Early 2026 Fantasy Football Rankings: Justin Boone's top-150 players for next season
- - Early 2026 Fantasy Football Rankings: Justin Boone's top-150 players for next season
Justin Boone January 10, 2026 at 12:55 AM
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Justin Boone is a two-time winner of the FantasyPros Most Accurate Expert Award (2019, 2025) and has nine top-10 finishes in the competition.
Below you can see a very early look at his fantasy rankings for the 2026 season. More expanded rankings, including PPR scoring and rookies, will be available in future updates.
Early 2026 Fantasy Rankings -
Quarterbacks
Running Backs
Wide Receivers
Tight Ends
Top 150
Takeaways from the early top-150 rankings -
Unlike previous years, you can make a strong case for several players to be the first overall pick in 2026 fantasy drafts. Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs are the only two backs to finish as top-four fantasy RBs each of the past two seasons, Puka Nacua averaged the most fantasy points among WRs, Ja’Marr Chase continued to be a high-end producer despite losing Joe Burrow to injury for some games, Christian McCaffrey was the top scoring fantasy RB and Jaxon Smith-Njigba had a breakout year that put him in the conversation with the elite players at his position. You could even make an argument for players like De’Von Achane and Jonathan Taylor, depending what their teams do at quarterback.
Trey McBride is the first tight end to average over 15 fantasy points per game in half-PPR (18 FPPG in PPR) since Travis Kelce accomplished the feat in 2022. Much like Kelce that year, McBride had a sizable advantage over the other players at his position, averaging 2.4 more fantasy points per game than the next closest tight end in half-PPR and 3.5 more in PPR formats. To give some context, that would have made him the WR7 behind only Nacua, JSN, Rashee Rice, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Ja’Marr Chase and George Pickens. The Cardinals have decisions to make with their coaching staff and quarterback, but Jacoby Brissett unlocked a version of McBride that makes him a borderline first-round pick in fantasy.
If you miss on McBride, don’t worry, there are seven tight ends that I feel comfortable drafting in 2026. McBride, Brock Bowers, George Kittle and Tucker Kraft have all displayed high-end fantasy upside that we want from the position. Meanwhile, a trio of sophomores in Harold Fannin Jr., Colston Loveland and Tyler Warren flashed intriguing ceilings as rookies and will be pushing to join the elite group of fantasy producers at the position next season. We’ll see where ADPs eventually settle, but I’ll be disappointed if I don’t come away with one of those seven in my drafts.
Quarterback is extremely deep, which means there’s going to be value at the position in the later rounds. In 2025, we had nine quarterbacks drafted outside the first 100 picks who were strong starters. Matthew Stafford, Drake Maye, Brock Purdy and Trevor Lawrence made up four of the top-six fantasy QBs in per game scoring. Other deep values like Jared Goff, Justin Herbert and Caleb Williams also finished as top-12 QBs. We even saw Daniel Jones post QB8 numbers through 13 weeks before getting hurt and Jaxson Dart emerged as a top-10 fantasy option once he began starting in Week 4. In my early 2026 rankings, Herbert, Dak Prescott, Dart, Purdy, Lawrence and Williams didn’t crack my top-five QBs, but I can easily make a case for any of them finishing in that range by season’s end.
Once you get outside of the top-100 picks, it’s time to load up your bench with as many backup RBs as possible. So it should come as no surprise that 26 of the final 50 players in the table below are running backs. Ball carriers like Jacory Croskey-Merritt, Braelon Allen, Kenneth Gainwell, Bhayshul Tuten, Trey Benson and Jordan Mason are obvious targets who could have major roles in their offenses next season. But there are several backs who performed well in relief duties this year and will once again be one-injury away from fantasy stardom in 2026, like Kendre Miller, Tank Bigsby, Sean Tucker, Emanuel Wilson and more.
Top 150
2026 Fantasy Football Rankings powered by FantasyPros
Early 2026 Fantasy Rankings -
Quarterbacks
Running Backs
Wide Receivers
Tight Ends
Top 150
Source: “AOL Sports”
