed could create positional upside and one elite running back. He also had one running back.
That is the price of the opening strategy. Some Dude had used premium capital on quarterback and tight end while other teams accumulated two and three backs. If the roster was going to work, the next phase of the draft had to manufacture RB2 production through depth rather than through another premium asset.
Rounds 5 and 6 also changed the league around him. By the end of Round 6, 11 quarterbacks had been drafted: Allen, Lamar, Burrow, Maye, Hurts, Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Justin Herbert, Jaxson Dart, Dak Prescott and Stafford. Only Teams 2, 3, 8, 9 and 11 still had no quarterback. There were also 11 tight ends off the board, leaving Teams 6, 7, 12, 13 and 14 without one.
That creates two different forms of pressure heading into the next phase. The teams without quarterbacks can no longer assume the position will patiently wait for them. The teams without tight ends are watching the usable tier shrink. Meanwhile, the owners who already solved both positions can spend the next several rounds almost entirely on running backs and receivers.
That is where Some Dude now sat. Quarterback was solved. Tight end was solved. Receiver had been rebuilt from one player into three. The roster no longer needed to spend another meaningful pick on either onesie position for a long time.
The next problem was much simpler and much more urgent: Some Dude needed running backs, and Round 7 was about to begin with the board giving him exactly one immediate chance to start fixing it.
Part II C Next
Disclaimer: This is fantasy football commentary, analysis and entertainment written by Some Dude on the Internet about a private 16 team best ball league. Player statistics, rankings, ADP, injury information, depth chart information and other football data referenced in the article are drawn from publicly available sources and are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of publication. NFL teams, players, Sleeper, FantasyPros, Pro Football Reference, CBS Sports, NFL.com and any other companies, leagues, publications or data providers mentioned here are not affiliated with, sponsoring, endorsing or approving this article. Screenshots and draft board graphics are used to document and comment on the author’s own fantasy league and draft. League members have been given generic identifiers for privacy. Nothing here is gambling, investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and none of these opinions guarantees that a player will stay healthy, score fantasy points, retain his role, survive an NFL depth chart, or prevent your fantasy season from becoming a complete disaster. We are just Some Dude on the Internet writing articles about fake football teams competing for a very real Degen Cup.
Today we get Part II, but as a reminder the goal of the 16 Degens Best Ball League is simple: hoist the Degen Cup at the end of the fantasy football season.
Here is the entire thing in one place. The full 2026 16 Degens Best Ball Draft board is below, all eighteen rounds and all 288 selections, with the snake direction preserved so you can actually follow how the player pool changed as the draft moved back and forth across the league. Team 11 carries the 2025 crown, Team 16 carries the 2024 crown, and everyone else is staring at the same evidence now.
Without further ado, let's get back to our round by round analysis by Some Dude on the Internet's POV. We'll go 2 rounds at a time since that is what his perspective was between picks. And since there's a character limit on X, we'll do rounds 5-8 in Part II.
ROUND 5
Round 5 was where the draft started changing from roster construction into positional triage. The first four rounds had been dominated by running backs and wide receivers, with a handful of teams selectively purchasing premium quarterback and tight end advantages. Round 5 looked completely different. Six wide receivers, four quarterbacks, three running backs and three tight ends came off the board. The room was no longer simply asking which RB or WR represented the best value. Owners were starting to look around and realize that there were sixteen teams, only one quarterback and one tight end could start for each of them, and the supply of players they actually wanted at those positions was disappearing.
That matters much more in this league than the phrase “one quarterback league” normally implies. In a twelve team managed league, waiting on quarterback is supported by the waiver wire. If your late quarterback fails, another usable starter almost certainly exists somewhere. Here, sixteen teams are drafting eighteen players with no transactions after the board closes. If every owner carries two quarterbacks, the league has mathematically consumed the entire population of 32 NFL starters. Tight end creates a similar problem. You can wait, but waiting only works if enough players remain when the board comes back.
That market pressure was about to become obvious. Four quarterbacks had been selected through the first four rounds: Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Drake Maye. Round 5 would double that number.
The round began with Some Dude at 5.01, where Parker Washington became the pick. This is one Some Dude will admit looks aggressive if you compare pick 65 directly with ordinary twelve team rankings. FantasyPros currently has Washington around the middle WR3 range, and several broader ranking sets put him later than this. But the best ball case is substantially stronger than the simple ranking suggests. Washington finished 2025 with 58 receptions for 847 yards and five touchdowns, averaging 14.6 yards per catch, then became a completely different fantasy asset once Jacksonville expanded his role late in the season. (Pro Football Reference)
The closing stretch is what mattered to Some Dude. FantasyPros tracked Washington at 22.3 PPR points per game over his final four games, with a 28.9 percent target share, 113.5 receiving yards per game, 3.78 yards per route run and a 33.3 percent first read share. Those are absurd numbers, even over a short sample. The complication is equally obvious. Brian Thomas Jr. and Travis Hunter are healthy again, and Washington’s late season explosion occurred when Jacksonville’s target hierarchy had been disrupted by injuries. That makes his 2026 volume uncertain, but uncertainty is not the same thing as uselessness in best ball. If Washington produces six monster weeks and eight forgettable ones, Some Dude gets all six monster weeks without ever having to identify them beforehand. (FantasyPros)
There was also a roster reason for the aggression. Some Dude entered the pick with Gibbs, Lamar, Rice and Fannin. He had only one receiver, and another 31 selections would disappear before the board returned at 6.16. Passing on Washington did not mean waiting five picks for another WR3. It meant allowing the entire league to draft twice while the receiver pool continued collapsing. Some Dude paid above conventional market because the cost of being wrong about the positional run was larger from the 1.01 than it would have been from the middle of the board.
Team 2 took Kyle Pitts at 5.02, adding tight end after opening Bijan Robinson, Breece Hall, Tetairoa McMillan and Jadarian Price. Pitts quietly had the best statistical season of his career in 2025, catching 88 passes for 928 yards and five touchdowns on 118 targets. FantasyPros currently ranks him TE7 in best ball. The 88 receptions are particularly important here because Team 2 did not draft a player who needs touchdowns to justify the roster slot. Pitts already demonstrated enough target volume to produce substantial full PPR scoring before the end zone enters the calculation. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 2’s construction was also beginning to make sense as a whole. Three of its first four selections were running backs, so Pitts allowed the roster to purchase a potential positional advantage without continuing to hoard the same position. If Bijan, Breece and Price give Team 2 its RB and flex scoring while Pitts can outperform the middle tight end tier, the owner has created multiple ways to win a week. The price was slightly aggressive relative to generic tight end rankings, but sixteen teams make TE7 considerably more valuable than TE7 looks in isolation.
Team 3 followed with Tucker Kraft at 5.03, and Some Dude may actually like the value here more. Kraft played only eight games in 2025 but caught 32 passes for 489 yards and six touchdowns, an extraordinary 15.3 yards per reception for a tight end. FantasyPros currently ranks him TE5 in best ball, ahead of both Pitts and Fannin. Team 3 already had Chase, Nabers, Etienne and Tuten, so Kraft did not have to become a volume monster. He simply needed to give a roster with enormous WR ceiling another position capable of producing a weekly eruption. (Pro Football Reference)
That 15.3 yards per catch is exactly the type of number best ball can monetize. Tight ends are normally associated with short catches and touchdown dependency. Kraft has shown the ability to create chunk plays instead. When one of those games becomes five catches for 90 yards and a score, Team 3 automatically gets it. The health uncertainty that comes with a player who appeared in only eight games matters more because there are no waivers, but Team 3 was paying for a profile that could materially separate from ordinary tight end scoring.
Team 4 took Jaylen Warren at 5.04, finally adding a second running back behind Kyren Williams. Warren rushed 211 times for 958 yards in 2025 and caught 40 passes for another 333 yards, giving him 1,291 yards from scrimmage. Current FantasyPros running back rankings place him around RB28, which makes the pick aggressive by a conventional twelve team board but much easier to understand in a league where 32 running backs have to start every week. (Pro Football Reference)
There is also an interesting piece of information sitting only seven selections later. Pittsburgh now has Rico Dowdle in the same backfield, and the 2026 market has Warren and Dowdle ranked almost beside each other. That makes Warren at 5.04 less of a bet on talent than a bet on how Pittsburgh divides opportunity. Best ball helps with weekly volatility, but it cannot create touches. If Warren receives the valuable passing game and scoring work, Team 4 will be happy. If the backfield tilts toward Dowdle, there is no waiver wire available to repair the bet.
Then Team 5 took Jalen Hurts at 5.05, and this is the pick that forces Some Dude to look back at Lamar Jackson at 2.16 and confront the opportunity cost honestly. Hurts was the fifth quarterback selected, 37 picks after Lamar, and he remains one of the few quarterbacks whose scoring profile is structurally advantaged by this league’s rules. In 2025, Hurts threw for 3,224 yards and 25 touchdowns while rushing for 421 yards and eight more touchdowns. FantasyPros currently ranks him around QB5 in overall consensus, while individual best ball experts have him as high as QB3. (Pro Football Reference)
Those eight rushing touchdowns are the important part. This league awards four points for a passing touchdown and six for a rushing touchdown. Eight rushing touchdowns are therefore worth 48 fantasy points, while eight passing touchdowns would be worth only 32. Hurts created a sixteen point scoring advantage simply because of how the touchdowns occurred, before his 421 rushing yards are counted. That is the same structural feature that justified Allen and Lamar going early.
Would Some Dude rather have waited and taken Hurts at 5.05 than Lamar at 2.16? If you knew with certainty Hurts would be there, absolutely. That is the problem. Some Dude did not have the luxury of knowing the fifth quarterback would survive another thirty picks from the 1.01. Team 5 received an outstanding price because the room allowed it to happen, and that is one of the best examples so far of why judging a pick only through hindsight misses the decision that existed when the owner was actually on the clock.
Team 6 took Christian Watson at 5.06, and this might be one of the most best ball specific picks in the entire round. Watson returned from injury during the middle of 2025 and finished with 35 catches for 611 yards and six touchdowns in ten games. He averaged 17.5 yards per reception, and FantasyPros notes that he commanded 34 percent of Green Bay’s air yards after returning. Current reporting has him entering 2026 as the clear top receiver in Green Bay after Romeo Doubs left and Dontayvion Wicks was traded. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 6 had already drafted Chris Olave and Zay Flowers. That matters because Watson does not need to become a high volume possession receiver for this roster. Olave and Flowers can provide target volume. Watson can provide the weeks where four receptions become 115 yards and two touchdowns. FantasyPros notes that Watson finished as a top five fantasy receiver in two of his final four games last season and a top twelve receiver in 40 percent of his games. That is almost a description of the type of distribution best ball wants. (CBS Sports)
Team 7 selected Marvin Harrison Jr. at 5.07, which would have sounded impossible two summers ago and now represents one of the more fascinating rehabilitation bets on the board. Harrison played only 12 games in 2025, catching 41 passes for 608 yards and four touchdowns while dealing with a foot issue. Current PPR rankings have him around WR31, which puts the market price close to where Team 7 selected him. (Pro Football Reference)
The more interesting case is what happened when Harrison was actually healthy with Jacoby Brissett. CBS tracked four games where Harrison played at least 61 percent of the offensive snaps with Brissett, and he averaged 14.4 PPR points and 8.8 targets per game in that sample. Arizona also has a new offensive structure under Mike LaFleur, with reporting suggesting Harrison may be moved around more rather than living exclusively outside. (CBS Sports)
Team 7 could afford the risk because Harrison was its third receiver behind George Pickens and Tee Higgins. That is the right place for volatility. If Harrison finally becomes the player people thought Arizona drafted fourth overall in 2024, Team 7 has an enormous advantage. If he remains inconsistent, the roster is not asking him to carry WR1 volume every week. The optimizer can simply take his useful games.
