Lineup Fantasy Football Show - 5 Breakouts to BUY in 2026 Dynasty Fantasy Football

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

We share five of our favorite breakouts to buy and target in Dynasty Fantasy Football leagues...including one LEAGUE WINNER! Analysis and thoughts on the 2026 Fantasy Football season's biggest sleepers and breakouts in Dynasty Leagues! 0:00 - Intro 0:50 - Tetairoa McMillan 4:37 - Tyler Shough 8:09 - RJ Harvey 11:41 - Michael Wilson 15:20 - Emeka Egbuka Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2025, we saw breakouts like George Pickens, Drake May, or even Giovante Williams, win their manager's championships in fantasy football. Now it's time you identify five players who can break out in 2026 and help you win your leagues. Welcome into the lineup fantasy football show. I'm Mitch Anderson. I'm Justin Mello. And outside of Parker Washington, it was obviously on a hiatus after deep diving on him last episode and probably again in the next two weeks or so.

Let's get into our top five Mello starting off with your first Dynasty Breaker. breakout. First of all, two weeks was conservative for how much we'll be talking about Parker Washington. Yeah, I don't know. I'm still waiting on the jersey. It might be his whole career that we're talking about Parker Washington in depth on this show. I have a different receiver for my first dynasty breakout though, a guy that feels almost too obvious to me as a breakout going into next year. And that is second year receiver, Tedaroa McMillan. I often tell the cautionary tale of those who overvalues second year receivers. I feel like I'm the one shouting as loudly as I can that we need to stop pumping these guys up in ADP and value.

But here I am, guilty as charged, just absolutely slurping up the T-Mack Kool-Aid. And I'm still thirsty. Good heavens. Still drinking that Kool-Aid. Clutching my pearls over here. Oh, yeah, maybe I should have audible that choice of words. You know what? No, no regrets because I'm standing. I'm, this is a flag plant kind of tape for me.

Brother, when you're slurping, you're slurping. There's no stopping. Yeah, I'm slurping. Grow up if you don't like that. I'm slurping up this Kool-Aid. I've talked about T-Mac a little bit on this show before. But to summarize some of my earlier points, what it really boils down to is both the tape and the numbers, the statistics, looked great for him as a rookie. And I think there's so much potential for him to grow still. of the 13 rookie wide receivers with at least 35 targets last year, he led all of them in receptions, yards, touchdowns, and pro football focused receiving grade while finishing second among all of them

in yards per out run. And yeah, wasn't the strongest of draft classes for receivers at least. We've had some stronger draft classes in the past. Sure. Yeah. Even if you bring in the 14 second year receivers from the 2024 draft, which was supposedly loaded at wide receiver,

and what they did last year. Of those 14 with 35 targets, TMAX still led all of them in receptions, yards, touchdowns, and pro football focus for receiving grade while finishing second nearest breath run. So really successful rookie year wasn't a true breakout, but I think it's coming. He is a 6-4 lab creation that should continue to develop

similarly to what we saw with guys like Mike Evans and Treyk London, who are similar archetypes of receivers that made the transition from impressive rookie to top tier professional wide receiver. It seems just too obvious to me that TMAQ's going to be taking that next step and have that full breakout next year and continue to be great for years to come. I love this pick. I mean, we got to talk about him a little bit in our top 12 wide receivers and it left me wanting to like deep dive more on TMAQ.

And you talked a little bit about targets. I wrote about this in our recent article that like, Targets are such a sticky stat, specifically, with rookies. And he finished 14th in the entire NFL in targets among wide receivers, which is like just something that gets you so excited, that he is a cornerstone of this offense. They're excited to keep building around him. And like, we're excited about Jalen Coker, obviously,

but it's not like we're like, there's a million mouths to feed in Carolina. And I think Bryce Young's going to keep stepping up and up. I think he's on the Ascension. So I absolutely love the T-Mac pick. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up Jalen Coker, too, because like, we've, we joked on this show where Cokeheads. We are.

