Consensus Best by Position Way Too Early 2026

by Dennis Michelsen 

@DMICmedia

 https://www.scienceoffantasyfootball.com

One of the biggest challenges in Fantasy Football is trying to interpret what the previous season’s statistics mean for the following season. Total Points can be deceiving, often showing us who stayed healthy for the most games. Points per Game can be skewed by one or two huge point days or one or two lousy games. Fantasy Football is a weekly game, so how a player performs every week is all that matters. I have developed four statistical tools to provide a different perspective on the weekly statistics. In this article, I present the consensus across these four metrics as a first look at the way-too-early Fantasy Football value for the 2026 season. 

MVP Index

Every week in Fantasy Football, there are three possible outcomes for a player’s statistics. They can help your team win by having a huge points week. They can cause your team to lose by having a very low points week. They can keep your team in contention by having a performance above the historic median of output expected. Combining these three outcomes into a single, easy-to-understand number was the goal of the MVP Index. While the historic median for Fantasy Football points is different for each position, using the same level of expected performance for RB, WR, and TE gives us a score to compare while making Flex starting decisions all season. 

BEST 8 Index

Maybe we need to stop treating Fantasy Football as a yearlong game and approach the season as 4 quarters of a real football game. This index looks at the best eight games from last season and uses the MVP Index method to show a score for each player’s best games. I also drop any bad games from the calculations, focusing only on each player's upside potential. As with the MVP Index, this is calculated only for a single season.  

Upside Index

Players who consistently produce big game point totals are valuable in Fantasy Football matchups. Because one season doesn’t provide enough data points for a player, this index is calculated using the most recent 2 years of weekly data. Each player’s best one-third of his games is counted, and an average score is computed; if a single game is a huge outlier, that game is adjusted to be more representative of the entire data set. 

Best Ball Index

This statistical tool uses only the big games and near-median games from the MVP Index, based on the last 2 years of data. Because it counts all games played over those 2 years, it emphasizes players who played more games during that period. This penalizes second-year players and those injured in the past 2 seasons. 

QB Breakdown Top 30

Top Tier

1 Josh Allen

Tier 2 

2 Matthew Stafford 3 Patrick Mahomes

Tier 3

 4 Jared Goff 5 Jalen Hurts 6 Lamar Jackson 7 Drake Maye

Tier 4

8 Dak Prescott 9 Bo Nix 10 Baker Mayfield 11 Brock Purdy 12 Caleb Williams 13 Joe Burrow 14 Trevor Lawrence

Tier 5 

15 Justin Herbert 16 Sam Darnold

Tier 6

17 Daniel Jones

Tier 7

18 Jaxson Dart 19 Jordan Love 20 Justin Fields 21 Jacoby Brissett 22 Jayden Daniels

Tier 8

23 Aaron Rodgers 24 Bryce Young 25 Jameis Winston 26 Joe Flacco 27 Tua Tagovailoa 28 CJ Stroud 29 Mac Jones 30 Tyler Shough

Josh Allen is in a tier of his own, but might not be worth the price tag at ADP for the 2026 season. He might not give you enough value because of the player you will have to pass on at RB or WR. Injury concerns for Patrick Mahomes and Daniel Jones to start the season put a question mark on their value right now. This year’s best strategy might be to draft 2 of the best values from the 3rd and/or 4th tiers and play the QB matchup game every week in 1QB redraft leagues. 

RB Breakdown Top 50

Top Tier

1 Bijan Robinson

Tier 2 

2 Jamyr Gibbs 3 Christian McCaffrey 

Tier 3

4 James Cook 5 Jonathan Taylor 6 De’Von Achane 7 Derrick Henry

Tier 4

8 Josh Jacobs

Tier 5

9 Kyren Williams 10 Saquon Barkley 11 Chase Brown

Tier 6

12 D’Andre Swift 13 Javonte Williams

Tier 7

14 Rhamondre Stevenson

Tier 8

15 Rico Dowdle 16 Cam Skattebo 17 David Montgomery 18 Breece Hall 19 TreyVeon Henderson 20 Travis Etienne

Tier 9

21 Kenneth Gainwell 22 Ashton Jeanty 23 Bucky Irving 

Tier 10 

24 Omarion Hampton 25 Zach Charbonnet 26 Kenneth Walker

Tier 11

27 Quinshon Judkins 28 Jaylen Warren 29 Tony Pollard 

Tier 12

30 RJ Harvey 31 Tyrone Tracy 32 Alvin Kamara 33 Kimani Vidal 34 JK Dobbins 35 Jordan Mason

Tier 13

36 Emmanuel Wilson 37 Ray Davis 38 Kareem Hunt 39 Aaron Jones

Tier 14

40 Chuba Hubbard 41 Rachad White 

Tier 15 

42 Sean Tucker 43 Jakory Croskey Merrit 44 Devin Singletary 45 Woody Marks 46 Kyle Monangai

Tier 16

47 Isiah Davis 48 Blake Corum 49 Tank Bigsby

Tier 17 

50 James Connor

The data shows a huge drop-off after the first few elite-level RBs. The strategy might be to end up with 3-4 RBs from the first six tiers this season. There will be so many free agent moves and draft picks that might find opportunity that we don’t even know what we don’t know at this point in the offseason. I will have a pre-draft, pre-free-agency look at the opportunity index at RB for each team in the weeks ahead.   