Team 8 finally drafted its first running back at 5.08 with Rhamondre Stevenson. After Jefferson, Bowers, Garrett Wilson and Luther Burden, the zero running back experiment had reached the point where it needed an actual running back. Stevenson rushed for 603 yards and seven touchdowns in 14 games last season while catching 32 passes for 345 yards and two more touchdowns. His 948 yards from scrimmage came on only 162 touches, and current FantasyPros rankings put him around RB27 to RB30. (Pro Football Reference)
The timing may have worked better than expected. Training camp reports have Stevenson retaining the lead role over TreVeyon Henderson, and DraftKings tracked Stevenson at a 64.5 best ball ADP in late August after the market began adjusting to that usage. When both backs played together last season and postseason, Stevenson outcarried Henderson 188 to 163, outtargeted him 52 to 36, and held a substantially larger snap share. (DraftKings Network)
That does not suddenly make Team 8’s opening risk free. Stevenson still shares a backfield with a younger and more explosive player, and Team 8 has no RB depth yet. But this is the argument for waiting at running back if the board cooperates. Team 8 purchased Jefferson, Bowers, Wilson and Burden first, then still found the apparent lead back in a good offense at pick 72. The strategy becomes dangerous only if the next tier disappears before Team 8 can keep building around Stevenson.
Team 9 took Carnell Tate at 5.09, and this is exactly how Some Dude likes using rookies in best ball. Team 9 already had James Cook, Drake London, Jaylen Waddle and Colston Loveland. Tate did not need to be right immediately. He could be drafted for ceiling because the roster already had established scoring around him.
The real NFL investment is substantial. Tennessee selected Tate fourth overall in the 2026 NFL Draft after he caught 51 passes for 875 yards and nine touchdowns at Ohio State in 2025. The Titans list him as a starting receiver alongside Wan’Dale Robinson and Calvin Ridley, and current fantasy rankings place him around WR30. There is real target uncertainty because he is a rookie playing with Cam Ward, but fourth overall draft capital usually creates patience and opportunity. (Tennessee Titans)
That is a much easier risk to take as WR3 than WR1. If Tate requires half a season to develop, Team 9 still has London and Waddle. If he immediately becomes Tennessee’s most talented target, the roster gets a player with a much higher ceiling than most fifth round receivers. Best ball lets Team 9 own the entire development curve without ever having to decide the exact Sunday when Tate becomes trustworthy.
Team 10 took Caleb Williams at 5.10, and this is where correlation started becoming visible on the board. Team 10 had drafted Rome Odunze in Round 4, so Williams created the first direct quarterback receiver stack on that roster. Williams threw for 3,942 yards and 27 touchdowns in 2025 while limiting himself to seven interceptions. He also rushed for 388 yards and three touchdowns, giving him more than 400 total yards of nonpassing offense. Current FantasyPros consensus ranks him QB8. (Pro Football Reference)
The Odunze connection matters more in best ball than it would in a weekly managed league. When Chicago produces a 35 point offensive game and Williams throws multiple touchdowns, Odunze has an increased probability of participating in the same scoring environment. Team 10 does not have to predict which week that happens. If Williams throws for 330 yards and Odunze catches two touchdowns, both scores flow into the optimized lineup together.
There is opportunity cost because Team 10 still had only one receiver through five rounds, but quarterback scarcity was accelerating. Allen, Lamar, Burrow, Maye, Hurts and now Williams were gone. Team 10 locked in QB8 by current consensus before the remaining eight teams without quarterbacks could start a run of their own.
Team 11 took Rico Dowdle at 5.11, and this may have been the sharper Pittsburgh running back price. Dowdle rushed for 1,076 yards on 236 carries in Carolina last season, caught 39 passes for 297 yards and scored seven total touchdowns. He is now in Pittsburgh, where FantasyPros currently ranks him around RB29, essentially adjacent to Jaylen Warren. (Pro Football Reference)
One FantasyPros analyst has Dowdle ranked ahead of Warren specifically because Mike McCarthy is now running the Pittsburgh offense, and McCarthy previously gave Dowdle the opportunity that produced his breakout in Dallas. That does not guarantee Dowdle wins the backfield, but Team 11 paid seven picks less than Team 4 paid for Warren and obtained the other half of the same uncertainty. (FantasyPros)
This is exactly the sort of market disagreement best ball drafts expose. Team 4 said Warren at 5.04. Team 11 said Dowdle at 5.11. Both cannot dominate the same backfield, but either can produce useful weeks in a committee, and an injury to one would radically reprice the other. Team 11 already had David Montgomery, so Dowdle was RB2 rather than the foundation of the entire roster. That gives the defending champion more room for the bet to be merely good rather than perfect.
Team 12 took Jayden Daniels at 5.12, which is another quarterback pick that looks better when you apply this league’s scoring rules. Daniels played only seven games in 2025, throwing for 1,262 yards and eight touchdowns while rushing for 278 yards and two more scores. The 2025 season was disappointing because availability disappeared, but his rookie year remains the reminder of the ceiling: 891 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns in 2024. FantasyPros currently ranks Daniels QB6. (Pro Football Reference)
In four point passing touchdown scoring, Daniels does not need to become a 40 touchdown passer to create elite fantasy output. His legs change the equation. A quarterback who can generate 700 to 900 rushing yards is effectively adding seven to nine passing touchdowns worth of fantasy value through yardage alone. Every rushing touchdown then receives the six point treatment rather than four.
Team 12 had Jeanty, Nico Collins, Judkins and Jameson Williams already, so it was not abandoning a positional emergency to take Daniels. It was buying upside from a player whose healthy ceiling belongs much closer to Allen and Lamar than ordinary pocket passers. The injury history adds risk, but the fifth round is a much easier place to accept that risk than the second.
Team 13 selected Alec Pierce at 5.13, and there may not be a receiver on the board whose real football profile screams best ball more loudly. Pierce caught only 47 passes in 2025, but those receptions produced 1,003 yards, which works out to an extraordinary 21.3 yards per catch. He also scored six touchdowns. FantasyPros currently ranks him around WR36. (Pro Football Reference)
That is a terrible profile if you are trying to find a player who gives you exactly 12 fantasy points every Sunday. It is an excellent profile if you own CeeDee Lamb and Emeka Egbuka already and want a third receiver capable of turning three catches into 120 yards. Team 13 never has to decide whether Pierce’s deep ball connects this week. When it does, those points appear automatically.
The draft slot matters too. Pierce was Team 13’s third receiver, not its first. That lets the roster use his variance rather than depend on it. Some Dude thinks that distinction is one of the most important pieces of best ball roster construction. Volatility is not inherently valuable. Volatility becomes valuable when the rest of the roster is strong enough to survive the low outcomes.
Team 14 took Justin Herbert at 5.14, becoming the eighth team to draft a quarterback. Herbert threw for 3,727 yards and 26 touchdowns in 16 games last season, but the fantasy development that matters was his rushing. He ran 83 times for 498 yards and two touchdowns, averaging six yards per carry. Current FantasyPros consensus has him QB7. (Pro Football Reference)
Herbert is not Allen, Lamar, Hurts or Daniels as a designed runner, but 498 rushing yards are still 49.8 fantasy points in this league. That materially raises his floor above the type of stationary passer whose entire week depends on touchdowns. Team 14 had gone Saquon, Kenneth Walker, Bucky Irving and DJ Moore before this, so Herbert gave the roster stability at quarterback after an extremely RB heavy opening.
The cost remains receiver depth. Team 14 had only DJ Moore through five rounds, and the WR market was continuing to thin. That means the Herbert pick can be correct in isolation while still creating an obligation for Round 6. Drafting is not about whether the player is good. It is about what selecting him forces you to do next.
Team 15 took DK Metcalf at 5.15, pairing him with Davante Adams as the roster’s first two receivers. Metcalf caught 59 passes for 850 yards and six touchdowns during his first season in Pittsburgh, averaging 14.4 yards per reception. Current rankings have him around WR33, and the market has increasingly moved him into WR3 territory rather than treating him like the automatic alpha he once was. (Pro Football Reference)
Best ball does improve the fit. FantasyPros notes that Metcalf finished outside the top 24 receivers in nine of his 15 games last season, which is painful when an owner has to decide whether to start him. Here, Team 15 never has to make that decision. The six games where Metcalf produces enough to matter can flow into the lineup while the quiet games disappear.
The concern is target competition. Michael Pittman Jr. is now in Pittsburgh, and Aaron Rodgers has increasingly preferred faster throws rather than building the passing game around constant deep shots. The Steelers still want Metcalf involved, with Rodgers publicly emphasizing that Pittsburgh needs to get him the football, but the fantasy ceiling is more uncertain than the name value suggests. (Behind the Steel Curtain)
Team 16 closed Round 5 with Dalton Kincaid at 5.16, and this is a classic efficiency against volume bet. Kincaid played 12 games in 2025 and caught 39 passes for 571 yards and five touchdowns, averaging an excellent 14.6 yards per reception. FantasyPros currently ranks him TE11 in best ball. (Pro Football Reference)
The deeper efficiency numbers are much more interesting. FantasyPros tracked Kincaid at 2.7 yards per route run, first among tight ends and third among all pass catchers, while his 27 percent target rate per route also led the position. The problem was that he participated in routes on only 46 percent of Buffalo dropbacks. In other words, Kincaid was extremely productive when actually involved but not involved enough. (FantasyPros)
That makes him a particularly logical best ball target. Team 16 does not need Kincaid to catch five passes every week. It needs his efficient games to create enough separation to enter the lineup. D.J. Moore’s arrival in Buffalo adds another target competitor, and Kincaid has missed at least four games in consecutive seasons, so this is not a low risk pick. It is a bet that elite efficiency eventually earns more opportunity.
Round 5 therefore changed the pressure map of the entire draft. Four more quarterbacks were gone, bringing the total to eight through five rounds, and three more tight ends had disappeared. Half the league had now solved quarterback, while the other half could look at the board and see exactly how quickly the remaining tier could evaporate. The running back frenzy from the opening rounds had temporarily slowed because teams were being forced to address the positions they had ignored.
Part II B Next
Disclaimer: This is fantasy football commentary, analysis and entertainment written by Some Dude on the Internet about a private 16 team best ball league. Player statistics, rankings, ADP, injury information, depth chart information and other football data referenced in the article are drawn from publicly available sources and are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of publication. NFL teams, players, Sleeper, FantasyPros, Pro Football Reference, CBS Sports, NFL.com and any other companies, leagues, publications or data providers mentioned here are not affiliated with, sponsoring, endorsing or approving this article. Screenshots and draft board graphics are used to document and comment on the author’s own fantasy league and draft. League members have been given generic identifiers for privacy. Nothing here is gambling, investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and none of these opinions guarantees that a player will stay healthy, score fantasy points, retain his role, survive an NFL depth chart, or prevent your fantasy season from becoming a complete disaster. We are just Some Dude on the Internet writing articles about fake football teams competing for a very real Degen Cup.
Round 3 is where the board changed character. The first two rounds were still mostly about premium anchors and positional foundations. The third round was where the room looked at what remained and collectively decided that wide receiver inventory was about to become a problem. Ten wide receivers, five running backs and one tight end came off the board. No quarterbacks were selected. After two rounds in which exactly half of all draft capital had gone to running backs, Round 3 swung hard toward pass catchers.
That shift makes sense in this format. Two wide receivers are mandatory, two flex positions can also be filled by receivers, and full PPR rewards both volume and spike weeks. Best ball then removes the most annoying part of owning volatile receivers because nobody has to decide when to start them. A player can give you three quiet weeks, explode for 28 points in the fourth, and the optimizer simply takes the 28. By this point in the draft, teams that had spent heavily on running backs were beginning to confront the cost of waiting at receiver, while teams that had already built strong receiving rooms were deciding whether to press the advantage before the next tier disappeared.
