This article recaps the fantasy football landing spots for five rookie fantasy football winners and five rookie losers.
Even though talent will generally rise to the top over enough time, fantasy football value is highly dependent on opportunity as well. The five Winners in this article were lucky enough to see their opportunity projection improve in the 2026 NFL Draft, while the five losers might face previously unexpected obstacles.
Draft Winners
Jordyn Tyson, WR, NO
The pre-draft process was bizarre for Tyson, who for nearly two years was singled out as the plausible if not likely WR1 of the 2026 class yet faced a barrage of barely-lucid criticisms beginning around February of this year. The injury history was one thing – outsiders couldn't know how the league viewed Tyson's surgically-repaired knee, or his more recent hamstring issues – but the criticism of Tyson as a player was basically unhinged. There was never any basis to doubt Tyson's talent.
Sometimes people give themselves Cabin Fever from obsessing about the draft too long, and in their fiendish haze they start to see things that aren't there. Maybe that happened at Tyson's expense because he made it look easy and didn't offer enough novelty value to hold the public's attention. At one point Daniel Jeremiah suggested that Omar Cooper would be a better pick for the Rams at 13 – maybe the fever got him.
Whatever the case, Tyson is a big NFL Draft winner because once it became clear that he was a top-10 pick we had confirmation that his durability issues were cleared by the league, at which point there are no meaningful remaining criticisms of Tyson. The durability concern was the only thing, and now it's gone.
The Saints needed someone to take some coverage pressure off Chris Olave, and with Tyson in tow they have someone who can do it immediately.
De'Zhaun Stribling, WR, SF
John Lynch has burned a fair amount of draft capital on unproductive players over the years, but roasting him for the Stribling pick specifically might not age well. The pick was at worst a reach of about one round, if that, and the consensus is fallible enough that we should at least wait for Stribling to fail before we call it a bad pick.
Look at Rashee Rice. He was generally projected as a fifth-round pick – even lower than Stribling was projected for this draft – and when the Chiefs selected Rice in the second round there was a great deal of crowing about what a reach it was, how the player clearly wasn't good, etc. As it turned out, the public was just wrong. Like Stribling, Rice was a productive player in college with strong athletic testing.
Stribling (6-2, 207) posted numbers indicating at least WR2 upside at each of his three college stops – Washington State, Oklahoma State and Mississippi. Once he logged his 4.36-second 40 there was no reason to doubt Stribling as an NFL starter.
That Stribling might be the heir to Kyle Shanahan's passing game certainly gives more reason yet to buy in on Stribling. The people who doubt Stribling's talent for its own part are making the same mistake they did with Rice, though.
Antonio Williams, WR, WAS
The concern with Williams is that he might be more of a slot specialist than a player who can run from both the slot and flanker positions. If Williams can't earn flanker reps then it might not be easy for him to earn two-wide snaps, and if you're only getting snaps in three-wide situations then your snap count will be hard-pressed to go over 600 or so.
There are not any concerns about Williams' ability to draw and convert targets. Indeed, Williams' production at Clemson makes clear that he will draw a certain number of targets per snap, and throughout his collegiate career he did a good job of converting those targets into receptions. To me, the only question with Williams is how many snaps he plays.
As an extreme outlier hypothetical: if Williams were to stumble into 850 snaps this year there would be sound reason to expect something like 100 targets. As a relatively low-ADOT target who's more of a possession wideout than a downfield runner, Williams' catch rate should exceed something like 65 percent. Players like Luke McCaffrey and Jaylin Lane don't seem like major obstacles to Williams approaching a snap count in that range.
Perhaps the yardage and touchdown count will be less than compelling – Williams isn't really a big-play threat and probably isn't imposing in the red zone – but in PPR scoring Williams could provide viable starts even in 2026 redraft leagues.
Elijah Sarratt, WR, BAL and Ja'Kobi Lane, WR, BAL
This one is simple enough: it's good to catch passes from quarterbacks who throw touchdowns. Sarratt (fourth round) and Lane (third round) both have real upside on their own parts and especially when factoring in the Lamar Jackson detail.
You might respectively think of them as high-floor and high-ceiling variants. Sarratt has a rock-solid game that will almost certainly result in NFL snaps, yet there's probably not much big-play upside with Sarratt.
Lane, by some contrast, has certain weak areas that he really needs to fix. More specifically, Lane must improve his catch rate after registering below the USC baseline each of the last two years. If Lane does fix his rough areas, though, then he could become quite a force, especially in the red zone. Not many receivers present the catch radius or Stunt Catch abilities of Lane, who otherwise drew targets at a high per-snap rate.
