Luke Wilson answers your fantasy football questions. Revisiting the top of the tight end rankings, a brief look ahead to the highly anticipated 2027 draft class, contextualizing Jadarian Price's first game relative to his ranking, whether we're still drinking the Jonathon Brooks Kool-Aid, and much more.
Question 1
Long time subscriber and believer here. I'm noting the projections for Bowers and McBride are roughly 60 points higher than those of the next tight end. How confident are you of these two being that much superior to the field?
Mike Kocis (Pittsburgh, PA)
Thanks Mike, glad to have you among the faithful. The answer to this question would have been shorter a week ago, but recent events have conspired to complicate matters and prolong my reply. One of them is obvious, the other, less so.
The case for McBride is still pretty self-explanatory. He's the only tight end that has topped 1100 yards each of the last two seasons, the only one that's topped 1200 since Kelce did it in 2022, and the TD clog he endured prior to 2025 was vigorously cleared when Jacoby Brissett relieved Kyler Murray last year. The increased target competition could well eat into his numbers, but our current projections already include a slight pullback from his 2025 totals.
The case was maybe even clearer for Brock Bowers — until the term 'meniscus trim' became the shot heard round the world earlier this week. The same knee that turned Bowers from a football robot back into a mortal last year is still bothering him, and now he and Las Vegas are going to try for a procedure with a purportedly quick recovery time and hope to get him back for Week 2 or 3. This is probably going to be enough to knock Bowers back into the ranges of the next couple of tight ends behind him in the season long projections, but me personally — he's still my TE2 with a bullet. I like the guys behind him plenty, but the Raiders are as talent poor at wide receiver as it gets and Ashton Jeanty is also already banged up. Fantasy is played, won and lost one week at a time, and Bowers' weekly ceiling is still stratospheric. That is, so long as this surgery did the trick.
The other thing eating into the 'McBride-Bowers, then everybody else' view is Rome Odunze's calf(?) issue. The 'Odunze or Burden' debate burned all summer long, but the knock-on effect of it was the general assumption that the answer to some degree was 'both', meaning that Colston Loveland had a fairly high but quite firm target share ceiling. But with injuries to both Burden and now Odunze in the run up to Week 1, Loveland is poised to have the wind squarely at his back out of the gates.
A potentially hot start from Loveland combined with a two-week hiatus for Bowers will likely prevent Bowers from running away from him by a significant amount, and quite possibly from doing it at all. The winds of fate have smiled on Loveland's ADP from even a week ago — and really, McBride's as well.
Question 2
Where does Boutte rank now that he's with the Texans?
Wyatt Klein (S Milwaukee, WI)
Shockingly, he ranks a good bit higher! Snowed in by big name reinforcements at the top of the depth chart, our last rankings with Boutte still in Foxboro had him buried down well outside our top 75 receivers, running with pure reserves like Roman Wilson, Hollywood Brown and his new teammate, Xavier Hutchinson. Despite returning strong per-target production last season, Boutte was on track to do a lot of sitting on his... y'know.
Shipped back south for the NFL equivalent of a bag of batting practice baseballs and a tub of Icy Hot, the Louisiana native backfilling the lost Jayden Higgins looks at first blush like a downgrade. And if the reports of Higgins' stellar camp are to be taken near face value then that's probably true — after all, Higgins is 6'4" with some inside-outside versatility. But it wasn't all that long ago that Boutte was rocketing into the conversation to be a first-round draft pick himself: Boutte went for 73 yards per game and 5 touchdowns as an 18-year-old true freshman in 2020, following it with a truly wild six-game showing as a sophomore that included 9 TDs. An October ankle fracture ended the party early, and a mysterious and deeply bizarre falling out with then head coach Brian Kelly the following year turned Boutte from a shoo-in Day 1 pick in 2023 into a guy that many were surprised was drafted at all.