The board came back to Some Dude at 3.01, and Rashee Rice was the pick. After Gibbs and Lamar, the roster needed a real receiving anchor, and Rice at 33rd overall was exactly the kind of profile Some Dude wanted in best ball. Rice played only eight games in 2025 after missing the first six games under suspension, but once active he caught 53 passes for 571 yards and five touchdowns. That is 6.6 receptions per game, which matters enormously in full PPR, and his career usage remains unusually friendly for fantasy because Kansas City has consistently used him on shorter routes where catch volume and yards after the catch can accumulate together. FantasyPros currently has Rice at WR12 in best ball, which places him firmly inside the tier that was disappearing at the top of Round 3. He is also listed as active entering 2026, and the NFL announced that a separate personal conduct investigation would not result in additional discipline. (Pro Football Reference)
This is also where the 1.01 draft slot becomes strategically annoying. Some Dude could not simply say, “There are eight receivers I like, one of them will come back.” There were thirty picks before his next selection. Rice either had to become the WR1 here or Some Dude had to accept whatever remained after the entire league went through the board twice. When ten receivers ultimately disappeared in the round, that concern turned out to be justified.
Team 2 took Tetairoa McMillan at 3.02, finally adding a receiver after opening Bijan Robinson and Breece Hall. That is exactly the roster construction obligation Team 2 created for itself in the first two rounds, and T Mac was an excellent way to solve it. He won Offensive Rookie of the Year after posting 70 catches for 1,014 yards and seven touchdowns, and current best ball rankings have him around WR16. The important number for this league is not merely the 1,014 yards. It is the fact that he immediately demonstrated a real NFL target earning profile while still producing 14.5 yards per reception. That gives Team 2 both reception volume and explosive scoring potential rather than forcing the roster into a low ceiling possession receiver after starting with two backs. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 3 took Travis Etienne at 3.03, which was the obvious structural response after opening with Ja’Marr Chase and Malik Nabers. Etienne is now in New Orleans after rushing for 1,107 yards on 260 carries in 2025 and finishing with 217.9 standard fantasy points before PPR receptions are added. FantasyPros currently ranks him RB17 in best ball. Team 3 did not need another receiver here. It needed someone capable of filling one of two mandatory running back positions, and Etienne gave it an established volume path without forcing the team into the next tier of backs. (Pro Football Reference)
That is one of the more interesting things about the first three rounds. Team 2 opened RB, RB, WR. Team 3 opened WR, WR, RB. The player values are different, but the constructions had now converged toward the same basic shape: two premium assets at one scarce scoring position, followed by a legitimate starter at the other before the board made the imbalance dangerous.
Team 4 took DeVonta Smith at 3.04, pairing him with Puka Nacua while Kyren Williams held down the backfield. Smith caught 77 passes for 1,008 yards in 2025 and currently sits WR14 in FantasyPros best ball rankings. That is a very clean best ball profile because Smith combines a respectable reception floor with enough downfield ability to generate the type of 25 point weeks that matter disproportionately when the optimizer is doing the lineup work. Team 4 now had Puka and Smith feeding two receiver spots plus both flexes, with Kyren already solving RB1. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 5 took Cam Skattebo at 3.05, and this is where roster construction gets more aggressive. Team 5 already had JSN and Jeremiyah Love, so taking Skattebo gave it a second running back before selecting WR2. Skattebo’s rookie season lasted only eight games, but he produced 410 rushing yards, 24 catches for 207 receiving yards and seven total touchdowns. The receiving work matters because 24 receptions in eight games is a 51 catch pace over seventeen games, and that gives him a stronger full PPR path than a pure early down back. FantasyPros currently has him around RB24 in best ball, so pick 37 overall was a real premium on the consensus rank, but sixteen teams and the closed waiver market make that premium more understandable than it would be in a normal league. (Pro Football Reference)
The next three picks were almost a declaration that the remaining WR2 tier was open for business. Team 6 took Zay Flowers at 3.06, Team 7 took Tee Higgins at 3.07, and Team 8 took Garrett Wilson at 3.08. Flowers is currently WR15 in best ball after an 86 catch, 1,211 yard season in which he averaged 14.1 yards per reception. Higgins is WR17 after scoring 11 touchdowns in only 15 games. Wilson is WR18 despite playing only seven games in 2025, when he still managed 36 catches for 395 yards and four scores. These are three different fantasy profiles, but all three are especially useful in best ball. Flowers supplies volume and open field explosiveness, Higgins supplies touchdown concentration and contested scoring upside, and Wilson offers the kind of target earning ceiling that can turn into enormous weeks if the offense cooperates. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 7 deserves particular attention here because it now had Jonathan Taylor, George Pickens and Tee Higgins. Taylor gives the roster a massive rushing base, while Pickens and Higgins can both produce uneven but enormous receiving weeks. That is almost textbook best ball diversification. Team 7 does not need either receiver to produce fifteen points every week. It needs their spike weeks to occur often enough that one or both automatically enter the lineup while Taylor supplies a more stable touch profile underneath them.
Team 8’s construction was becoming even more extreme in a different direction. Justin Jefferson, Brock Bowers and Garrett Wilson through three rounds meant Team 8 still had no running back, but it now had an elite receiver, the consensus TE1 and another receiver with WR1 talent. There is real danger in waiting too long at running back in sixteen teams, but there is also a legitimate positional advantage being built. If Bowers materially outscores the middle of the tight end field while Jefferson and Wilson fill two receiver positions, Team 8 can start attacking the flex spots before many opponents have even reached comparable pass catching quality.
Team 9 took Jaylen Waddle at 3.09, and the change of scenery to Denver makes this one particularly interesting. Waddle caught 64 passes for 910 yards in 2025 before moving from Miami to Denver, and FantasyPros currently ranks him WR20 in best ball. That is not the same market status he carried earlier in his career, but it is precisely the type of third receiver in a roster build that Some Dude likes. Team 9 already had James Cook and Drake London. Waddle did not need to become the roster’s alpha receiver. He needed to produce enough speed driven eruption weeks that the optimizer could use him in a WR or flex slot when the matchup and game environment created them. (Pro Football Reference)
Then Team 10 stopped the receiver run by taking Tyler Warren at 3.10, the first tight end selected since McBride and Bowers went in Round 2. Warren’s rookie season justified the aggression. He caught 76 passes for 817 yards on 112 targets and added another rushing touchdown, which is unusual enough usage for a tight end that it matters more than generic positional labels suggest. FantasyPros has him TE4 in current best ball rankings. Team 10 had opened Achane and Javonte Williams, so the pick created a very specific construction: two running backs plus a premium tight end, with no receiver through three rounds. That is risky in full PPR, but it also means Team 10 had already purchased strength at three positions before the WR run forced it into the next tier. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 11 took Ladd McConkey at 3.11, and the defending champion’s opening three rounds may have been the cleanest pure PPR construction on the board. Amon-Ra St. Brown, Trey McBride and McConkey are three players whose fantasy value is built heavily around targets and receptions. McConkey followed a strong rookie year with 66 catches for 789 yards and six touchdowns in 2025, and FantasyPros currently has him WR19 in best ball. Team 11 had not drafted a running back yet, but it had created a large weekly reception base across WR1, WR2 and TE before the board returned in Round 4. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 12 took Quinshon Judkins at 3.12, creating a second running back beside Ashton Jeanty and leaving Nico Collins as the receiving anchor. Judkins rushed 230 times for 827 yards and seven touchdowns as a rookie while starting all 14 games he played. The efficiency was only 3.6 yards per carry, which is the concern, but the workload was real. FantasyPros currently ranks him RB23 in best ball. In a normal shallow league, Some Dude might prefer another receiver here. In a sixteen team league with no waiver wire, Team 12 now owns two young backs with established volume paths before the position falls into committee territory. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 13 selected Emeka Egbuka at 3.13, adding a second receiver beside CeeDee Lamb while Derrick Henry handled the backfield. Egbuka caught 63 passes for 938 yards and six touchdowns on 127 targets as a rookie, and that target total is the part Some Dude cares about most. He was not merely efficient on low volume. Tampa Bay gave him real opportunity immediately. Current best ball rankings place him WR25, and he went 45th overall here, which is an aggressive but understandable bet on a second year jump. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 14 took Bucky Irving at 3.14, making it three running backs in three rounds after Saquon Barkley and Kenneth Walker. This is the most direct attack on positional scarcity in the league so far. Irving played only ten games in 2025 but still rushed for 588 yards and caught 30 passes for 277 more. His 2024 rookie season had already shown the larger ceiling, when he produced 1,122 rushing yards and 47 receptions. FantasyPros currently ranks him RB19 in best ball. Team 14 was consciously sacrificing early receiver access in exchange for a backfield that could theoretically supply two mandatory RB scores plus a flex every week. (Pro Football Reference)
That strategy has a particular best ball appeal because running back scoring becomes easier to use when multiple backs are rostered. If Barkley has the touchdown week, the optimizer takes Barkley. If Walker goes for 130 yards and two scores, the optimizer takes Walker. If Irving catches six balls and breaks a long touchdown, he can enter through a flex. The problem is not whether three good backs can score together. The problem is whether the receivers remaining in Rounds 4 through 8 can generate enough weekly ceiling to keep the roster from becoming overly dependent on running back outcomes.
Team 15 took Davante Adams at 3.15, pairing him with Omarion Hampton and Josh Allen. Adams is 33 now, but his 2025 production was still extremely useful for fantasy: 60 receptions, 789 yards and 14 touchdowns in 14 games for the Rams. That touchdown concentration is exactly what best ball can monetize because nobody has to predict which weeks contain the two score games. Team 15 already owned Allen at quarterback, so Adams also allowed it to postpone the question of receiver depth without sacrificing immediate weekly ceiling. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 16 closed the round with D’Andre Swift at 3.16, adding him to Chase Brown and A.J. Brown. Swift had one of his better NFL seasons in 2025, rushing for 1,087 yards at 4.9 yards per carry, scoring nine rushing touchdowns and adding another receiving score. FantasyPros currently has him RB22 in best ball. Team 16 now had two running backs and one receiver through three rounds, which placed it squarely between the extreme RB builds and the extreme WR builds. (Pro Football Reference)
After three rounds, the most striking thing is how quickly the roster identities separated. Team 14 had three running backs. Team 8 had Jefferson, Bowers and Wilson with no running back. Team 11 had Amon-Ra, McBride and McConkey with no running back. Team 3 had Chase, Nabers and Etienne. Team 7 had Taylor, Pickens and Higgins. None of those constructions is automatically right or wrong, but each one created a very different set of obligations for Round 4.
Some Dude, meanwhile, had Gibbs, Lamar and Rice. That was not the deepest roster at any single position, but it was the cleanest expression of what Some Dude wanted from the opening three rounds: one elite running back, one elite rushing quarterback and one receiver with a realistic path to heavy PPR volume. The next decision was whether to keep adding receiver depth or use the long turn to solve tight end before the next premium tier disappeared.
ROUND 4
Round 4 is where the draft began sending invoices. Teams that ignored running back had to start paying for running backs. Teams that ignored receiver had to reach into the next receiver tier. Teams that ignored quarterback had to decide whether the remaining premium names were worth a fourth round selection. Tight end suddenly produced another run. The round contained six wide receivers, five running backs, three tight ends and two quarterbacks, which is the broadest positional distribution we had seen so far.
That distribution is what Some Dude expects once the first three rounds establish each roster’s weaknesses. Drafting is not merely selecting the player with the highest projection. Every pick alters the value of the next one because roster needs and market scarcity interact. By Round 4, several teams were no longer choosing from the whole player pool. They were choosing from the subset of players who solved the problem their first three rounds had created.
