2026 Expert Draft Recap: Taylor, Rashee Rice & Malik Nabers

**John Hansen** (0:00)
Hey, what's up?

**John Hansen** (0:00)
John Hansen here, flying solo for the next edition of the Fantasy Points Podcast, as our guy Brian Drake is driving back from Canton, Ohio from the Fantasy Football Expo. And speaking of the Expo, I participated in a 14-team expert draft. Some of the participants, the Kings Classic were, I believe, at the Expo in Canton, but I drafted a pretty good team. I actually implemented the Fantasy Guru draft plan. If you will, that dropped over at Fantasy Points. I was able to pretty much implement it, even though this is a 14-teamer APR. As always, thanks for subscribing, commenting, throwing us a bone with a good review. And as always, you are welcome.
We'll see you next time. They're not here. I'm John Hansen, hosting another edition of the Fantasy Points Podcast solo. Brian, I'm recording this, by the way, on Sunday evening, July 26th. And Brian is probably in his car, returning from Canton at the Fantasy Football Expo. From all reports, Brian had a very good time hanging out with members of the fantasy football community. I did not make it, but I did participate in one of the drafts that went on over the weekend in Canton, the King's Classic.
I'm going to call it the Online Draft. I know it's kind of been part of the Canton Fantasy Football Expo experience for quite some time. I actually did this draft last year.
Did pretty well, but here's the problem with being terrible at team management.
I hate to admit this, but I forgot about the team for a couple of weeks, so I did not make the playoffs because, again, completely forgot about the team. We did draft it last year at this time, so it's a good what? Six, seven weeks from the opener. That was definitely my bad, but I did have a pretty good team, and I thought I had a pretty good draft. The topic of this podcast is to go through and recap my team, talk about the process. This is a 14-teamer, so it's a little bit of a different spin. I'm going to pay special attention to the sleeper picks, basically, toward the end of the draft, but it was pretty interesting. I thought I did the best I could. I really don't have many regrets. Did though, based on the flow of the draft, I made a decision very early on that I'm going to go for the gusto. So I took some high-risk guys early in the draft. If they do pan out, then I'm going to be golden, because I got some good value on some of the other players that I took. So again, let's break it down here at the top. 14-team PPR drafted over the weekend here on July 25th. If you must know, on Saturday morning, starts one quarterback, only two running backs required, three wide receivers, however, three flexes, no kickers, no defenses and just right for a goof, I'll map out real quick here at the top and we'll go pick by pick in terms of how the draft went for me.
Here it is. I went out of the eight hole, by the way. I started at the eight hole. I went running back, wide receiver, wide receiver, running back, wide receiver. Not exactly my plan to go that heavy at wide receiver, but you notice I held off a little bit on tight end and quarterback. Then I went tight end, got another running back, another wide receiver, got another tight end, a tight end too. I think it's a really good year, especially in this format. You're starting three flexes. I took a tight end in round nine that I'm very high on, 14 team league too. So I think he's going to be a weekly starter for me. Then I finally took my quarterback. Let's take a look. So that's four wide receivers, three running backs, two tight ends and one quarterback through 10 rounds. So let's take a look at round number one here, the 2026 Kings Classic Snake Draft, 14 team PPR out of the eight hole. It went Bijan and Gibbs, then Pooka and Chase, no big surprises. Jackson Smith and Jigba, Aman Ra St. Brown went at six overall. Then my man, Jeff Manz took, again, this is an expert league. Jeff Manz took Ashton Gentry at seven overall. So he's clearly very high on Ashton Gentry. So here I am at the eight hole. You know, I'm not taking Christian McCaffrey, did consider CD. Lamb. I'm feeling pretty good about CD. Lamb this year, but I had to go kind of safe, maybe even a little boring. But one of my favorite players of all time, Mr. Jonathan Taylor. So now I have locked in, I think that's a pretty good pick. His ADP is around seven, so six or seven. So I got him a spot or two below the ADP. Obviously, I'm hoping and praying that Daniel Jones can stay in one piece. But obviously, Taylor did pretty good work in the passing game last year. You know, nothing special. But can you give us? Can you give us 40? You know, let's take a look. I think Jonathan Taylor just just got that right around that 40 mark, obviously cleaning up at the goal line here with no more Anthony Richardson. And Taylor actually had 46 That's a good number that was actually the highest of his career and the highest target number that he's received. So my contention with Jonathan Taylor has always been that he's a pretty damn good receiver. He was kind of knocked for that coming out of Wisconsin. I was like, no, no, no, no. This guy's a really good receiver. And here we are six years into the career. He's averaging eight yards of reception, which is a damn good number. And he's got a 78 percent catch rate, which again is awesome. Eighty three percent last year. Love me some Jonathan Taylor. Round two, by the way, James Cook, McCaffrey, Lamb, Justin Jefferson, Amir in Hampton. It's a good pick.