We like Jeline Coker. Yeah. But he is still obviously a distant to T-MAC, who is the better talent with higher draft capital. You can forget about Xavier Ligget entirely now. He should be a podcaster like us at this point with that voice it is. I think he's more qualified for that than an NFL receiver. So there aren't really a whole lot of other mouths to feed. and I think T-MAC is going to continue to eat in this offense.

I couldn't agree more. Before I jump into my first player, if you guys are enjoying the video, please hit that like button. It helps us so much. Then hit that subscribe button to be notified every time you drop a brand new video. Let's talk about a guy we teased last episode in Tyler Shuck. I have been yapping all off-season. I'm professionally yapper.

About Jackson Dart, hottest name on the scene at QB right now as a breakout candidate. I almost wanted to talk about him. and I was like, enough. Everyone's kind of been getting on me, too, about like, enough Jackson Dart. We've heard enough. So let me talk about the guy who isn't getting enough love. The current QB 22, according to Keep Trade Cut. He obviously didn't start the year.

He took it over from Spencer Rattler in week nine, and he started nine games from that on. He finished the year in weeks 13 through 17 as the QB8. I almost feel like we could have named him as one of our boring guys, but I think this is actually a way better label for him as a breakout. Of QBs with 300 or more dropbacks, he ranked sixth and completion percentage in 10th in yards per attempt, which is a very, very important combo.

We saw that with Drake May last year, that he was one of those rare examples of a guy who's completing a lot of passes and also chucking it downfield. Tyler Shuck can also do it with his legs. He got on 186 yards, three touchdowns in the ground in those nine games. You look at his weapons, Chris Alave, Joan Johnson. We're not the biggest Travis A-chan guys, but now him and Kamara are in that backfield,

not the worst duo to be targeting for receiving backs. Plus now you have the rumblings that they could potentially go after a receiver. We could see it be Carnal Tate or McCoy Lemon. You add that, I promise you. Tyler Shucks' price tomorrow is not going to be his price today. I love it. I'm glad you brought the mobility too because, especially down the stretch last year,

he had so many impressive runs too. These weren't just like, you know, you forget about the quarterback, easy 12-yard scramble. He had some really impressive runs last year, and I think the mobility is something to start being excited about. Yeah, he's got, I don't know what it is. It's like he's quicker than fast, like, you know, at sneaky speed, coach's son kind of thing.

I don't know what it is about it. First guy and, last guy out. Jim rat. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I don't know what it is about him. He's got all the intangibles, yeah. Ah.

No, but I think it's interesting because I think he's a guy of lot of people have already written off for not being the long-term guy. But I think the opportunity. he's there. Ironically, almost kind of similar to the guy he replaced in New Orleans and Derek Carr, who wasn't a high draft pick, even though he got the starting job as a rookie, people thought he'd eventually be replaced. And he went on to start for them for what, like eight, nine years, built a solid career. And as long as the mobility is there, which, I mean, he's not Lamar Jackson, but he can definitely run better than Derek Carr was ever able to. And we talked about his efficiency

and his ability to push the ball down the field. He could, who knows, have an even better career. and be a better fantasy asset. Yeah. I think he's, we look for our target brand, our Walmart, great value brand guy versions of some of these dudes

that are getting propped up too much. And Tyler Shuck to me is just like the perfect, great value. I wouldn't go as far as to say Timu because that's insulting. I think he's a great value, Jackson Dart.

Yeah, great value. I think that's a fair place to put it. I want to figure out who the Timu Jackson Dart is. I'll have to report back to you on that one. Me. I don't know. Yeah, you and me. All right, you're going to love this next one, Mitch.

