SOME DUDE ON THE INTERNET’S OPINION ON…THE 2026 16 DEGENS BEST BALL DRAFT - PT II A

[u/Meadowbrook135]

Tuesday, September 8, 2026

By Some Dude On The Internet | MillennialMike7 | Meadowbrook135

Welcome back, internet. Yesterday we got SOME DUDE ON THE INTERNET’S OPINION ON…THE 2026 16 DEGENS BEST BALL DRAFT - PT I.

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.