Heading for free agency in the spring, Boutte doesn't have the deep NIL/primo rookie contract cash reserves that a lot of guys coming off of their rookie deals do nowadays. Back in the I-10 corridor and playing to recapture some of the fortune he let slip away in Baton Rouge, he's a pretty intriguing late round flyer/last minute waiver wire add. Our final preseason rankings had him running with names like Devaughn Vele, Rashid Shaheed and the Cleveland rookie wideouts. I like him more than a couple of those guys.
Question 3
In our league (20 team 2 keepers) we can draft a college player and, as long as they are rostered for the entire season, have the option of carrying them over the following year as one of our two keepers. Are there any college players you reccomend taking a chance on?
David Hogshire (Plymouth, MN)
Great year for this question. As you are probably aware, the 2027 class is packed with youngsters that the dynasty community has already been maneuvering into position to try and nab for well over a year. Arch Manning and Jeremiah Smith are the two biggest names, but they certainly do not lack for company.
Smith is billed as the kind of galactic world eater who winds up being a household name like a Ja'Marr Chase; he will almost definitely have been grabbed up by somebody in your draft, and probably scandalously early on. But there are plenty of other names coming down the pike at wide receiver that we can go ahead and start learning now: Cam Coleman, KJ Duff, Ryan Wingo, Bryant Wesco, Nick Marsh, Nyck Harbor, Ryan Coleman-Williams. This is a very big and extremely fast wide receiver class: Smith and Marsh run in the 4.3s with true 6-foot-3 frames. Harbor is a superfreak's superfreak: 6-foot-5, and expected to run a touch under 4.3.
And the running backs may not lag that far behind. Ahmad Hardy might already be on his way to RB1 status in the class if not for catching a bullet in the leg at a concert this summer; Nate Frazier is already where Jadarian Price was when he arrived in the NFL as a smallish back with major home run hitter ability, except he's still got this season to burnish his collegiate resume (3 TDs on his first 4 carries of 2026 is a pretty good start); Mark Fletcher and Jadan Baugh are both built like brick outhouses and looking to prove that their solid-not-spectacular 2025s were still just the tips of their icebergs. Kewan Lacy rumbled for 24 scores last fall and will try to author a worthy sequel in his likely collegiate finale.
And of course, Arch, Sayin and others are poised to make it a solid-to-very good quarterback cohort as well, so when it comes to planting a rookie seed it really depends on who you like and/or what you need. Smith is the guy who arrives in the NFL expected to end up in Canton; none of these other guys are in his area code as prospects. But I wouldn't mind pocketing Coleman, Baugh or even Hardy and crossing my fingers that they finish strong, stay healthy and don't opt to stay in football school for one last season of eligibility.
Question 4
I am having trouble getting a feel for how FI feels about Jadarian Price. The most recent writeup seems almost unimpressed with him, while the rankings for this year and in dynasty have ranked very favorable?
Damon Duhon (Baton Rouge, LA)
There's dissent in our ranks (and our rankings) on the dynamite Golden Domer. He weaved a bit of a winding path in our projections over the summer to get there, but heading into Labor Day redraft prime time Price wound up at a ranking broadly in line with the bullish ADP he's settled in with across most platforms. And as if on cue, Seattle's rookie tailback confirmed both the positives that his advocates have lauded him for and the concerns that the Price bears (like myself) have used as flies in the ointment.
Brass tacks, when we're talking about players being drafted in the top 60 it is generally assumed (if not always implied) that said players are pretty safe bets, both season long but also as weekly plays, assuming good health, offense cohesion, advantageous horoscopes, etc. And broadly, the unifying attribute that gives running backs and receivers that weekly consistency is volume. Therefore, this was my primary concern with Price: A full-on repeat of The 2025 TreVeyon Henderson ADP Experience, where people got on the ride (at what peaked at a 4th round sticker price) expecting 15 touches per game from the get-go that wind up taking way too long to actually materialize.