To me Sarratt looks like a Keenan Allen type, while Lane in his best-case scenario would probably be someone like T.J. Houshmandzadeh.
Caleb Douglas, WR, MIA
Douglas in the third round was one of the most surprising picks of the draft, not so much because it was an egregious pick but rather because there were a lot of other quality receiver prospects on the board with better profiles. There were a bunch of different receivers Dolphins fans hoped for at the pick, and Douglas was not one of them.
Douglas would have been a universally praised selection if it had been in the fifth round rather than the third. By contrast, picking Douglas to pass on players like Ted Hurst, Ja'Kobi Lane, Elijah Sarratt, Chris Brazzell and Skyler Bell might not age well.
With all of those backhanded points noted, it's a good sign for Douglas' playing time projection to get picked earlier than expected, and he really is not a bad prospect. At 6-foot-4, 206 pounds Douglas logged a 4.39-second 40, which is interesting even if it's undermined by his bad 32.5-inch vertical. Douglas posted production at Texas Tech that hinted at WR3 upside in the NFL, and his athletic metrics were at least of the same caliber.
As much as Douglas will almost certainly fall behind fellow third-round pick Chris Bell once Bell is over his ACL injury, there's still a good chance Douglas sticks as the WR2 in Miami. Players like Malik Washington, Tutu Atwell and Jalen Tolbert simply are not very good.
Draft Losers
Mike Washington, RB, LV
Washington will remain interesting as a prospect due to his 4.33 speed at 223 pounds, but he'll never steal carries from Ashton Jeanty and the longer Washington takes to make an impact the easier it will be for Washington to get passed up on the depth chart by players who offer greater versatility.
Washington is a liability on passing downs due to poor receiving ability and, unless something changes, he might also be a liability on rushing downs if only due to his fumbling. If a guy can't catch and fumbles a lot then he should at least be automatic as a runner, yet Washington averaged only 4.39 yards per carry over his first four college seasons.
I think undrafted free agent Roman Hemby is plainly the better player, and crucially for Washington's playing time projection, Hemby is a good receiver. Don't be surprised if Washington is scratched multiple times as a rookie with someone like Hemby playing ahead of him.
Germie Bernard, WR, PIT
The simple deal with Bernard is that the quality of his production will likely be a tautology of the offense around him, and he's unlikely to raise or lower any team's base line.
If Bernard is logging snaps in a robust passing game, he will do his part and log numbers good enough to protect his role. If Bernard is playing in a dead passing game, on the other hand, he doesn't have any unique traits to escape the constraints of the situation.
It seems folly to hope for a good Pittsburgh passing game anytime soon. Aaron Rodgers has limitations at this point, and whatever comes next might be worse. Additionally, Bernard will never put any heat on DK Metcalf or Michael Pittman for snaps or targets. Bernard might effectively be a backup for a passing game that has little to offer anyway.
Kenyon Sadiq, TE, NYJ and Omar Cooper, WR, NYJ
Sadiq and Cooper end up here not just because the Jets passing game has been so bad, though that's certainly a pertinent consideration. Rather, the more immovable issue is that the two are caught in a zero-sum game. The theory of either player's path to production is one that collides with the other.
The Sadiq selection was odd if only for the fact that the Jets already have Mason Taylor, but if the Jets insist on turning Taylor into an overqualified blocker to clear out targets for Sadiq then they'll need to do so by allocating the slot rep to Sadiq, be it as an actual slot receiver or a second tight-end rep in a two-wide set.
If Sadiq is in the slot, then Cooper is not. The sales pitch with Cooper out of Indiana is that he's some sort of YAC monster, yet even Cooper's proponents seem to concede that he needs the slot to do this.
Maybe it's Cooper who gets the slot and Sadiq who gets frozen out. There's no way to know, but we do know they won't both be there. I also happen to think Isaiah Williams is better than Cooper anyway, though perhaps that's a bit extreme.
Denzel Boston, WR, CLE
Boston's issue is the landing spot and the poorly projected passing game in Cleveland. Boston's best trait is his ability to high-point the ball toward the sideline and/or in traffic, and that trait was particularly useful in college when Washington got into scoring range.
Once Washington reached striking distance of the end zone Boston's utility would increase. Boston's production doesn't have much evidence of a guy who draws targets rapidly at the next level – if anything Boston's below-baseline catch rate at Washington indicated that he was targeted too much – but if he's in an offense that throws a lot of touchdowns then for that particular offense Boston could be uniquely useful.
Perhaps Deshaun Watson bounces back from years of grim failure, and perhaps new coach Todd Monken is a wizard who somehow gets the Browns throwing for touchdowns. Until that point, though, Boston might not have a whole lot to do.