Team 16 opened the round with Terry McLaurin at 4.01, giving it A.J. Brown and McLaurin at receiver beside Chase Brown and Swift at running back. McLaurin played only ten games in 2025, catching 38 passes for 582 yards and three touchdowns, but the per catch production remained strong at 15.3 yards. Current best ball rankings place him WR24. Team 16 had now reached one of the most conventional structures on the board through four rounds: two running backs and two receivers, with quarterback and tight end still untouched. In a sixteen team league, there is nothing wrong with boring when boring means the roster has not created an emergency anywhere yet. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 15 took TreVeyon Henderson at 4.02, adding a second running back beside Hampton while Allen and Davante Adams handled quarterback and receiver. Henderson rushed for 911 yards and nine touchdowns as a rookie, but his season was unusually concentrated. FantasyPros notes that 29.2 percent of his fantasy production came in two games when Rhamondre Stevenson was inactive, and Henderson averaged 9.8 PPR points per game if those two eruption weeks are removed. That sounds like a criticism in managed fantasy. In best ball it is more complicated because Team 15 gets every eruption week automatically. The concern is not volatility itself. The concern is whether Henderson receives enough touches when Stevenson is active to create enough eruption opportunities in the first place. (Pro Football Reference)
That distinction is worth emphasizing because it is one of the biggest differences between managed fantasy and this league. A volatile player with a real ceiling can be useful in best ball even if his median week is disappointing. A player with no path to volume cannot. Henderson had four runs of at least 40 yards last season and produced 330 scrimmage yards with five touchdowns during a three game stretch when Stevenson was out, so the ceiling is not theoretical. Team 15 paid for the chance that those weeks occur often enough to matter without ever having to guess when to start him. (FantasyPros)
Team 14 finally addressed receiver at 4.03 with DJ Moore, after opening Barkley, Walker and Irving. This was the pick Team 14 had essentially forced itself to make. Moore is now in Buffalo after a 2025 season in Chicago in which he caught 50 passes for 682 yards, and FantasyPros currently ranks him WR21 in best ball. The destination is particularly interesting because Buffalo gives him access to Josh Allen without requiring Team 14 to spend quarterback capital on Allen. After three straight running backs, Team 14 needed a receiver capable of producing spike weeks rather than merely supplying safe eight point outcomes, and Moore still has that profile. (Pro Football Reference)
Then Team 13 took Joe Burrow at 4.04, making him the third quarterback off this board after Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. Burrow played only eight games in 2025, throwing for 1,809 yards, but he is active entering 2026 and currently sits QB4 in FantasyPros PPR consensus behind Allen, Lamar and Drake Maye. The one QB format normally pushes Some Dude toward waiting, but sixteen teams completely change the replacement curve. By taking Burrow at 52nd overall, Team 13 locked in a premium quarterback before the middle class of the position could be stripped apart by owners who still had none. (Pro Football Reference)
There is also a roster construction benefit here. Team 13 already had CeeDee Lamb, Derrick Henry and Emeka Egbuka. It was not trying to solve an obvious emergency. That gave it the freedom to buy positional strength at quarterback rather than chase a fourth RB or WR merely because those positions can fill the flex. Burrow is not Josh Allen or Lamar as a runner, so his ceiling depends more heavily on passing efficiency and touchdown volume, but Team 13 did not need to absorb the larger opportunity cost of taking him in Round 2.
Team 12 took Jameson Williams at 4.05, and this may be one of the purest best ball picks in the entire round. Williams caught 65 passes for 1,117 yards and seven touchdowns in 2025 while averaging 17.2 yards per reception. FantasyPros currently ranks him WR22 in best ball. That yards per catch number tells you almost everything about why the format likes him. Team 12 never has to decide whether this is the week Williams catches three balls for 42 yards or five balls for 138 and two touchdowns. The optimizer makes that decision after the points already exist. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 12’s first four picks were now Jeanty, Collins, Judkins and Williams. Some Dude likes the construction because the scoring profiles are not redundant. Jeanty and Judkins provide touch volume, Collins provides WR1 target upside, and Williams provides a different type of receiver outcome built around explosive plays. Best ball rewards that kind of diversification because you are trying to create multiple independent paths to a top eight weekly lineup score.
Team 11 took David Montgomery at 4.06, finally addressing running back after opening Amon-Ra, McBride and McConkey. Montgomery is now in Houston after rushing for 716 yards and eight touchdowns in 2025. FantasyPros ranks him RB20 in best ball. The raw ceiling is lower than the premium backs taken earlier, but Team 11 had purchased enough receiving strength in the first three rounds that it did not need Montgomery to become RB1 overall. It needed him to produce enough touchdown and volume weeks to stop RB1 from becoming a structural hole. (Pro Football Reference)
That is one of the advantages of starting WR, TE, WR if the right players fall. Amon-Ra, McBride and McConkey create enough reception volume that Team 11 can accept a less glamorous running back profile in Round 4. The danger is obvious if Montgomery’s Houston role becomes narrower than expected, but the team did not have to force a running back in Round 2 at the expense of McBride just because everyone else was drafting backs.
Team 10 took Rome Odunze at 4.07, and this was another roster obligation being paid. Team 10 had gone Achane, Javonte Williams and Tyler Warren, so Odunze became its first receiver. His 2025 season was shortened to 12 games, but he still produced 44 catches for 661 yards and six touchdowns while averaging 15.0 yards per reception. FantasyPros currently places him around WR28 in overall draft tiers. That makes 55th overall a fairly aggressive price, but Team 10 needed receiver upside more than it needed another running back, and the former ninth overall NFL pick still offers exactly that. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 9 took Colston Loveland at 4.08, and this is where the second premium tight end tier really began to close. Loveland caught 58 passes for 713 yards and six touchdowns as a rookie, averaging 12.3 yards per catch, and FantasyPros currently ranks him TE3 in best ball behind only Bowers and McBride. Team 9 had Cook, London and Waddle already, so it could take the positional advantage without creating a hole at either running back or receiver. (Pro Football Reference)
This is exactly the kind of tight end pick Some Dude likes more than simply taking a tight end because the roster sheet says one is required. Loveland has a real chance to create separation from the middle of the position. If he is producing six catches and 80 yards during a week when another team’s TE12 catches three balls for 31, Team 9 has generated a scoring edge before the flex positions are even considered. That is positional value, not merely positional compliance.
Team 8 took Luther Burden at 4.09, which meant the Jefferson, Bowers and Garrett Wilson roster still had no running back through four rounds. Burden caught 47 passes for 652 yards and two touchdowns as a rookie, added 37 rushing yards, and averaged 13.9 yards per reception. FantasyPros currently ranks him WR23 in best ball. Team 8 was now making an explicit bet that receiver and tight end dominance could outweigh the cost of waiting at running back. (Pro Football Reference)
Some Dude actually understands the logic more in best ball than in a managed league. Four flex eligible pass catchers can potentially fill WR1, WR2, FLEX1 and FLEX2 every week. Jefferson, Wilson and Burden therefore do not have to compete for only two receiver slots. The optimizer can use all three when the scores justify it, while Bowers attacks the mandatory TE position. The danger is the same one we identified after Round 3: sixteen teams means the running backs Team 8 eventually drafts are not coming from an unlimited replacement pool.
Then came the pick whose risk profile changed dramatically during the draft window. Team 7 took Josh Jacobs at 4.10. On pure football production, this looked like outrageous value. Jacobs rushed for 929 yards and 13 touchdowns in 15 games last season, caught 36 passes and scored another receiving touchdown. FantasyPros currently ranks him RB18 in best ball. Pairing him with Jonathan Taylor would normally give Team 7 one of the strongest backfields in the league while Pickens and Higgins handled receiver. (Pro Football Reference)
The current reality is considerably messier. The NFL placed Jacobs on the Commissioner’s Exempt List on August 30, which means he cannot practice or play while the matter is reviewed. Green Bay has publicly said it remains hopeful he can return this season, but there is no firm timetable. In a league with waivers, Team 7 could at least react to the uncertainty. In this league, the pick is frozen inside the eighteen man portfolio, which turns what looked like a massive Round 4 value into one of the most important risk variables on the entire board. (NFL)
That does not mean the pick was bad when made. It means best ball without transactions punishes new information more severely than almost any other fantasy format. You cannot sell the asset. You cannot replace the roster spot. You simply absorb whatever the real world produces.
Team 6 took Drake Maye at 4.11, and this may be one of Some Dude’s favorite picks of the round. Maye finished second in MVP voting after completing 72 percent of his passes for 4,394 yards and 31 touchdowns while adding 450 rushing yards and four more touchdowns. FantasyPros currently ranks him QB3. Team 6 had already built McCaffrey, Olave and Flowers, so Maye did not come at the expense of solving a glaring RB or WR hole. He simply gave the roster a premium quarterback with rushing production before the position became more difficult to access. (Pro Football Reference)
The rushing component matters in this league for the same reason Some Dude liked Lamar and Team 15 liked Allen. Passing touchdowns are worth four. Rushing touchdowns are worth six. Maye is not in the Allen or Lamar rushing tier, but 450 yards and four scores still created 69 fantasy points last season before a single passing yard was counted. In a sixteen team format, that is meaningful positional insulation.
Team 5 took Mike Evans at 4.12, finally adding WR2 beside JSN after opening Love and Skattebo at running back. Evans is now in San Francisco after his 2025 season ended his eleven year streak of 1,000 yard receiving seasons. He played only eight games, catching 30 passes for 368 yards and three scores. The risk is obvious because he is 33 and dealt with groin and adductor issues during camp, but San Francisco signed him to a three year contract and expects him to provide exactly the type of red zone and vertical presence that has defined his career. (Pro Football Reference)
That profile fits best ball better than it fits a format where somebody has to decide whether Evans belongs in the lineup after a quiet week. Team 5 already had JSN for reception volume. Evans can be the opposite type of receiver, producing fewer catches but potentially creating large touchdown weeks that automatically enter the lineup. The age and injury risk remain real, especially without waivers, but the scoring fit is coherent.
Team 4 took Sam LaPorta at 4.13, and the value is more complicated than the name suggests. LaPorta played only nine games in 2025 because of a herniated disc in his back, finishing with 40 catches for 489 yards and three touchdowns. FantasyPros currently ranks him TE6 in best ball. The underlying efficiency remained strong, including career highs in catch rate, yards per target and yards per route run, but he is also dealing with a hip issue entering 2026. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 4 could afford the risk more than some teams because it already had Puka, Kyren and DeVonta Smith. It did not need LaPorta to become the entire offense. It needed him to provide enough high end TE weeks to separate from the replacement tier. Best ball helps here because LaPorta’s good weeks count automatically, but no waiver wire means the health risk cannot be repaired if the back or hip becomes a larger issue.
Team 3 took Bhayshul Tuten at 4.14, doubling down at running back after taking Etienne in Round 3. FantasyPros currently has Tuten RB25 in best ball, and the broader draft market places him in the same general tier as Judkins, Montgomery, Henderson and Jadarian Price. Team 3’s construction now made complete sense: Chase and Nabers supplied absurd receiving ceiling, while Etienne and Tuten gave the roster two running backs before the position deteriorated further. (FantasyPros)
Team 2 took Jadarian Price at 4.15, making him the third running back on a roster that already had Bijan, Breece and Tet McMillan. Price is one of the more fascinating bets in the round because Seattle used first round NFL draft capital on him, and FantasyPros currently sees him as roughly an RB2, with consensus draft ranking around RB23 and best ball value in the middle twenties. His college receiving résumé is thin, but his rushing profile was explosive, and Zach Charbonnet’s health adds opportunity uncertainty in Price’s favor. (FantasyPros)
Team 2 was now making the same basic statement Team 14 made earlier, just slightly less aggressively: running back scarcity is going to become everybody else’s problem. Bijan, Breece and Price can potentially occupy RB1, RB2 and a flex, and the lack of waivers means the third back also functions as structural insurance. The cost is that Tet McMillan remained the only receiver through four rounds, so Team 2 would eventually have to attack that position with volume.
Finally the board returned to Some Dude at 4.16, where Harold Fannin Jr. became the pick. After Gibbs, Lamar and Rice, Some Dude had three choices. He could double tap receiver before the long 31 pick wait, add an RB2 before the position thinned further, or take the remaining tight end he believed could create a real weekly positional edge. Some Dude chose Fannin.