The caution-urging here was never about the talent: Price can play, that's clear. But there was a narrative being echoed across the fantasy media ecosystem that Price would simply be too good for lesser talents like George Holani, Emanuel Wilson and quite possibly even a healthy Zach Charbonnet to keep off the field — 'Seattle didn't use a 1st round pick on him for no reason'. And that's true, the Seahawks are clearly already better for his presence as a big play generator. But the path from talent to opportunity is often a winding one, and Seattle appeared quite comfortable mixing and matching their guys on Wednesday night. With Charbonnet reportedly on track to return as early as next month, Price's obvious talent may need some time to subdue his competition.
Question 5
Hello Luke! I would like to run a dynasty trade offer by you: I have been offered Jonathan Brooks and a 2028 2nd round pick for KC Concepcion, should I take it? The other owner knows I’m in a bind at RB (Josh Jacobs), so you could argue that he’s either helping me out or taking advantage of me! Is Brooks really ready to play, or am I just giving away my first round pick for an injury plagued committee RB?
David Jung (San Francisco, CA)
That is a cruel twisting of the knife your league mate is administering. Too soon man! But long story short: Heck no, no way, no sir, no way Jose, etc.
Short story long: Let's remember where we are in the now 2-plus year arc of Jonathon Brooks' time as an NFL player. Labeled as sort of the de facto top running back of a very weak class (a title that in hindsight should have been shared by Bucky Irving and Blake Corum), Bijan Robinson's successor in Austin suffered a late ACL tear in 2023 that dinged but didn't decimate his draft stock the following spring. Expected to begin pushing Chuba Hubbard for work fairly quickly upon his return from injured reserve, Brooks of course suffers the nightmare scenario when he re-tears the ACL just three games into his NFL career, wiping out all of his 2025 and imperiling his entire football future.
But we're suckers for a comeback story, and Brooks' spring hype stream combined with another brutally shallow group of incoming rookie runners revived Brooks in fantasy broadly, and in dynasty circles in particular. He was packaged in trades like crazy over the summer, almost always to teams that were looking mighty thin at the position. Now with the 2026 season coming into focus, the reality may already be falling behind the hype: Carolina's down both of last year's starting tackles until further notice, Brooks has been working through "soreness" that Dave Canales absolutely refuses to elaborate on, and Chuba Hubbard is quietly positioned to dominate touches for at least September. Comeback story taking on some water here.
And even without that, KC Concepcion alone would be asking too much for a guy with major medicals and a yet unclear role in the offense. Adding the draft pick on top when he's the one trying to get out on his whiff while the getting's good? I'd scrape by with what I had on hand.
Question 6
What's with Daniel Jones? Is he going to start the season or still recovering?
Matt Morse (Glennallen, AK)
He is indeed. In fact, both of the Colts' high-priced walking wounded are now on track to suit up for this weekend's season opener against the team that now plays in Baltimore: Alec Pierce finally returned to practice a little over a week ago after missing the entire offseason while recovering from ankle surgery. Barring last second misfortune, the Colts should have all of their core offensive personnel available to open 2026.
How effective Jones will be, though, is another question. On the one hand, Jones doesn't run as much as he did in his heyday: Aside from an overtime-assisted 53 yards against Atlanta in Berlin, Jones never topped 30 yards rushing in a game last year. But on the other, Jones said he actually first suffered injury to his leg weeks before his ultimate Achilles rupture — he wasn't nearly as good over his final four full games as he was during Indy's scorching 7-1 start.
One thing's for sure: Indianapolis doesn't get the same velvet rope opening draw that they enjoyed a year ago. Other than a trip to Landover to play a Washington defense that probably still isn't very good and a home tilt against Tennessee, Indianapolis doesn't get any other layups on their dance card before November. Was the Colts' swoon because of the loss of Jones, or did tougher competition reveal that the emperor had no clothes? Won't be long now before we find out.