You're going to absolutely love this player. I know you love this player. I don't even know who it is. I haven't seen it in the dock. This is somebody that you have been hot and bothered by, and I'm stealing the page out of your book, because I'm starting to get hot and bothered too. I don't know if I'm slurping the Kool-Aid yet,

but I'm definitely sipping it for R.J. Harvey. He's very conservative with the slurps. He doesn't do that for just anybody. No, I'm not. slurping down anyone's Kool-Aid. I'm slow sipping this. I might pour myself another glass. I don't know how quickly that one will go down, but I'm starting to get more excited about R.J. Harvey, no doubt. I did know that one. I don't know why I said I didn't know that. I just remember. You just forgot. It's okay. I forget, like, what I had for lunch today, so you're good.

R.J. Harvey, though, I think this offseason's gone beautifully after all these rumors that they could go after Brees Hall if he became available or all these other free agent running backs like Ken Walker and Just every rumor possible. Every running back was linked to the Broncos. And all they did in free agency was bring back J.K. Frankenstein Dobbins and J.L.L. McLaughlin, which I think is the best case scenario for R.J. Harvey to only bring back those guys. It's also a very weak running back class we've talked about on the show. The Broncos are obviously nowhere near in range for Jeremiah Love, so you don't have to worry about that.

All signs. point to Harvey being the clear number one running back in this offense. And he was already, and I know you've mentioned this before, the running back five from weeks 13 to 17 last year. Absolutely ridiculous. I think he has an opportunity to become more efficient to get a full season as the leadback where he wasn't really last year, which is exciting. And he's in an offense where both the coach and Sean Payton and the quarterback in

Bo Nix are guys who love to get the running back involved in the passing game. They've both done it independently. Sean Payton with the Saints and Bo Nixon College. Now they're both doing it together in Denver. RJ Harvey is a good pass catcher. So it's just with all this considered really hard for me to envision a scenario where he disappoints where he's currently being ranked in both redraft and dynasty. The Broncos really said they were going to bring another running back and then they just said JK.

Sucky. All right. That was the best joke I had. But, yeah, RJ Harvey Harvey to me is. Everyone was saying, you know, yeah, I'll take my victory lap, whatever. Everyone was saying I was an idiot because they're bound to bring in a free agent. They're bound to bring in somebody who's going to take away so much work from him. They're going to get Travis A. Chan.

And now it's like they don't get him and his price hasn't moved and everyone's just like, yeah, we're not talking about that. Go get RJ Harvey because by the time all the fantasy analysts and everyone starts coming back in, all the assholes on their mic start talking about and digging into it, we're going to realize that RJ Harvey is so wildly undervalued right now. This one to me is like, I don't get it. I truly don't get the RJ Harvey price, and I'm glad you talked about it because clearly I can't talk about without getting fired up.

Maybe I'm slurping it. I think you are slurping it. I appreciate you pouring me a little bit out of your lasso, because I am enjoying this RJ Harvey Kool-A. I'm going to have to put like a slurp juice in the thumbnail, hide in a little Easter egg. Easter egg for the people. People are going to be like, what the hell is this?

All right, we good for me to do. jump into my second guy. Let's do it. All right. This is a guy that I'm going to be honest, and I will keep it real. I was not slurping at the beginning of the off-season, quite the opposite of slurping. I even mentioned that I think it's hard

to imagine him repeating what he did last year. Can I stop you for a second? I would just like to clarify, you were not slurping his Kool-Aid. I didn't like the way you said I was not slurping him. I didn't like that. I said what I said.

Michael Wilson, I didn't think that he could repeat what he did last year, and then it struck me that you don't need him to. Michael Wilson was like the wide receiver two in the back half of last year, which a lot of people I can't believe and I couldn't believe either. From week 11 on literally the wide receiver two in fantasy football, his current price tag is the wide receiver 34 in Dynasty as a 26-year-old wide receiver. Do you want to know a crazy stat? Guess where Michael Wilson ranked in Rout's Run for 2025?

I'm doing this blind here. Yeah. Where he ranked among all wide receivers? All wide receivers in the NFL. I'm going to go with... One E-second. Michael Wilson ran the most routes in the NFL in 2025. No way.

