Luke Wilson answers another batch of your fantasy football questions. Wrestling with 'what ifs' at the top of the 2026 draft board, an impromptu risk discussion on two Texas wideouts, unpacking the why behind some maybe-icky advanced metric jargon, and more.
Question 1
Hi Luke, Love your work. I have the 4th pick overall in a 12 team PPR draft and can keep Puka with a late 2nd round pick. I assume Gibbs, Robinson and Chase will be off the board when I make my first pick. I would love to draft Amon (or Chase, if available) at that spot and have 2 beast receivers, but feel like if I do so I am left with slim pickings at running back in round 3. My question is would you take McCaffery or Taylor with my first round pick? McCaffery scares the hell out of me. Thanks!
Alex Konop (Northport, NY)
Hey, thanks amigo! Glad to be of assistance. Let's see if we can't keep that streak alive.
Doesn't take too much predictive exertion to agree with your plan to keep Nacua at that wholesale price. I understand your hesitation at the idea of going Chase if he's there; assuming 3-5 teams retain running backs with their keeper pick, that means you would probably be icing yourself out of any of the top 12 running backs if you go WR at 4. Sets the table for the dreaded 'zero RB' strategy. But positions aside for a moment, let's remember: We wanna score points, period. In PPR, a Chase-Nacua tandem is going to hit like a sledgehammer wrapped in barbed wire most weeks. That's good.
Does sound a bit 'pie in the sky' though. In PPR leagues, Chase and ARSB are both going in the first 7 or 8 picks in most drafts period; if you add in even a 'keep 1' for 12 teams and suddenly the odds that those guys make it to you seem pretty long. McCaffrey and Taylor are also running in the top 10, so wouldn't be surprised if all four of these players are out of play when you go on the clock. But still, let's game it out:
- Chase or St. Brown are easily my preference, whichever gets to you. Weekly floor, lots of week-winning performances, offensive stability. In PPR it's worth going WR-WR to shove that production into your lineup and keep it away from everyone else's.
- If it's between Taylor and McCaffrey, sorry but I'm going to be a wet blanket and take Taylor's lower ceiling over McCaffrey's horrifying floor. Maybe I'm being an old crank yelling at neighborhood kids to keep their skateboards off my sidewalk, but I see the 450 touches McCaffrey just ate and my fight or flight response immediately activates. The fact that he's now a 30-something with a thoroughly checkered injury history is just icing on the take cake.
But as alluded to, there's a real scenario none of these guys are available when you pick (maybe there are rules/forces at play in your league that lead you to suspect that they will be). In that case, some Plan B options that look to me like they could/should be there:
- Ashton Jeanty. Caught 55 passes as a rookie, no meaningful pass-catching competition brought in, could easily eclipse Achane to lead the AFC in RB receptions.
- Justin Jefferson. No way the Vikings let him go to waste two years in a row. A set and forget WR1 in PPR his first five seasons before last year's tire fire. He shouldn't be available to you at 4; if he is, rejoice.
- Devon Achane. Speak of the devil. Even more than Jeanty, Achane can and probably will monopolize his offense's touch distribution this year. He's less risky than he probably feels.
- CeeDee Lamb. It felt like a down year, but his 17-game pace was 107 receptions on 166 targets.
- Brock Bowers. This one's not for the faint of heart, but the swell of Bowers advocacy among industry types is difficult to overstate. There are people smarter than me expecting records to be broken here, and he ain't coming back to you in the second. The WR1 and TE1 is a difficult combo to overcome in full PPR, and this exceedingly bold move would give you a real shot at owning both. Do with that what thou will.
Question 2
Hello Luke, or should I say, Howdy! I have two questions, each is pretty unimportant: First, when will this mailbag get renamed? Second, I am officially sick of hearing and reading the term "yards per route run." It's a useful stat, but how did it end up "route run" and not just "route"? Every time a podcaster says that phrase it sounds like they have a speech impediment, all for a not needed extra word.
Josh Obusek (Pittsburgh, PA)
Howdy pardner! Sir, there are no unimportant questions, I assure you.
... Shame on me for not reading your questions before typing that first bit. Egg on both our faces. (Kidding!)
And here I thought I was an aficionado of calling out speaking redundancies like "ATM machine", or "Adam Schefter just tweeted out". Yet I never even noticed the implied redundancy in yards per route run before now! I'm going well out on a limb here, but I think this goes toward the fact that the route run data itself is inherently a visual appraisal. Whichever hub you're sourcing the data from, that data mill theoretically had someone who watched the tape (At least hopefully it was a person — has AI come for the tape-eaters' jobs too?!) for that player for each game and tabulated, '[Player] logged X snaps (which is objective data), and I charted them as running Y routes on those snaps (mixed objective/subjective)'; obviously wide receivers don't run routes every play, nor even every pass play.
I agree, it is superfluous extra verbiage. Given the context the term "route" sufficiently implies that the receiver did the route. But I think there's an underlying intent to help differentiate itself from just raw playing time.
Now just a moment while I tweet out this question as a poll to the masses (kidding again).
Question 3
Welcome Luke! Seeking Dynasty feedback: Thoughts on 2 trades I made. I traded both Lamb and Pickens for Justin Jefferson and Nico Collins. BTW, Jefferson was nowhere to be found on your WR Dynasty Rankings. Also, which TE would you start among Kelce, Chig (Okonkwo) or Strange?
