Ranking the Top-20 Landing Spots for the 2026 Rookie Class (Episode 979 with Evan Silva and Adam Levitan)

**Adam Levitan** (0:15)
Hello, and welcome to episode 979 of the official establishtherun.com podcast. My name is Adam Levitan. I am one of the co-founders here at ETR, as always joined by fellow co-founder, Evan Silva. And now that we've had a couple weeks to digest this rookie class, I think it's a good time to assess some year one outlooks to do that today.
Evan Silva, how's it going?

**Evan Silva** (0:39)
It's going great. I'm on a little respite here in Scottsdale, Arizona, as you could tell YouTube haters in the back, I did not make my bed. I leave that for housekeeping. Okay. But today we're going to be talking about strictly landing spots.
No real in-depth player analysis. We're just going to talk about where the guys landed in the draft.

**Adam Levitan** (1:00)
Absolutely. Scottsdale, beautiful place. Evan's enjoying his time. As he mentioned on today's show, we're going to do a simple exercise. Rank the 2026 rookies for year one landing spots. This isn't about draft capital or what we think of players or even who we think will score the most fantasy points, although we'll talk about all that stuff. This is about landing spots. If you want to see our rankings, you can always check those out on the site. This is about the situations that these rookies now find themselves in for year one. Before we get into it, I do need to note that Best Ball Summer is officially live and it is massive. DraftKings launched a $25 buy-in best ball contest with 3 million to first, 2 million to second, a million to third. Just so absurd. Our uploadable rankings for that and Underdog and all the best ball formats are all live as part of our best ball product. Head to establishtherun.com for details on the best ball product.
All right, Evan, let's get into it here. We are going to rank 20 players, 20 rookies for their year one landing spot, starting at one and finishing at 20
Checking in at the top overall spot, maybe a controversial one, Evan.
I have it as Jordan Tyson who lands with the Saints, expecting Jordan Tyson to be in two wide receiver sets right away given the lack of competition plus the draft capital he got. So he lands in a spot where he has immediate playing time with Kellen Moore, I consider to be highly capable and we know highly up tempo. He also gets one of the best possible schedules. He does Jordan Tyson, he also gets 10 dome games. The Saints defense is really shaky, especially a pass rush and corner play, which can lead to a lot of shootouts. You get improved offensive line play also, which I think just can't hurt with David Edwards there, and Eric McCoy back healthy. So I thought this was the number one landing spot. Evan, do you agree? Thoughts on Jordan Tyson spot here with the Saints?

**Evan Silva** (3:02)
The only thing I disagree with you there is that it should be controversial. I think that actually if we were going to tier this, tier the landing spots, Jordan Tyson would be in his own tier. And not to mention the fact that he, that elite draft capital, you know, that number eight overall pick, all the stuff that you mentioned. You know, Chris Olave is an alpha, but not so much, but there's not enough talent, I think, in the past country court. You got, you have Joanne Johnson, you have Noah Fant, you know, you have Devon Vailet, all those guys are like clear cut role players.
So I think that Jordan Tyson can get fairly close right away to where Chris Olave is in terms of market share. I'm so, so, so, so excited about this landing spot, the clear cut number one.

**Adam Levitan** (3:51)
Yeah, I know you haven't worked on your top 150 yet, or finalized your first top 150 yet, Evan, but in the ETR DK best ball ranks, you're at 24 overall on Olave and 68 overall on Jordan Tyson. Some people have commented to me that they think that gap is too wide. Again, Olave 24, Tyson 68 You're just your initial gut on the gap between those two guys for this year, 2026

**Evan Silva** (4:15)
My initial gut would be just that I would have Tyson higher. I think that Olave is okay at the 2-3 turn. I think that that's right, but I would have Tyson probably within the top 50 One other note is that Mike Clay, who does a great job, of course, for ESPN, used to work with us at Roto World. He came out with his initial projections, and he has Tyler Shuck finishing number four in the NFL in passing yards.