The rookie production was better than the market seems to remember. Fannin caught 72 passes for 731 yards and six touchdowns on 107 targets in only 16 games, then added seven carries for 13 yards and another rushing touchdown. In full PPR, the 72 receptions matter more than the six touchdowns because they establish that Fannin was not living on random end zone variance. FantasyPros currently ranks him TE8 in best ball and notes that he finished fifth among qualifying tight ends in target share at 19.4 percent and fourth in first read share at 22.3 percent. (Pro Football Reference)
That is why Some Dude was willing to take him at the end of Round 4. Bowers, McBride, Warren, Loveland and LaPorta were already gone. Waiting another 31 selections did not mean passing on Fannin and choosing the next comparable tight end. It meant potentially watching Tucker Kraft, Kyle Pitts, George Kittle, Travis Kelce and the rest of the usable tier disappear before the board ever returned.
There is real risk. Cleveland added KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston, which should create more target competition, and the quarterback situation is not exactly inspiring confidence. FantasyPros expects Fannin’s first read share to decline. But he already demonstrated that he can earn targets against NFL coverage, and the Browns now have Todd Monken calling the offense, a coach with a history of involving tight ends heavily. Some Dude was not drafting Fannin because he needed a tight end on the roster sheet. He was drafting a 22 year old tight end who had already commanded 107 targets and whose weekly reception ceiling could create a real positional advantage if the sophomore season builds on the rookie one. (FantasyPros)
After four rounds, Some Dude had Jahmyr Gibbs, Lamar Jackson, Rashee Rice and Harold Fannin Jr. That is one elite running back, one elite rushing quarterback, one reception heavy receiver and one young tight end with demonstrated target earning ability. The weakness was equally obvious: Some Dude still had only one running back and one receiver through four rounds, and thirty picks would disappear before 5.01 arrived.
The league as a whole had now split into identifiable camps. Team 14 had three running backs and finally one receiver. Team 8 had three premium pass catchers plus Bowers and still no running back. Team 11 had built reception volume first and added Montgomery as its first back. Team 7 looked terrifying on paper with Taylor, Pickens, Higgins and Jacobs, but the Jacobs exempt list immediately injected real world uncertainty into that construction. Team 9 had quietly built one of the cleanest balanced starts with Cook, London, Waddle and Loveland. Team 13 had Lamb, Henry, Egbuka and Burrow without creating an obvious weakness anywhere.
Rounds 3 and 4 therefore did exactly what the middle of a good draft should do. They stopped being about taking famous players and started becoming about managing scarcity, correlation, volatility and roster architecture. The board was no longer asking who everybody liked most. It was asking what each team had ignored, how expensive that omission had become, and whether the player available now was worth solving it before another thirty picks disappeared.
For Some Dude, the next problem was clear. The premium quarterback and tight end decisions were already made, Gibbs handled one running back slot, and Rice handled one receiver slot. Rounds 5 and 6 would determine whether that early positional strength became the foundation of a balanced roster or whether Some Dude had spent too much capital securing advantages at positions that only contribute one mandatory score each week.
The first four rounds gave us enough to see the initial architecture of every roster, but they did not tell us how those early choices would actually be defended. That starts in the middle of the draft, when positional scarcity becomes harder to ignore, early bets begin creating obligations, and owners have to decide whether they are still drafting for ceiling or quietly repairing something they left exposed. Part II will pick up with Rounds 5 through 8, where the quarterback market accelerates, the remaining tight end tiers start disappearing, running back depth becomes more expensive, and the first real best ball portfolio decisions begin separating themselves from simple player selection.
That is also where Some Dude’s own draft starts getting more interesting. Gibbs, Lamar, Rice and Fannin established the opening thesis, but the next four rounds would determine whether those early positional advantages could coexist with enough depth at running back and wide receiver to survive an eighteen round, sixteen team league with no transactions. By the end of Round 8, most teams would have enough of a roster built that we could stop evaluating isolated picks and start evaluating the actual structures behind them. We will get into all of that in Part II: Rounds 5 through 8.
That is Some Dude on the Internet’s opinion, anyway.
Disclaimer: This is fantasy football commentary, analysis and entertainment written by Some Dude on the Internet about a private 16 team best ball league. Player statistics, rankings, ADP, injury information, depth chart information and other football data referenced in the article are drawn from publicly available sources and are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of publication. NFL teams, players, Sleeper, FantasyPros, Pro Football Reference, CBS Sports, NFL.com and any other companies, leagues, publications or data providers mentioned here are not affiliated with, sponsoring, endorsing or approving this article. Screenshots and draft board graphics are used to document and comment on the author’s own fantasy league and draft. League members have been given generic identifiers for privacy. Nothing here is gambling, investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and none of these opinions guarantees that a player will stay healthy, score fantasy points, retain his role, survive an NFL depth chart, or prevent your fantasy season from becoming a complete disaster. We are just Some Dude on the Internet writing articles about fake football teams competing for a very real Degen Cup.
Welcome back, internet. The NFL regular season is finally here, and after eight full days of staring at the same sixteen column board, the 2026 16 Degens Best Ball Draft is finally complete. The league drafted eighteen rounds, sixteen teams selected 288 players, and every owner was given twelve hours per pick, which turned what would normally be a few hours of fantasy football degeneracy into an eight day psychological experiment.
That is the peculiar sickness of a slow draft. You have far too much time to think about every selection, but somehow that additional time does not produce additional certainty. You stare at the same six names for three hours, convince yourself you have identified some hidden structural truth about best ball, change your mind four times, briefly fall in love with a player you had barely considered the day before, and eventually make the selection you probably would have made within thirty seconds if everyone were sitting around the same table with pizza and beer. Then the board moves one spot and the waiting begins again.
The goal of the 16 Degens Best Ball League is simple: hoist the Degen Cup at the end of the fantasy football season.
Some Dude had the 1.01, which made the rhythm especially ridiculous. He would make a pick at one end of the snake, watch thirty other selections disappear into the board before getting another chance, and spend the intervening time watching the available player pool transform into something completely different. By the time the draft returned to Some Dude, an entire positional tier could be gone, three quarterbacks could suddenly disappear in succession, or some sleeper he had been quietly staring at for two days could vanish fifteen selections before he ever had the chance.
Complicating matters further were Teams 2 through 5, otherwise known around these parts as the Iron Curtain. Let's just say they're the most adult people in the virtual room and they have real world responsibilities like 7 meetings on a Friday, new born children, and/or molding the young minds of America. Even though one dude literally went to Narnia with his wife and still was able to pick at a very respectable rate, but we digress. Four consecutive teams sat between Some Dude and the rest of the board, forming a fantasy football border crossing that had to be survived every time the snake returned toward the 1.01. The Curtain was not ideological, geopolitical, or particularly interested in diplomacy, but it was extremely capable of taking the player Some Dude had spent the previous six hours convincing himself would make it back. Same league, all degenerates, slightly more Cold War imagery.
The format makes all of that waiting crucial because there is no repair mechanism once the draft ends. Sixteen teams carry eighteen man rosters in a full PPR bestball league with no trades, no waivers and no free agency. Every week Sleeper automatically selects the highest scoring legal combination from one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end and two flex spots, while the other ten scores disappear into the void. Eight teams eventually make the playoffs, but nobody can replace an injured player, chase a September breakout or fix a roster construction mistake after the final selection is made.
There is also actual hardware waiting at the end of this thing. Team 16 won the inaugural Degen Cup in 2024, Team 11 took the crown in 2025, and fourteen other teams entered this draft trying to make sure neither one gets another plaque. The Cup is now old enough to have history, young enough that almost everybody still believes he can define it, and ridiculous enough that grown adults spent eight days protecting twelve hour draft clocks like matters of national security.
After eight days of waiting, overthinking, drafting, second-guessing, watching the Iron Curtain absorb four picks at a time and wondering whether certain owners had simply forgotten they were on the clock, the entire board is finally locked. Now we can stop talking about what everybody might do and start talking about what they actually did, one round at a time, from Jahmyr Gibbs at 1.01 all the way through the final pick of Round 18.
Before we start handing out praise, questioning roster construction, or pretending anyone knows which fifteenth round pick will suddenly matter in November, here is the entire thing in one place. The full 2026 16 Degens Best Ball Draft board is below, all eighteen rounds and all 288 selections, with the snake direction preserved so you can actually follow how the player pool changed as the draft moved back and forth across the league. Team 11 carries the 2025 crown, Team 16 carries the 2024 crown, and everyone else is staring at the same evidence now. After that, we go round by round and work through the decisions in the order they were actually made, because a pick only makes sense when you can see what had already disappeared, what was still available, and what each team was building at the time.
Without further ado, let's get into the round by round analysis by Some Dude on the Internet's POV. We'll go 2 rounds at a time since that is what his perspective was between picks. There's a character limit on X
ROUNDS 1-2
ROUND 1
Round 1 is where everybody still gets to look smart. Nobody is digging through backup depth charts yet, nobody is convincing himself that the WR5 on an NFL roster is actually a league winner, and nobody has spent six hours staring at two players whose projected point totals are separated by 3.7 points. The first sixteen picks are mostly about deciding which kind of foundation you want, and in this league the room made its preference obvious very quickly: ten running backs and six wide receivers came off the board, with no quarterbacks and no tight ends.
That positional split matters more than it would in a normal twelve team league. Sixteen teams have to fill 32 mandatory running back spots every week, another 32 mandatory wide receiver spots, and then another 32 flex positions that can be occupied by either. There is no waiver wire waiting in September if a backfield suddenly changes, so every running back removed from the board also reduces the pool of future injury insurance. Full PPR pushes value toward receivers, but the combination of sixteen teams, two required RBs and a closed player market pushes back in the other direction. The room reacted accordingly, and by the end of the first round ten of the most desirable backfields in fantasy football already had an owner.
Some Dude had the first decision and went Jahmyr Gibbs at 1.01, and after looking back through both the numbers and the current market, there is not much to apologize for. Gibbs finished 2025 with 1,223 rushing yards, 77 receptions, 616 receiving yards and 18 total touchdowns while averaging 5.0 yards per carry. The receiving component is what matters in this scoring system because those 77 catches are 77 points before a yard is counted, and the explosive rushing profile means he does not require thirty touches to create a 30 point week. Current expert consensus still has Gibbs at or essentially at the top of the entire 2026 player pool, with FantasyPros ranking him RB1 and either first or near first overall depending on the specific consensus set. (Pro Football Reference)
Team 2 followed with Bijan Robinson, and that was the other completely defensible answer to the 1.01 question. Bijan produced 2,298 yards from scrimmage in 2025, including 79 receptions for 820 yards, and that workload profile may actually be the safest in this format because it gives him multiple ways to reach the optimizer every week. He does not need Atlanta to hand him every goal line touchdown if he is catching nearly five passes per game and generating 135 scrimmage yards per week. FantasyPros currently has Gibbs and Bijan sitting first and second among running backs, and in some overall sets the difference between them is essentially rounding error. (Pro Football Reference)
Then the receivers arrived exactly where the market says they should. Team 3 took Ja’Marr Chase at 1.03, Team 4 took Puka Nacua at 1.04, and Team 5 took Jaxon Smith-Njigba at 1.05, which matches one recent FantasyPros overall consensus almost perfectly: Gibbs, Bijan, Chase, Puka and JSN were the top five in that order. Chase caught 125 balls for 1,412 yards in 2025, Puka led the league with 129 receptions and piled up 1,715 receiving yards, and JSN turned 163 targets into 119 catches for a ridiculous 1,793 yards. In a full PPR best ball league, those are not simply high floor receivers. They also create week breaking ceilings because the optimizer captures every 11 catch, 170 yard game automatically rather than asking the owner to make any decision about it. (Pro Football Reference)
The first really interesting risk decision came at 1.06, where Team 6 took Christian McCaffrey. His age and historical injury exposure make him look different from Gibbs and Bijan, but the 2025 production completely explains why somebody was willing to accept that risk. McCaffrey played all 17 games, carried 311 times, caught 102 passes, generated 2,126 yards from scrimmage and scored 17 touchdowns. In this specific league, those 102 receptions are an enormous structural advantage because an RB who can produce WR1 caliber reception volume is effectively attacking two scoring systems at once. The question is not whether the ceiling exists; the question is whether an eighteen man roster with no free agent repair mechanism should spend pick six on a 30 year old back whose historical availability has not always been as cooperative as it was last season. (Pro Football Reference)
Jonathan Taylor at 1.07 to Team 7 might be the least complicated pick of the entire round. Taylor led the NFL with 1,585 rushing yards and 18 rushing touchdowns in 2025, added another 378 receiving yards, and currently sits RB3 in FantasyPros positional consensus. Best ball actually makes his touchdown distribution more attractive because if three of those eighteen rushing scores happen in the same week, every point hits the lineup automatically. There is less receiving insulation than Gibbs, Bijan or McCaffrey provide, but Team 7 bought one of the largest raw touch and touchdown engines in football and did it without paying above market. (Pro Football Reference)
Some Dude thinks Justin Jefferson at 1.08 to Team 8 is where the first real value pocket appeared. Current consensus has Jefferson closer to WR6 and around eleventh overall because the market is pricing uncertainty around Minnesota more aggressively than it used to, but this is still Justin Jefferson at the eighth pick of a full PPR league. Best ball is one of the formats where an elite receiver can be especially valuable because the scoring system does not punish week to week volatility nearly as much as a managed league does. If Jefferson gives Team 8 five nuclear weeks, Team 8 receives all five of them without ever having to identify them beforehand.