WR Breakdown Top 60

Top Tier

1 Puka Nacua 2 Ja’Marr Chase 3 Jaxon Smith-Njigba 4 Amon Ra St Brown

Tier 2 and Tier 3

None

Tier 4

5 George Pickens 6 Davante Adams 7 Cee Dee Lamb

Tier 5

8 Drake London 9 Nico Collins 10 Zay Flowers 11 AJ Brown 12 Chris Olave 13 Tee Higgins

Tier 6 

14 Courtland Sutton 15 Rashee Rice 16 Garret Wilson 17 Justin Jefferson 18 Jameson Williams 19 Stephon Diggs 20 Wan Dale Robinson 

Tier 7 

21 Mike Evans 22 Quentin Johnson 23 Deebo Samuel

Tier 8 

24 Ladd McConkey

Tier 9 

25 DJ Moore 26 DK Metcalf

Tier 10

27 Devonta Smith 28 Alec Pierce 29 Michael Pittman 30 Terry McLaurin 31 Mike Wilson 32 Jaylen Waddle

Tier 11

33 Malik Nabers 34 Khalil Shakir 35 Jakobi Meyers 36 Brian Thomas 37 Jauan Jennings 38 Parker Washington 39 Emeka Egbuka

Tier 12

40 Tetairoa McMillan 41 Christian Watson 42 Jordan Addison 43 Marvin Harrison Jr 44 Chris Godwin 45 Troy Franklin

Tier 13

46 Keenan Allen 47 Rome Odunze 48 Josh Downs

Tier 14

49 Tory Horton 50 Marvin Mims 51 Tyreek Hill

Tier 15 

52 Romeo Doubs 53 Rasheed Shaheed 54 Xavier Worthy

Tier 16 

55 Luther Burden 56 Ryan Flournoy 57 Tre Tucker 58 Jayden Reed 59 Kayshon Boutte 60 Cooper Kupp

Based on the last two seasons of data, there is a special group of four WRs that are separated from the rest of the top guys by at least 2 tiers. This indicates there is a potential advantage to be gained by investing in one of these four WRs if they are available at the top end of the draft. Once these WRs are gone, the advantage switches to the RB position. 

TE Breakdown Top 30 

Top Tier

1 Trey McBride

Tier 2

2 George Kittle

Tier 3

3 Brock Bowers

Tier 4

4 Travis Kelce

Tier 5

5 Dallas Goedert 6 Jake Ferguson 7 Tucker Kraft

Tier 6

8 Sam LaPorta 9 Hunter Henry 10 Kyle Pitts 11 Harold Fannin 12 Coleston Loveland

Tier 7 

13 Dalton Kincaid

Tier 8 

14 Dalton Schultz 15 Zach Ertz 16 Juwan Johnson 17 Mark Andrews

Tier 9

18 Colby Parkinson 19 AJ Barner 20 Tyler Warren 21 Jake Tonges 22 David Njoku 23 Brenton Strange 24 Pat Freiermuth 25 Johnu Smith 

Tier 10 

26 Orande Gadsden 27 Cade Otton 28 Darren Waller 29 Theo Johnson 30 Mike Gesecki 

Trey McBride is not only in a tier of his own, but each of his values using my metrics would qualify him as an RB1 or WR1 level starter at each of those positions. That’s why he gives you such a huge advantage in Fantasy Football drafts. If I pass on him or miss him, I might wait and use the 2-TE streaming approach this season. Depending on the ADPs and early reports on his health, a Kittle and Tonges draft strategy might work well. 

Conclusion

The rankings here do not indicate a hard and fast forecast to depend on for the 2026 season. This data shows which players offer the safest value going forward, based on their last 2 seasons. I tend to look at players more in tier groupings than in a hard-and-fast "20 is better than 21" sort of approach. Last year’s rookies have a huge disadvantage on two of these metrics, so if they rank highly, that is a very positive sign for their second season. After the NFL draft and first round of free agency, we will be able to start our serious forecasts for the 2026 season.