Draft season is a casino, and the smart money knows the difference between a safe floor and a lottery ticket. The players below are lottery tickets. Every one of them carries a range of outcomes wide enough to win you a league or sink your season, and there’s very little middle ground. That’s the whole appeal. You don’t build a title team on running backs who finish RB18 every year. You build it by nailing two or three of these swings while everyone else drafts scared.
Here are five names I’m circling for 2026, the case for the boom, the case for the bust, and where I land on each.
1. Jonathon Brooks, RB, Carolina Panthers
Nobody in this range has a wider gap between the ceiling and the floor than Brooks. The Panthers spent a second-round pick on him in 2024 because they saw a three-down back with the vision and receiving chops to anchor a backfield for a decade. Then his body betrayed him. He tore his ACL at Texas, tore it again as a rookie in December 2024, and spent all of 2025 on the PUP list watching football instead of playing it.
Here’s why I’m buying anyway. Brooks turns 23 this July, and because he barely played the last two years, there’s almost no tread on the tires. He showed up to camp this summer as a full participant for the first time in his NFL career, and the coaching staff has been talking him up. Reports out of Carolina say he has a real opportunity to start. Rico Dowdle, who stole the backfield last season, is gone. That leaves Chuba Hubbard sitting atop the depth chart, and Hubbard is a fine NFL back who has never scared anyone as a fantasy anchor. If Brooks is anywhere close to the player Carolina drafted, the talent gap shows up fast.
That’s the boom. Brooks supplants Hubbard by midseason, takes over a lead role on a young offense that will be playing from behind and throwing to its backs, and finishes as a top-20 back that you drafted in the double-digit rounds.
The bust is just as easy to picture. Two ACL tears on the same knee is a medical red flag, not a talking point. Guys who miss two straight years don’t always come back the same, and a preseason tweak or a slow ramp could hand the job right back to Hubbard. If that happens, Brooks is a bench stash you cut by Week 4.
I’m in. At his cost, you’re paying a backup price for a starter’s upside, and the path to the job is clearer than the market thinks. Just don’t draft him as a guy you have to start Week 1.
2. Kenyon Sadiq, TE, New York Jets
Tight end is where leagues get won at a discount, and Sadiq is my swing at the position. The Jets took him 16th overall out of Oregon, and the athletic profile is absurd. He’s 6-foot-3, 247 pounds, and ran a 4.39 in the 40. His Speed Score ranks first in the database going back to the 2018 class. That’s not a tight end body with tight end wheels. That’s a weapon. He caught 51 balls for 560 yards and a team-high eight touchdowns in his final college season, so the production backs up the testing.
When I let myself dream on him, I see the Trey McBride path. McBride sat behind an established veteran, waited his turn, and the moment the targets opened up he turned into one of the highest-volume tight ends in football. Sadiq has the same kind of ceiling if the Jets decide to feed him. A young, physically dominant tight end who commands eight-plus targets a game is a cheat code, because the position is so thin that even middling efficiency plays as a weekly starter.
Now the Jets part. This is where the dream gets complicated. New York has been a fantasy graveyard for years. They’ve capped the ceilings of Breece Hall and Garrett Wilson, both far more proven than Sadiq, and the target competition is stiff. He has to beat out Mason Taylor, last year’s rookie tight end, and share a huddle with Wilson, Adonai Mitchell, and Omar Cooper Jr. Rookie tight ends almost never produce right away even in good spots, and this is not a good spot. On top of that, Sadiq posted a 9 percent drop rate in college with too many body catches, which is exactly the kind of thing that gets a rookie benched in obvious passing situations.
So which is it? McBride, or another Jets “what if” that we’re still asking about in 2029? He’s going as roughly the TE20 in redraft, so the price already bakes in the risk. I’ll take that swing in the double-digit rounds and stream around him early. But I won’t pretend the landing spot isn’t working against him. In dynasty, where you can wait, I love him a lot more.
3. Carnell Tate, WR, Tennessee Titans
There’s a lineage of Ohio State receivers who leave Columbus and turn into legitimate NFL problems. Ja’Marr Chase, Chris Olave, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Garrett Wilson, Marvin Harrison Jr. The list keeps growing, and Tate has the profile to be the next name on it. Tennessee took him fourth overall, which matters, because top-five receivers hit at a rate almost nothing else in this exercise can match. He’s a big-bodied X receiver who wins with strong hands, polished route running, and elite contested-catch ability. He shredded man coverage in college. He walks into Brian Daboll’s offense with a clear path to the number one role from day one.
The boom case writes itself. History says top-five wideouts produce early, and Tate has both the draft capital and the empty depth chart in front of him. If it clicks, he’s a low-end WR2 as a rookie with room for more. Analysts already floated a top-20 finish as his ceiling this year.