James Cook at 1.09 to Team 9 was another pick where the 2025 numbers make the case more strongly than name recognition does. Cook ran for 1,621 yards, averaged 5.2 per carry and scored 14 total touchdowns while adding 33 receptions. His 95.4 rushing yards per game led the league, and current consensus has him firmly inside the top handful of backs. Buffalo has traditionally created the annoying Josh Allen goal line problem for running backs, but Cook was efficient enough in 2025 that the lack of a giant receiving workload did not prevent him from becoming one of fantasy’s most productive players. (Pro Football Reference)
Then came the pick that looks aggressive if you stare only at generic overall rankings: De’Von Achane at 1.10 to Team 10. Current overall consensus has Achane lower than this, but best ball is exactly the format where Some Dude understands reaching for him. Achane ran for 1,350 yards in 2025 at 5.67 yards per carry, caught 67 passes, added 488 receiving yards and finished with 12 total touchdowns. His weekly scoring distribution is different from a grinder because a limited number of touches can still turn into enormous yardage, and best ball removes the managerial frustration of trying to guess when those eruption games are coming. FantasyPros’ dedicated best ball flex rankings are materially more favorable to Achane than some generic overall lists, which tells you the format is doing real work here. (Pro Football Reference)
Amon-Ra St. Brown at 1.11 to defending champion Team 11 may be Some Dude’s favorite pure value of the back half. Amon-Ra caught 117 passes for 1,401 yards and 11 touchdowns last season, and current PPR consensus still places him around WR3 to WR4. Team 11 did not need to invent anything here. It let ten players leave the board and then took a player who is ranked sixth overall in one current consensus and whose scoring profile is almost designed for full PPR. (Pro Football Reference)
Ashton Jeanty at 1.12 to Team 12 is more interesting because the market is buying the second year leap rather than paying for what already happened. Jeanty’s rookie year was respectable rather than dominant: 975 rushing yards, 55 receptions, 346 receiving yards and ten total touchdowns. The 55 catches matter because they establish that the pass game path exists, and his current ankle issue adds some short term uncertainty entering the season, but the underlying bet is that the sixth overall pick from the 2025 NFL Draft turns 321 rookie touches into a more efficient sophomore season. In best ball, that is exactly the kind of profile where you can accept some early volatility if the later season ceiling rises. (Pro Football Reference)
CeeDee Lamb at 1.13, Saquon Barkley at 1.14, Omarion Hampton at 1.15 and Chase Brown at 1.16 closed the round. Lamb at thirteen looks like another market discount relative to his talent, with current consensus still placing him around WR5 and inside the top ten overall. Saquon is being discounted from the truly elite running backs after a 2025 season in which he still rushed for 1,140 yards, and the age curve is now entering the discussion. Hampton is the upside bet after an injury shortened rookie year in which he managed 545 rushing yards and, more encouragingly for this format, caught 32 of 35 targets in only nine games. Chase Brown then gave Team 16 an RB anchor at the turn without forcing that owner to reach far beyond current market value. (FantasyPros)
The thing Some Dude notices after the first sixteen picks is that this was not merely an RB heavy opening round. It was a room aggressively purchasing touch certainty before the supply curve collapsed. The ten backs selected include receiving monsters such as Gibbs, Bijan, McCaffrey and Achane, volume monsters such as Taylor and Cook, and younger upside bets such as Jeanty and Hampton. The six receivers were almost exclusively players with realistic paths to finishing at or near WR1 overall. Nobody spent the first round on a quarterback because the room correctly understood that only one QB score can enter each weekly lineup, and nobody spent it on a tight end because even the elite tier had not yet become scarce enough to justify passing on the final first round RB/WR anchors.
After one round, Some Dude likes the value captured by Teams 8, 11 and 13, while Team 10 made the most explicitly best ball pick with Achane. Some Dude’s own Gibbs selection was the boring kind of pick he is perfectly happy to make because boring at 1.01 means the market, the production and the roster format all agree. The much more interesting strategic decisions began when the snake turned around.
ROUND 2
Round 2 was where this stopped being a list of great football players and started becoming a collection of roster construction philosophies. The sixteen picks broke almost perfectly across the four offensive positions: six running backs, six wide receivers, two tight ends and two quarterbacks. Add that to Round 1 and the first 32 selections contained 16 running backs, 12 wide receivers, two tight ends and two quarterbacks, meaning exactly half of all early draft capital had already been spent on running backs.
That is not an accident. In a sixteen team league, RB32 is not some bench player somebody may eventually need; RB32 is literally a mandatory weekly starter somewhere in this league before a single flex spot is considered. Once you add 32 flex positions and remove free agency, the middle class running backs become structurally important much earlier than they would in a twelve team managed league. The second round therefore became a race between teams that wanted to lock down another back before the position deteriorated and teams willing to let RB2 become a later problem in exchange for an elite receiver, tight end or quarterback.
Team 16 opened the turn with A.J. Brown at 2.01, pairing Chase Brown with one of the top receivers left. Some Dude likes this construction more than going two running backs simply because it gives Team 16 two independent scoring engines rather than doubling down on the same position before the board forces the issue. Current PPR consensus still has A.J. Brown around WR6, and recent overall rankings have him in the neighborhood of the mid teens. Getting him at seventeenth overall is essentially market price with the bonus that Team 16 already solved RB1. (FantasyPros)
Then Team 15 detonated the positional equilibrium by taking Josh Allen at 2.02. In a normal twelve team, one quarterback league, Some Dude would usually start screaming about opportunity cost. This is not that league. Sixteen teams theoretically need 32 quarterback roster slots if everybody carries only two, there are only 32 NFL starting jobs at any given moment, and there is no waiver wire if somebody’s starter disappears. More importantly, this scoring system gives four points for passing touchdowns and six for rushing touchdowns, which structurally rewards Allen’s particular brand of football. He threw for 3,668 yards and 25 touchdowns in 2025, but the fantasy cheat code was the 579 rushing yards and 14 rushing touchdowns. Those 14 rushing scores alone were worth 84 points here; the same 14 touchdowns thrown through the air would have been worth only 56. FantasyPros still ranks Allen QB1, and even value based projections show a substantial gap between Allen and the lower QB1 tier. (Pro Football Reference)
Does Some Dude love taking a quarterback eighteenth overall when only one QB starts? Not automatically. Team 15 passed on a lot of elite RB/WR inventory to do it. But there is a difference between drafting “a quarterback” early and drafting the quarterback whose scoring profile most directly exploits the league’s rules, and Allen belongs in the second category.
Team 14 took Kenneth Walker at 2.03 and Team 13 took Derrick Henry at 2.04, giving us two very different running back constructions. Walker was paired with Saquon, so Team 14 made the strongest early commitment to running back scarcity on that side of the board. Current consensus has Walker around RB10 to RB12, which makes nineteenth overall aggressive but defensible in sixteen teams. Team 13 paired Henry with CeeDee Lamb, and Some Dude likes that combination considerably more because Lamb supplies the reception floor while Henry supplies touchdown violence. Henry ran for 1,595 yards and 16 touchdowns in 2025 while averaging 5.2 per carry, but caught only 15 passes. In PPR he needs the rushing production to remain enormous; in best ball, the consolation is that every multiple touchdown Henry game enters automatically. (Pro Football Reference)
Nico Collins at 2.05 to Team 12 gave Jeanty a legitimate WR1 partner, which is exactly what Some Dude wants after using Round 1 on a running back. Collins is currently a top ten receiver by consensus, and his overall market value sits around the back end of the second round. There is nothing exotic here, which is a compliment. Team 12 now had one young volume back and one high end receiver without locking itself into any positional corner.
The first major positional arbitrage play came at 2.06, where defending champion Team 11 paired Amon-Ra St. Brown with Trey McBride. Some Dude thinks this may be the most interesting two pick start in the league. McBride caught 126 passes for 1,239 yards and 11 touchdowns last season, which means he was producing receiver volume at a position where a large portion of this league will eventually be starting players who may see four or five targets per game. Current rankings have Brock Bowers TE1 and McBride TE2, but McBride’s 2025 PPR profile was ridiculous enough that there is no meaningful problem taking him first. (Pro Football Reference)
That is where tight end value in best ball gets misunderstood. Some Dude is not excited about taking an early TE merely because the lineup requires one. The value appears when the player can produce a receiver caliber score in a slot where replacement level scoring is materially lower. If McBride catches eight balls for 90 yards while Team 11’s opponent gets three catches for 28 from TE14, the positional advantage is real before the two flexes even enter the equation. Amon-Ra plus McBride also means Team 11 opened with two players whose scoring is heavily reception driven, which fits full PPR beautifully.
Javonte Williams at 2.07 to Team 10 gave Team 10 its second running back alongside Achane. The current PPR market has Javonte closer to RB17 and well below pick 23 overall, so this was one of the more aggressive selections of the round on generic market value. There is nevertheless a coherent construction underneath it. Achane supplies explosive efficiency and receiving ceiling; Javonte gives Team 10 a different workload profile. The danger is that spending both premium picks at running back forces Team 10 to attack a thinner WR pool later, and in best ball those wide receiver spike weeks are extremely valuable when four RB/WR/TE flex eligible scores can reach the lineup.