Now Michael Wilson's competition outside of obviously, like, Trey McBride just count him as a receiver. Like, he's not a tight end. In my mind, the target share he gets is that of a wide receiver. Yeah. It's MHJ, who I'm low on. I know people hate me for it. I'm low on Marvin Harrison Jr.

But then you've got Kendrick Bourne, Devin Duvonne, aka the Dove, and Xavier Weaver. Michael Wilson is in that awesome situation, too, where it's like, so many guys are projecting are like, oh, I think we could see a breakout because he already showed us the breakout last year.

Do I have to repeat wide receiver two from week 11 on? And so I think everyone's so excited about Jacoby Brissette's return and how that's going to prop up Tray McBride and it's going to prop up Marvin Harrison Jr. And I just feel like there's been coach speak about Michael Wilson and yet nobody wants to talk about him. And he's another perfect guy that kind of falls into that. We could have used him for the boring players episode.

But to me, the breakout label just meant a little bit more. Yeah, it's, I think we're really mean to players that have late round draft capital. You need to have like at least two full really good seasons before people want to admit you're good, especially when you're playing on the same team as a guy who was perceived as this generational wider super prospect. Yeah. But I'm with you. Like, I'm not going to blame someone if they would rather have Marv in a dynasty league just because of what... I mean, it would have been asinine to say that these two are even close two years ago.

So I get why people have like some skepticism. But with that said, I think we are two of the most aggressively anti-Marv people in the fantasy community. and say what you want. I would actually say that's like fully true. The amount of Dynasty Buy videos I see with Marvin Harrison Jr. is crazy and we literally put him as our primary cell. Well, that's the thing. If everyone says he's a buy, he probably is a cell.

So not to pat ourselves on the back, but I really, I think he is. And the last thing I'll say on it, not that this is an exercise of Marr versus Michael Wilson, but I mean, I guess it kind of is in a sense. The last thing I'll say is, regardless of what you want to say about the future, just look at the past and look at last year

and try to look me in the eye and tell me that Michael Wilson was worse than Marvin Harrison Jr. last year. And I don't think you can do that. It's a difference in 14 positional ranks in Dynasty. Marvin Harrison Jr. is the wire receiver 20. Michael Wilson is the wire receiver 34. This is actually a great episode idea.

We should do the Walmart brand guys. Ooh. Of players. I'm going to start cooking that. I might go to Walmart just get some inspiration. Yeah, I'll get a bag of great value shredded cheese. I'll start eating that while I fill this out. Who's this player remind me of? Or this cheese remind me of.

All right, you want to get into our league winner? Let's do it. You have been yelling from the rooftops for years, Mello, not to get excited about second year wide receivers. But there has never been a better time to get excited about them after last year when it was such a failure relative to ADP, which is why after talking about T-MAC, we are even more excited to talk about Emeka, Abuka. of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, currently valued as the wide receiver 10 in Dynasty,

this is where things start shifting. Him and T-Mack are a little different than a lot of these guys we've talked about because you're not going to get a discount on them. They're really expensive for a reason, but why we're so excited is I think there's a very real possibility that we're talking about him as a top five wide receiver next year, and he's 23 years old.

Mike Evans, out of the building, off to an electrical substation in San Francisco. We officially have runway for Abuka to be the Alfa wide receiver in this offense. He was 2025's wide receiver 20 in PPR scoring, but for those who remember those beautiful, incredible first five weeks when he was the wide receiver three, something interesting I looked into too.

Do you remember that Baker Mayfield was the MVP favorite leaving week five? Yep. It wasn't just Abuka where the wheels fell off. The entire Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense just kind of became dysfunctional after that and just, it was fine by the end, but like they weren't how they were firing. at the beginning of the year.

This guy passes the eye test. Phenomenal physical profile and statistical profile coming out of Ohio State. There's now a vacancy of targets with Mike Evans gone and a vacant role in that offense that needs to be filled by an alpha wide receiver.

