The First Round of 2026 Fantasy Drafts Is All Wrong

**Josh** (0:00)
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There is no bigger consensus in Fancy Football drafts than the top 12 overall picks the first round. So as soon as best ball drafts open in May, the same names make up the first round all summer long for multiple months.
But we all know that the season once it's over does not end that way. So today, Hayden and I are going to do our best to break group think and both list how we rank the top 12 to 15 overall picks in this year's Fancy drafts.

**Hayden** (2:00)
I think the interesting part about round one is there's like the top six players who have established themselves as true separators and then the back half and then even in the second round to me this year, it's about finding the ceiling case because if I don't have Jahmyr Gibbs this year, if I don't have Puka Nacua, I feel very nervous about my chances of winning. I can't afford to take the RB8 finisher somewhere in that turn. I'm hoping for the RB3 that year because I think it's gonna be pretty difficult to match some of the ceiling cases that we have in the first half of round one. So that's why I'm breaking ties at the back half of round one.

**Josh** (2:36)
Love all of that.
How we're gonna do this is just go back and forth, one, two, fifteen. We're gonna talk about this players at the turn because that's when a major factor is in terms of how you're gonna build your lineups this year. We're gonna talk about half PPR rankings, but maybe throw in a bit of strategy if PPR in our rankings and how we're draft these players is very divergent from that. All right, you're gonna start with each one of these, and then I'll go back and forth. Who is your number one player in drafts this year?

**Hayden** (3:04)
It's gotta be Jahmyr Gibbs. He's holding out for a contract. Hopefully that gets settled shortly, but the upside here is so obvious. Jahmyr Gibbs has averaged 25.1 half PPR points in the eight games that David Montgomery has missed or played under 25% of the snaps. He's gonna set career highs in volume. The Detroit offensive line has gotten a little bit better going into this season. They spent some real capital across the entire offensive line.
He was fourth last year in fantasy points, over replacement per game. That was while he was splitting time with David Montgomery. Pacheco's in there. I do not think Pacheco and David Montgomery are nearly the same level player. This is all going towards Jahmyr Gibbs. And the other last note I had, that defense is gonna be pretty bad this year in Detroit. We're gonna see a lot of shootouts, a lot of dome games, this entire division's loaded. So we're gonna see a lot of like 28 to 30 games in Detroit. Jahmyr Gibbs is gonna get a lot of those points.

**Josh** (3:57)
Yeah, the interesting part about the defense maybe still being bad is that the Lions heading into the season are still favored in 14 games this year. I think that's second across the league. Jahmyr Gibbs is also my number one player. He's actually going second on Yahoo at this very moment. If you look at drafts over the last handful of days, I mean, the goal of drafting a running back this early on is that he eclipses the 20 or 21 points per game for the entire season. In the 25 career games with Gibbs has played 60% or more of the team snaps. He's averaged 20 points per contest. And as you said, I wrote it down the same way. Isaiah Pacheco is no Dave Montgomery. So I'm expecting Jahmyr Gibbs to hit that 70% snap share on a weekly basis. He played 67% last year. And then a big note for me with how the team kind of crumbled last year, obviously they fired their play caller and offensive line injuries hit in a major way.