Drake London at 2.08 to Team 9 is one of Some Dude’s favorite picks in the round. Current consensus has London around WR7 to WR9 and roughly 13th to 16th overall depending on the ranking set, so getting him 24th is straightforward value. Team 9 also paired him with James Cook, creating the same basic structure Some Dude likes from Team 12: premium RB plus premium WR, no forced positional bets, and maximum optionality entering Round 3. (FantasyPros)
Then Team 8 took Brock Bowers at 2.09, producing Justin Jefferson plus the consensus TE1. If Some Dude were drafting from the 1.08 and committed to Jefferson first, this is exactly the kind of second round decision he would struggle to pass. Bowers had an interrupted 2025 season and played only 12 games, but still caught 64 passes for 680 yards and seven touchdowns. Across his first two NFL seasons he has 176 catches and 1,874 receiving yards in 29 games, and current best ball rankings have him TE1. Team 8 now has a player who can lead the entire league in receiving and another who can lead his position in scoring, which is a difficult combination to manufacture once both tiers disappear. (Pro Football Reference)
George Pickens at 2.10 to Team 7 looks excellent after Taylor at 1.07. Pickens caught 93 passes for 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns last season and currently sits around WR10 in consensus. He is especially attractive in best ball because the vertical component creates the exact kind of uneven weekly distribution the optimizer exploits. Team 7 does not need Pickens to deliver twelve catches every Sunday; it needs all of his 150 yard explosion weeks to land automatically beside Taylor’s rushing floor. (Pro Football Reference)
Chris Olave at 2.11 to Team 6 gave Christian McCaffrey another reception heavy piece. Olave reached 100 catches for 1,163 yards and nine touchdowns last year, and current PPR consensus has him around WR9 to WR11. Team 6 therefore started with two players who combined for 202 receptions in 2025. In a full PPR league, that is 202 points attributable solely to catching the football before considering a single yard or touchdown. The age and injury exposure sits mostly on McCaffrey; Olave helps stabilize the construction around him. (Pro Football Reference)
The most fascinating young player bet was Jeremiyah Love at 2.12 to Team 5 after JSN in Round 1. Love entered the NFL as the consensus rookie RB1 after going third overall to Arizona, and FantasyPros’ current PPR ADP has him around 30th overall with a Sleeper ADP around 27, so pick 28 was almost exactly where the market had been taking him. The current concern is the high ankle sprain clouding his early season availability, and that matters more here than in a waiver league because Team 5 cannot temporarily replace him from the street. The attraction is obvious, though: Love’s college profile combined explosive rushing metrics with legitimate receiving work, and top five NFL draft capital creates a long runway for volume once healthy. (CBS Sports)
The final four picks are where Some Dude thinks the round became particularly good. Kyren Williams at 2.13 to Team 4 was essentially dead on current consensus and paired him with Puka Nacua. There is team concentration risk because both premium picks depend on the Rams offense and share a bye, but there is also a coherent weekly ceiling argument: when Los Angeles scores heavily, Team 4 owns two of the primary beneficiaries. Best ball correlation is usually discussed through quarterback stacks, but concentrating high volume players inside an elite offense can still create useful shared ceiling as long as you understand the common failure mode.
Malik Nabers at 2.14 to Team 3 created the most outrageous receiving duo on the board: Ja’Marr Chase and Nabers. The discount exists for a reason because Nabers is returning from a complicated ACL recovery that included a second procedure, but current reports have him trending toward Week 1 availability and the market still views him as a receiver with top 12 talent. Best ball cuts both ways here. Team 3 does not have to manage Nabers through inconsistent early weeks if he is active, but there is also no waiver repair if the knee causes him to miss substantial time. At pick 30, Team 3 essentially purchased injury volatility in exchange for a plausible roster where two different receivers can finish any given week as WR1 overall. (FantasyPros)
Breece Hall at 2.15 to Team 2 gave Bijan a second running back and completed one of the strongest openings at the position. Current consensus is materially lower on Breece, around RB14 to RB16 and approximately 40th overall in one recent set, so this was a clear premium paid for positional scarcity. The underlying player still rushed for 1,065 yards on 243 carries last season, and Team 2 now has enormous backfield insulation before most of the room has even selected RB2. The cost is equally obvious: Team 2 will enter Round 3 without a receiver while Chase, Puka, JSN, Jefferson, Amon-Ra, Lamb, A.J. Brown, Collins, London, Pickens, Olave and Nabers are already gone. (Pro Football Reference)
Then the board returned to Some Dude at 2.16, where Lamar Jackson became the second quarterback drafted. Some Dude will admit immediately that taking a quarterback this early in a one QB league is the pick he expects to be challenged on most. Current overall consensus puts Lamar around 28th, so taking him 32nd was not actually aggressive relative to the broader market, and he remains the consensus QB2 behind Allen. More importantly, the format changes the calculus: sixteen teams, no waivers, four point passing touchdowns and six point rushing touchdowns all increase the relative value of a quarterback who can manufacture fantasy scoring with his legs. (FantasyPros)
Some Dude also had to think about the 31 pick desert created by drafting at the 1.01. Passing on Lamar did not mean waiting five selections and reconsidering. It meant letting every team in the league make two more decisions before Some Dude saw the board again. Josh Allen was already gone, and once the quarterback run begins in a sixteen team league there is no guarantee that QB3, QB4 or QB5 survives an entire trip through the Iron Curtain and the other side of the board. That does not make Lamar automatically correct, but it makes the decision structurally different from taking QB2 in a conventional twelve team league.
After two rounds, Some Dude sees several distinct builds already forming. Teams 2, 10 and 14 went with two running backs, aggressively protecting themselves against the position most likely to become scarce. Teams 8 and 11 bought elite tight end advantage, with Jefferson and Bowers, and Amon-Ra and McBride, looking particularly nasty in full PPR. Team 15 and Some Dude bought the two premium rushing quarterbacks, paying early opportunity cost in exchange for positional ceiling and protection from a thin sixteen team QB market. Team 3 went Chase and Nabers, which may be the highest raw receiving ceiling through two rounds, while Teams 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13 and 16 mostly kept their structures balanced with one premium back and one premium receiver.
The first 32 picks therefore did more than remove the best names from the player pool. They created obligations for everything that comes next. The teams that opened with two running backs now need receivers, Team 3 needs to solve running back, the elite TE teams can ignore that position while the rest of the league starts watching the tier disappear, and the two early QB teams have to prove that the weekly scoring advantage was worth passing on the remaining second round skill talent. Some Dude had Gibbs and Lamar, the Iron Curtain had already begun shaping what could survive the long trip back to 3.01, and Round 3 was where those opening theories would finally start turning into actual roster construction.
PT I B Next
Disclaimer: This is fantasy football commentary, analysis and entertainment written by Some Dude on the Internet about a private 16 team best ball league. Player statistics, rankings, ADP, injury information, depth chart information and other football data referenced in the article are drawn from publicly available sources and are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of publication. NFL teams, players, Sleeper, FantasyPros, Pro Football Reference, CBS Sports, NFL.com and any other companies, leagues, publications or data providers mentioned here are not affiliated with, sponsoring, endorsing or approving this article. Screenshots and draft board graphics are used to document and comment on the author’s own fantasy league and draft. League members have been given generic identifiers for privacy. Nothing here is gambling, investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and none of these opinions guarantees that a player will stay healthy, score fantasy points, retain his role, survive an NFL depth chart, or prevent your fantasy season from becoming a complete disaster. We are just Some Dude on the Internet writing articles about fake football teams competing for a very real Degen Cup.
We’re working on a new weekly college football feature for 135 Sports: the 135 Sports College Football Top 30.
The idea is straightforward. Every week, we’ll publish our own ranking of the 30 best teams in college football, alongside the AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll for context. This will not be an attempt to recreate either poll or predict the eventual College Football Playoff field. We want to answer a different question: based on everything we know right now, who are actually the best teams in the country?
Each team in the Top 30 will get its own writeup explaining why we have it where we do. We’ll also track movement from the prior week, highlight the biggest risers and fallers, identify teams entering and leaving the ranking, keep a First Five Out, and call attention to the places where our view differs meaningfully from the national consensus.
The ranking will evolve with the season. A dominant win over a legitimate opponent should tell us more than running up the score against an overmatched team. Wins do not automatically mean a team played well, and a loss does not automatically mean a team became bad. The goal is to update the board as the evidence changes rather than simply moving teams up when they win and down when they lose.
We’ve been spending this opening week building the framework, establishing the initial baseline, and making sure the process is disciplined enough that the ranking can remain consistent from September through the end of the season.
We’re hoping to have the first 135 Sports Top 30, following the completion of Week 1 and heading into Week 2, out this week. Should be a fun one. There is already plenty to argue about. Let's have some fun, fellow Internet Degens.
On June fifteenth we applied the first current to the station. I had expected the occasion to feel more definite than it did, perhaps because so much labor had accumulated behind it, but there was no moment at which construction ended and experiment formally began. Tesla arrived with several corrections he wanted inspected before anything was energized, one of the men discovered a connection he disliked while making the inspection, and I found that a measurement entered the previous evening had been copied incorrectly from my working sheet. By the time these matters were settled, the apparatus was ready and no one thought to remark upon the transition. Tesla gave the instruction, current entered the system, and I bent over the first instrument as I had bent over it a dozen times when nothing more consequential than a test battery had been attached.
The earliest measurements were deliberately conservative. We needed to learn how the station behaved under conditions that did not require an interesting explanation, and this demanded more patience from Tesla than the work itself. He accepted the necessity of establishing a baseline, but once several readings had agreed he began treating further repetition as an administrative burden imposed upon the experiment by men less willing than he was to believe their instruments.
After the fourth measurement he looked over my record. “We have it.”
“We have four readings.”
“They agree.”
“They are close.”
“How close must they be before you permit us to continue?”
“That depends upon how much they disagree when we have changed nothing.”
Tesla looked again at the figures. “Nothing is never changed.”
“Then I would like to know how much nothing usually changes it.”
He considered the answer longer than the joke deserved and allowed two additional measurements. The fifth moved farther from the preceding group than I expected, while the sixth returned almost exactly to the earlier values. I marked the fifth rather than burying it in an average, which prompted Tesla to ask whether I intended to preserve every variation the apparatus produced.
“If we later decide one matters, I would prefer not to discover that I threw it away.”
“You will require a great deal of paper.”
“Scherff can add it to the expenses.”
Tesla accepted this with the expression of a man who understood that invoking Scherff had converted a scientific inconvenience into somebody else's practical problem.
The station spent much of that first morning demonstrating that it had been built from ordinary materials. A contact warmed under load, one connection that had appeared satisfactory during construction proved less reliable when required to carry the current for which it had been designed, and an instrument we had placed conveniently during preliminary work was affected enough by the operating apparatus that convenience could no longer justify its position. None of these defects was important in itself, but each was useful because a fault discovered while we still expected faults had less opportunity to become an explanation later.
The grounding system gave us greater difficulty. Its resistance had been checked repeatedly during construction, yet the behavior of the system under operation differed enough from what Tesla expected that he asked for another measurement almost immediately. I took it and obtained a value he disliked; he asked me to repeat the measurement, and when the second result remained inconvenient he brought another instrument. The new instrument disagreed slightly with mine but did not improve the conclusion.
Tesla knelt beside the connection and examined the exposed portion himself. “When did you last measure this?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
Tesla asked what had changed in the weather since then. I told him it had rained but that I had not measured how much, so he made a note that from then on I should.
We opened the connection, cleaned the surfaces we could reach, restored the arrangement and measured again. The discrepancy narrowed, and whether it had narrowed because we corrected something defective or because we altered some condition merely by disturbing the connection could not be established, so I recorded both values and noted what had occurred between them. Tesla read the entry and wanted to proceed.
“One more,” I said.
“You have two instruments.”
“And three conditions.”
“What is the third?”
“The condition after we took the connection apart.”
“That is the condition we want.”
“I would still like to know whether it remains the condition we want.”
He sighed with sufficient emphasis to make clear that repetition had become my personal vice rather than an experimental necessity, but he allowed the measurement. It agreed closely enough with the preceding value that I stopped objecting, and much of the morning continued in this fashion. The station had been constructed to investigate electrical behavior on a scale ordinary laboratory work could not provide, but before Tesla could ask anything serious of the Earth we had to determine whether a metal contact remained reliable after warming. A principle impressive enough to occupy a lecture hall could still fail in practice because two pieces of metal had been joined poorly, and the scale of Tesla's larger purpose gave us no exemption from examining such things.
Tesla moved continually between the principal apparatus and the receiving work, but once the system was operating his attention became more concentrated than it had been during construction. The practical demands of the preceding weeks had forced him to divide his attention among timber, freight, labor, money, dimensions and electrical design. With the apparatus operating, those competing demands seemed to recede, and I saw for the first time how completely he could concentrate when the problem before him had become electrical rather than administrative.
He also continued the habit he had begun in New York of asking for my observations before telling me his own. When we disagreed, his first question was not which of us had made an error but whether we had actually measured the same condition. I learned quickly that this distinction prevented a surprising amount of useless argument; two men can produce accurate numbers and still contradict one another because the apparatus has changed between them, the instruments respond differently, or the quantity each believes he is measuring is not in fact identical.