Howie Fishman (Venice, FL)
Based on the receiver values and the order in which you... well, ordered them, I'm going to assume you flipped CeeDee Lamb straight up for Jefferson. I like it; as I alluded to earlier, statistically Jefferson's first five seasons were without peer. It would be very easy for the current consensus 'Big 3' in dynasty (Chase, JSN, Nacua) to be proven guilty of recency bias by a massive bounceback from "JJettas". But it's also trading one beachfront property for another; Lamb and Jefferson are both 27, both locked up tight on massive contracts, and both belong to what have usually been very good offenses. I'd lean Jefferson, but it's a slight lean. Lamb doesn't have JJ McCarthy problems.
Sending George Pickens for Nico Collins is a larger leap of faith than you may realize. Obviously, Pickens is going (or rather being forced to go) the full Tee Higgins route, i.e. quite possibly playing this season on the franchise tag before he and the Cowboys reach the fork in that road next March. There's a lot of uncertainty there, but I'd argue Collins doesn't have much less. He's under contract one year longer than Pickens, but how exactly Houston feels about the prospect of handing C.J. Stroud a market rate mega-extension we truly don't yet know. It's unlikely, but in 8-10 months Collins could be facing similar volatility akin to present day Pickens. Add in Pickens' relative good health (3 missed games last four seasons; 16 for Collins over that timeframe) and to my eye this one's a little more of a bang-bang call at the bag.
'Which TE to start' in the opener, or in general? For 2026 I think the answer is still pretty clear (and predictable). I like both Okonkwo and Strange a lot: Back Maryland, Okonkwo the former Terrapin has a lot of opportunity to be an almost linear replacement for Deebo Samuel as the primary run after catch weapon over the middle and on the shallow edges of zone coverage looks. Strange is a true do-it-all Y in an offense everyone is crowding around trying to get pieces of in dynasty. Both are hard guys to get your hands on for any kind of reasonable prices right now.
But volume access is volume access, and Kelce's still got it in spades. Even in his twilight and on ho hum versions of the Chiefs offenses we've known and benefitted from, for the last two campaigns Kelce has kept right on chugging along for 850 or so yards and 80-90 grabs. Because of course he has — Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs have evolved into playing a version of high percentage, ball control dink and dunk offense that seeks to guarantee the Chiefs enter the fourth quarter either leading or trailing by single digits, and it all but guarantees Kelce breaks off underneath of a deep cross or sits down between spying linebackers for what are basically long handoffs 4-8 times every week. 'If it ain't broke', etc.
And did K.C. do anything to meaningfully get any reps off of their soon to be 37-year-old's plate? Dear reader, they did not: Marquise Brown and Juju Smith-Schuster were encouraged not to let the door strike them on their ways out and were only "replaced" by some Day 3/UDFA scratch-off ticket types. Which means that Travis Kelce is now one California stop by Rashee Rice away from once again being force fed cheapie option route layups up the seam until Taylor Swift herself intervenes. Okonkwo and Strange are both positioned to have career years, but neither of them can catch 90 balls. Travis Kelce most definitely still could.
Some of your fellow eagle-eyed readers may have also noticed Jefferson's absence from the initial dynasty rankings. Rest assured, he'll slot back in toward the very top in the first supplemental rankings of 2026. And thanks for the welcome!
Question 4
RBs Jumping Around After reviewing the team grades, it feels like I see a bunch of mid-tier RBs that have changed teams multiple times in the last few years. Gainwell, Rico (Dowdle), (Brian) Robinson and others. I'm sure there are more. Any trend here?
Eric Kiser (Tampa, FL)
No, you're definitely not wrong. Add Rachaad White to the 2026 names, Najee Harris, Javonte Williams, JK Dobbins, and Rico Dowdle again last year. And we can't even name all the guys involved in The Great RB Migration of 2024, which saw a whopping nine running backs sign multi-year contracts with new teams that included the first year's salary being fully guaranteed. Even those criteria miss some of the lesser deals for relevant players that year — like JK Dobbins and Rico Dowdle!
To my mind, this is something of a minor market correction for the complete collapse in running back salaries that we've watched play out over the last 10-15 years. No, running backs aren't going to be closing ranks on wide receivers and edge rushers in the earning power department anytime soon, but every cycle there are invariably a half dozen or so teams that need to upgrade their running back rooms. Instead of teams just spamming rookie contracts at it and hoping one sticks, there seems to be a more deliberate desire for teams that are between generational talents like a Bijan or a Jeanty (yep, I said it) to just go get 'their guys'. Specifically, front offices are willing to spend just a tad more for scheme/culture fits that their coaching staffs covet.
Rico Dowdle and Chris Rodriguez, two perfect examples. Carolina probably would have liked to keep Dowdle; after all, he basically single-handedly saved their season with his October explosion. But they didn't want him quite so bad as his old buddy Mike McCarthy, who (unconfirmed opinion incoming) was willing to royally tick off Jerry Jones' kid to make Dowdle his feature back and send Royce Freeman packing in his last season here in Dallas. Washington floated Rodriguez with a non-tender, probably thinking they could turn around and re-sign him cheaply enough — not realizing how much his tackle-breaking prowess was coveted by old pal Liam Coen. Gainwell, Tyler Allgeier, Keaton Mitchell: All guys who are now being paid decent-to-good money, and were added with the clear intention of adding specific skillsets to depth charts that were lacking them.
What exactly this says about the average incoming Day 2 rookie running back I'm not sure, but if I had to guess it boils down to finding guys who can function on passing downs. Free agency happens a month before the draft, and teams would rather risk a running back abundance (like the one Arizona now has) than leave it to chance over 1-2% of their next couple salary caps. Plus, heading into the draft not obligated to add a running back allows teams to take stabs on players who, if they pan out, represent a greater value relative to the top earners at that position than most speculative rookie running backs.
Looking at it that way, I'd say this is a case of the NFL trending a little bit smarter about roster construction.
