These Players Are OVERPRICED In Fantasy Football Drafts

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
What a grab! It's McBride!

**Kevin Szafraniec** (0:05)
Oh, one-hander, CD Lam! There he goes, Brace Hall to the end zone!

**Colm Kelly** (0:13)
Should you be out on the second round wide receiver, that is what we're going to talk about today on RotoViz Overtime, along with a number of other players, which I think are very big decision points in 2026 when it comes to your fantasy football drafts. I'm joined once again by Kevin Szafraniec from rotoviz.com.
Kevin has been doing a fantastic series, working his way through all the divisions in the NFL, working through team by team. Today we're going to talk a little bit about the Patriots and the Bears, even though they're in two different divisions. They are two teams that we haven't yet got to talk about, Kevin, that I think have some very intriguing questions. You told me though, before we started recording this, one of the reasons maybe we should talk about the Patriots is because you're out on one AJ Brown. AJ Brown obviously traded over this off season from the Philadelphia Eagles.
Last year we were looking at this Patriots team and wondering what would it be like if we had a true wide receiver one? Your mileage may vary on Stefan Diggs, or I was impressed with some of Kishan Bhute's play, but now we have AJ Brown after a pretty stellar career moving to New England at this point of proceedings. A lot of people thinking that he can be the Alpha in this offense and really helped Rick May jump to that next level. Tell me why that is not the case.

**Kevin Szafraniec** (1:36)
Well, he's going to be the Alpha in the offense. I'm not debating that. I'm just more sceptical about his price tag right now. I mean, he had a good year last year. Even we hear about the rifts that he has with teammates, and we don't know how much all that stuff actually played in. But what the data tells us is that, specifically his yards after the catch, all the YAC data, he's been known as this physical receiver who creates after the catch, pretty much across the board, all of his yards after the catch, and evasion numbers are down compared to his year. The last time we saw any of his numbers get close to what they were in 2025 was during his last season in Tennessee, when he was dealing with all those knee issues. And it comes out that the Patriots had to sign off on a degenerative knee issue once he took his physical, once he came to the team.
So for a player who's seemingly in decline, I mean he's 29 years old, all the signs are pointing to like he's not the player that he used to be.
It's just like he's still being priced higher than what he finished last year. Some people could point to like, oh, he wasn't happy there, you know, it was Jalen Hurts' fault or this, that and the other. But really the data is pointing to him not being very good. I can't, no, let me pull that back. He's still good because he finished as the wide receiver at 11 last year. And he was also, he was still relatively efficient. He was 23rd in FPOE per game.
But at the same time, so this year, you know, he's being right now, I should say, he's being priced as the wide receiver at the end of the second round. I was 100% in on him early when Best Ball Drafts opened, when he was in the middle of the third round. And even when there was all this, you know, there was all this uncertainty about where he was going to end up, he even fell like his ADP fell almost like the end of the third round, 100% in on him at those prices. I think that's like where he deserves to be. And even though we all kind of, you know, we had really strong feelings that he was going to move to New England. But when the, you know, like happens with, you know, all these players that move, you know, we know it's coming, but yet when he actually gets traded, then he goes flying up around. And that's where I was out on him. Because even, you know, his yards per route were down as well last year, but they still sat, you know, right below the 90th percentile of wide receiver seasons since 2019 So it's not like he's just dust and he's terrible. I just have a difficult time, you know, saying, oh, since he's going to New England, like everything's magically going to get better and we should be paying more for him this year than, you know, his 2025 production would indicate. And in the bull case for that, you know, I do see both sides of the coin there as like, you know, every single aspect of the Patriots offense last year was like insanely efficient, insanely efficient. Like, you know, Drake may throwing the ball, the running backs, you know, they went from like, essentially they, not even essentially they did. They went from like a bottom three offense in the league in 2024 to a top three offense in 2025 But there's also some, you know, some, obviously we say like, oh, you know, like their games will be more competitive this year. So maybe they'll throw the ball more. You know, they were one of the top teams in the league last year, you know, running the most plays when trailing, or when leading by a score. They rarely ever, you know, trailed by a score.