Here’s the catch, and it’s a big one. Tate’s fantasy value is chained to Cam Ward. Ward enters year two after a rookie season that was more growing pains than fireworks, and a receiver can only produce what his quarterback allows. Tate doesn’t have elite speed to bail out bad throws with pure separation, so he needs Ward to develop timing, trust, and accuracy on contested throws. If Ward stalls, Tate becomes a talented young receiver stuck catching six-yard outs on a bad offense, and the box scores won’t reflect the tape.
That’s the tension. The talent and the draft capital check every box, but the quarterback is the whole ballgame. I’m optimistic. Big-bodied contested-catch receivers are exactly the type who can post numbers even with shaky quarterback play, because they win the throws that lesser receivers can’t. If Ward makes the year-two leap the Titans are counting on, Tate is the biggest steal in this group. Bet on the pedigree.
4. Jaxson Dart, QB, New York Giants
Dart is out of excuses. The Giants handed him John Harbaugh, a Super Bowl-winning head coach who spent eighteen years turning Baltimore into a contender and who took this job in part because of what he saw on Dart’s film. When a coach with that resume picks your team over other openings because he believes in the quarterback, that’s a signal. The infrastructure is here now. The rookie learning curve is behind him. This is the year we find out who Dart really is.
The fantasy case is loud. Dart averaged 24.7 fantasy points in the eleven games last year where he hit at least 20 dropbacks. That’s a starting-caliber number, and it was fueled by his legs. He rushed for 487 yards and nine touchdowns as a rookie, and rushing production is the single most reliable way for a quarterback to smash fantasy expectations. Harbaugh has compared parts of his game to Lamar Jackson, and while nobody should expect Jackson’s numbers, the archetype is the one that wins fantasy titles. The weapons got a serious upgrade too. Malik Nabers returns from his torn ACL, and the front office added Darnell Mooney, Odell Beckham Jr., and JuJu Smith-Schuster, three receivers who have each cleared a thousand yards in a season.
The bust risk is the same thing that makes him exciting. Dart plays a reckless, physical style that led to five concussion checks and two missed games last year. A dual-threat quarterback only helps your team when he’s on the field, and if the hits pile up, all that rushing upside means nothing from your bench or the waiver wire. There’s also the matter of whether a new scheme reins in the very aggression that makes him a fantasy asset.
Where do I land? I’m buying. A running quarterback with a genuine coaching upgrade, a healthy top receiver, and a rebuilt supporting cast is the profile of a league-winner at the position, and you’re paying a QB2 price for QB1 upside. The health is the only thing standing between Dart and a top-eight finish. No more excuses.
5. Kyren Williams, RB, Los Angeles Rams
Kyren is the most fascinating case here because the thing that makes him appealing is the same thing that could sink him. The Rams are the betting favorites to win the Super Bowl, sitting around +500 after an offseason that included trading for reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett. When you’re the best team in the league by a comfortable margin, you spend a lot of fourth quarters nursing leads, and leads mean handoffs. A team burning clock with the game already decided is a running back’s best friend, and Williams is the guy who gets fed at the goal line.
The production has been there. In 2025 he ran for 1,252 yards and ten touchdowns on 259 carries, added 36 catches for 281 yards and three more scores, and did it across a full 17-game season. He remains atop the depth chart, he owns the goal-line work, and he plays for the offense most likely to be protecting fourth-quarter leads all year. That’s a strong foundation, and he’s going in the third round for a reason.
Now the worry, and it’s a real one. Blake Corum won’t go away. The Rams have settled into roughly a 60/40 backfield split, and Williams’ touch share has shrunk from about 21.9 a game in 2024 to 17.4 in 2025. The trend is going the wrong direction, and the recent camp buzz around Corum suggests Los Angeles wants him involved even more. If that split tilts closer to even, or if Corum takes over goal-line work in blowouts, Williams goes from a rock-solid RB1 to a touchdown-dependent RB2 who leaves you sweating every week.
So the same game script that should inflate his value could just as easily be the thing that hands touches to the guy behind him. That’s the boom-or-bust knot. I still lean boom. Williams is the clear early-down and goal-line back on the best team in football, and volume plus red-zone work is the most bankable fantasy recipe there is. But temper the enthusiasm. The Corum praise out of camp and the shrinking touch trend both point the same direction, and I’d rather draft Williams as a strong RB2 than reach for him as a set-and-forget RB1.
The Bottom Line
Boom-or-bust picks aren’t reckless. They’re how you separate from a draft room full of people playing it safe. Of these five, Dart and Tate are the swings I’m most confident in, Brooks is the value that makes me smile at his price, Williams is the calculated gamble on the league’s best team, and Sadiq is the pure dart throw that I’ll only take at the right cost. Nail two or three of them and you’re not just competing this year. You’re the team everyone else is trying to catch.