We saw all the hype last year, flew up draft boards, and so he's not a guy you're going to get for cheap because people love him, but you should be able to get him a little cheaper because I think a lot of people

are pissed off about that back end of last year. That's the beauty of it for me. We're actually so lucky. If you're someone who wants to invest in that at Google, long term. We're so lucky the back half of the year won the way it did because, yes, you'll still have to pay up, like you said. He's still worth quite a bit in most people's eyes, but it's still significantly less than what it was projected to be at this time at, you know, midway through the season

or after week five or six last season. Because the way it was trending, it looked like a Buka was going to be valued as like the top 10 dynasty asset. What if he finished as a top five wide receiver last year? Like, where are we putting Emeka of Buka? He would, if he just, stayed on the pace he was through the first like month and a half of the season, we would be putting him in that tier with Jamar and JSN and Puka. Yeah, I was like, is he just under JASN? Puka, well, Puka, we'll figure out, but Puka, Jammar, and then Abuga? Yeah, like, I think that's where he probably would be.

And not that he should be there. I don't think he should be. But I think he should be higher than what a lot of people are, where a lot of people are putting him right now because of the back half of the season last year. And you're right. I'm usually the guy talked about it with T-Mac, who's like, we pump up these year two receivers too much. We pump them up too much. They're too expensive. Don't buy the hype. Don't buy the hype. Too expensive. But you're right. After last year, were they all disappointed. Now the second year guys going into next year aren't all that expensive

like Igbuka. Yes, still expensive, but not like not through the roof too much. Yeah. You mentioned Baker Mayfield. Like, I think a big part of Igbuka's fall off last year was, Baker was so injured. He was not himself. But he's a guy who throws the ball a lot. He's been top seven in passing attempts each of the last three years in Tampa Bay. I think he'll continue to be that, hopefully healthy next year too. You mentioned no Mike Evans. So Egbuka, as this first round talent, they believed in, I think should be the number one in this offense. I think Chris Godman, if he's healthy, will still get his. But I think Igbuka will emerge as the true number one. And also, you mentioned, like, we've been talking about the back half of a Bucca's year.

It was so different than most rookies where you see their snaps go up. To illustrate that, he went from averaging 59 and half snaps per game, his first four weeks of the season, to just 39 and a half the last four. So, huge dip down the stretch. And I think another part of it that I really wonder about that not a lot of people are talking about, is that week six hamstring injury last year wasn't considered serious. And it really probably wasn't because he didn't miss any time. But hamstring injuries are known for nagging. Even if you're on the field, you're not the same with the hamstring injury.

It really makes me wonder if he was seriously affected by it because week six is right around the time the decline started, right, where the falloff started. So. Well, it's quite literally the exact moment when the decline started. Right. So you can- I want to say it was like 6.4 points in week six. and that's when the whole thing went downhill. Yeah, I think we can attribute that a lot of that to the handstring injury.

And then it's also around the time where Baker was hurt. And it's also the time where they were getting guys back who weren't previously available. So it all was just kind of this perfect storm to bringing Bucca down to earth. But those weren't long-term things. I think he could be right back or at least closer to what he was the first month of last season. We know how talented he is. know how much Tampa Bay likes to throw the ball with Baker Mayfield. I think he is absolutely somebody who we could be talking a lot higher of this time next year. I think that was such a great

way of putting it and such like a ribbon on all of this is that any issues with Abuka last year were not Emeka Abuka issues. They were not long-term issues. They were situational. They were circumstantial. And we don't see them going into 2026. No. I'm, I'm, it really was a blessing that happened though in hindsight if you're somebody who wants to go out and get a buca. Absolutely. And I will wrap up this episode by saying we are slurping the amechabuka Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid specifically. Thank you guys for tuning in. If you agree with these picks, let us know down below if you have any of these guys. If you don't agree and you think there's a better breakout, let us know down below too and we might talk about them in a future episode. Mello, we miss anything?

It's all I doubt. All right. We will catch you guys next episode.