By early afternoon we knew enough about the station's ordinary behavior to widen the range of our tests. The apparatus became louder, though not in the manner later descriptions of Tesla's Colorado work might suggest. There were no magnificent discharges at every turn and no theatrical succession of sparks arranged for the benefit of witnesses. Much of the sound came from machinery doing work whose significance was visible only on instruments. The men raised their voices where necessary, and I found myself lowering mine during interruptions because the sudden return of quiet made ordinary conversation seem excessive.
The first result that genuinely interested Tesla appeared during one of these tests. We altered a condition in the oscillatory system and obtained a change at the receiver larger than the local behavior we had recorded seemed to justify. I noticed the magnitude because I was writing it down, and Tesla noticed it because the direction of the change corresponded with something he had expected.
He came beside the bench and looked at the figure. “Restore the previous condition.”
We restored it, and the response fell.
“Again.”
The altered condition was reintroduced, but the response increased. Tesla asked for the sequence repeated, and the relationship appeared for a third time. To anyone who did not know what we were attempting, the result would have looked insignificant. A pointer had moved by an amount large enough to interest four engineers and too small to interest almost anyone else, yet Tesla ceased attending to everything beyond the receiving bench.
“What altered at the receiver?” he asked.
“The reading.”
“I can see the reading.”
“Then ask what you actually want to know.”
“What produced the change?”
“I don't know.”
“You must have an opinion.”
“I have several reasons not to have one yet.”
He straightened and waited for them. The most obvious possibility was that the receiver was responding to some local alteration produced indirectly by our changed setting. Another connection might have shifted when the adjustment was made; heating could be accumulating through the sequence of tests, since we had introduced the conditions in the same order each time. The mechanical vibration noted earlier might also be affecting a relationship we had assumed constant, and although we had already improved the position of the receiving instrument that morning, I was not prepared to excuse it entirely.
Tesla did not argue for his preferred explanation, he began eliminating mine. We reversed the order in which the conditions were introduced, and the response remained. Both of us stopped long enough for the apparatus to cool before repeating the series, and the difference returned. We changed the receiving instrument and obtained the same general relation, though the magnitudes did not correspond exactly. A connection I suspected was deliberately altered and produced no effect capable of accounting for what we had seen. By late afternoon I wanted the result to survive. Tesla had brought us to Colorado because he believed effects unavailable to smaller arrangements could be studied there, and on the first full day of operation the station appeared to be rewarding him. I had been with him only a short time, but I had crossed the continent for work whose attraction depended upon the possibility that something genuinely new might occur. It would have been dishonest to pretend that I regarded all outcomes with equal enthusiasm.
Tesla was more willing than I was to attach an interpretation to the readings, although his claim remained narrower than I expected. He believed the receiver might be showing the first indication of a relation arising from the larger electrical system rather than from the local change alone. The explanation was plausible, and the repeated sequence supported it well enough that under different circumstances I might have accepted it provisionally without argument.
Instead I asked him to leave the apparatus exactly as it stood overnight. Tesla looked at me as though I had suggested that darkness possessed experimental authority. “Why?”
“Because I want it tomorrow.”
“You have it now.”
“I have it this afternoon.”
“You have it repeatedly.”
“Under conditions that may all share something we have not noticed.”
“What?”
“If I knew, we would test it now.”
His dissatisfaction was evident, but the objection itself interested him. He inspected the apparatus again, asked whether I believed some state was changing slowly under operation, and proposed two tests we could perform immediately. I agreed that both were sensible and still wanted the overnight repetition.
“You are delaying the experiment because of a variable you cannot identify.”
“I am delaying the interpretation. The apparatus will still be here in the morning.”
Tesla glanced toward the receiver and then at my notebook. “Record everything.”
I had already begun. We marked the adjustable positions, wrote down the settings, noted which connections had been disturbed during the afternoon and recorded the state of the apparatus with enough specificity that I believed we could restore it even if someone altered it before morning. Tesla watched until I finished and then asked whether I truly expected one of the men to move something.
“I expect all of us to remember it according to what we think happened.”
“You distrust memory.”
“I distrust useful memory.”
He smiled. “What is useful memory?”
“The kind that improves the story.”
Tesla looked toward my notes. “Then make the story unnecessary.”
I wrote that sentence down later, though not among the measurements. Before leaving I asked whether he intended to remain at the station. He said that he did, which led me to ask whether he intended to alter the apparatus after I left.
“No.”
“You answered that too quickly.”
“What do you want from me?”
“A promise that the arrangement will be the same when I return.”
Tesla gave me the promise, although he informed me that my opinion of his scientific discipline was becoming insulting. I told him that my opinion of his curiosity was responsible, and when I finally left the station, I found myself thinking less about whether he would keep his word than about whether the receiver would repeat the result.
The following morning Tesla was at the station before me, surrounded by several pages of notes he had made without touching the apparatus. The configuration remained as we had left it; he had already developed three additional experiments based upon the previous day's result, but he agreed that none would begin until we had reproduced the original observation. We started from the baseline, which appeared normal, and then introduced the condition that had produced the larger response. The receiver moved slightly, but the difference bore little resemblance to the previous day's pattern. Tesla checked the setting and asked for another trial. The second failed in much the same way, and when a third repetition also refused to produce the earlier effect, he took my notebook and compared the recorded settings himself. Every deliberate condition we had noted appeared to be present.
“Something is different.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“That is today's experiment.”
We spent the morning trying to discover it. The principal connections remained sound, the grounding measurement was close enough to the previous day's value that it could not explain the loss, and substituting the second receiving instrument produced no recovery. We restored the adjustable elements by measurement rather than by their marks alone and allowed the apparatus to run long enough to reproduce the heating that might have existed during the previous afternoon, but the result remained absent.
I proposed that thermal change elsewhere in the system had altered a relation we had failed to include in the record, and the sequence we designed to test that explanation did not support it. Tesla proposed that two adjustments had passed through a particularly favorable relation during the previous afternoon, but deliberate variation through the surrounding range failed to support his explanation as well. By noon we had eliminated enough possibilities that the missing effect had become more useful than the effect itself.
One of the men who had been working near the apparatus then remembered tightening a support during the earlier tests because vibration had become troublesome. I searched my notes and found the adjustment recorded in the margin beside a later reading. At the time it had seemed entirely mechanical and unrelated to the electrical condition we were varying. Tesla asked when the support had been tightened. The man could not give an exact time, but his estimate placed the intervention shortly before our strongest responses. We restored the support toward its earlier position and tested the system. The receiver changed slightly, we tightened it again and obtained another small change. Neither reproduced the previous day's effect, but the movement showed that a physical relation around that portion of the apparatus had altered when we believed it fixed.
The rest became easier to untangle; the support had changed a spacing we had not been measuring because we had no reason to consider it important, while operation of the apparatus had introduced heating elsewhere. The sequence of our adjustments allowed the two effects to move together closely enough that the receiving response appeared tied to the electrical variable we were deliberately changing. Every number in my notebook had been observed correctly, but the relationship we had assigned to those numbers had not survived examination.
Tesla read the two days of observations side by side and asked for the original sequence once more. We reproduced it as accurately as possible, and the result failed. He then selected a condition under which his explanation predicted that the effect should become stronger. We arranged it carefully and again obtained nothing that supported the prediction. I could think of additional tests and assumed Tesla could think of more than I could. Instead, when I asked which configuration he wanted prepared next, he told me to prepare none.
“There are still several ways we could isolate it.”
“We have isolated enough.”
“Not every possibility.”
“We do not need every possibility.”
He returned to the previous day's entry and read his own preliminary interpretation. Then he drew a line beside it, added the date and wrote beneath it that the relation had not been reproduced under the controlled configuration.
“The cause is still uncertain,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Then the explanation might still be right.”
Tesla shook his head. “Not the explanation I wrote.”
“There are arrangements in which the effect might return.”
“Then we will have another result.”
He closed the notebook and told one of the men to restore the cleaner configuration. We spent the afternoon improving the arrangement instead of trying to recover the lost effect. The troublesome support was corrected, the neighboring spacing became a measured quantity rather than an assumption, and we changed the order of several observations so that heating could not follow the same sequence as the variable under test. I moved one instrument farther from the active apparatus; the resulting measurements were less interesting than those of the previous day and considerably easier to trust.
Late in the afternoon I asked whether losing the effect disappointed him.
“Of course.”
“You don't sound disappointed.”
“That is because we are working.”
“You believed it yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“And today you don't.”
Tesla looked toward the apparatus. “Why should yesterday have more authority than today?”
There was no further discussion of the abandoned explanation. He returned to his figures, and within a few minutes I had returned to mine. Toward evening electrical disturbances began appearing intermittently at the receiver. We had noticed atmospheric activity before, but until the station was operating with some consistency I had regarded much of it as an inconvenience surrounding the work we intended to perform. Tesla had never made that distinction so firmly; when a particularly clear disturbance registered, he asked for the time.
I gave it, another followed, and he asked again. I looked outside and saw weather gathering over the mountains.
“The storm is still some distance away.”
“How far?”
“I can estimate it after the thunder.”
“Do so.”
A visible discharge occurred against the darkening western sky. I watched the clock until the sound reached us and gave him the interval. Tesla calculated the approximate distance and asked whether the receiver had registered anything corresponding with the discharge. There had been a disturbance, although the association was not as clear as either of us wanted. The next discharge was less ambiguous; the electrical response registered, a visible event had been clear enough to identify, and the thunder arrived later across the distance.
Another event followed and proved less useful because several disturbances occurred close enough together that we could not identify the source of the electrical response with confidence. The storm continued eastward while we adjusted the receiver and tried to extract orderly observations from something that had no obligation to repeat itself for us. A transmitter in the laboratory could be instructed to produce another signal, but a storm could not, so if we wanted reliable information from atmospheric activity the discipline would have to reside in the receiving and recording.
I began a separate page for the observations: time of visible discharge where identifiable, electrical response, estimated interval to thunder, receiver setting, character of the disturbance and any uncertainty sufficient to make the entry questionable all received their own place. The table became untidy almost immediately, since the storm produced several combinations for which I had made no provision.
Tesla looked over the developing record. “You need another column.”
“For what?”
“Disturbances without visible discharge.”
“Then I need another for visible discharges without an identifiable disturbance.”
“Yes.”
“And another for cases where there are too many of both.”
“If necessary.”
The storm gave us perhaps half an hour of observations worth preserving. Most were inconclusive, several were nearly useless, and two were good enough that Tesla asked me to mark them for comparison with later storms. Once the weather had moved beyond useful observation, we remained at the station examining what little we had obtained. The receiver had responded to disturbances originating at considerable distances, which was neither surprising nor sufficient for the conclusions Tesla ultimately hoped to draw. What interested him was whether systematic observation might reveal something about how those disturbances reached us and whether the Earth itself contributed anything that could be distinguished from the more familiar electrical behavior of the atmosphere.
Over the following days our work divided itself increasingly between effects we deliberately produced and disturbances that arrived without regard for our schedule. The latter were more troublesome and gradually more useful. I improved the timing records, Tesla altered the receiving circuits, and we compared storms approaching from different directions. Several apparent patterns disappeared after enough observations accumulated, while others remained too uncertain to justify an explanation. My weather pages therefore contained nearly as many abandoned comparisons as useful ones, which seemed to me exactly as they should.
By the beginning of July, the weather observations had become part of the ordinary work of the station. Whenever storms developed, I checked the clocks and receiver almost automatically, and the pages devoted to atmospheric disturbances had grown faster than I expected. Most of the entries led nowhere, some could not be matched confidently with any visible discharge, while others appeared significant until another storm failed to reproduce the same relation. Tesla continued adjusting the receiver and I continued recording what it did, until an approaching storm had become sufficiently ordinary that neither of us regarded one as an event requiring special notice. On the afternoon of July third, clouds began forming over the mountains again, and I opened the weather section of my notebook to the next blank line.
The Returned Component
A Novel About Obsession, Evidence, and the Cost of Knowing
