Lineup Fantasy Football Show - Our HOTTEST Fantasy Football Takes for 2026

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

We're break down our HOTTEST fantasy football takes for 2026: An MVP darkhorse, sneaky QB1, NFL Rookie of the Year, and more insane takes. 🌶️ If you disagree... drop it in the comments 🌶️ 0:00 - Fantasy Football Hot Takes 2026 0:50 - Isaac Tesla Will Lead Lions In... 3:41 - Jaxson Dart Will Win... 6:19 - Derrick Henry Will Be a Top _ RB 8:47 - Makai Lemon Will Win... 11:58 - De'Zhaun Stribling Will Be a Top _ Rookie WR 16:34 - Ashton Jeanty Will Be RB_ 20:21 - Super Bowl Predictions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are going to say a few things over the next 20 minutes that might make you close the video, or they might make you agree with us because you're just as sick and twisted as we are. Welcome into the lineup fantasy football show. I'm Mitch Anderson. I'm Justin Mello. And this is an idea we have been sitting on for a while, and I feel like we're just getting into the summer. It's just getting hot out. Let's break out the hot takes, Mello. No safe picks, no hedging, no...

It depends. We are giving our hottest takes that we genuinely do believe in, so let's get into things. But before we do, this episode's about no shame, and so I'm doing a shameless plug. Please hit that like button if you've been appreciating the content. Hit the subscribe button to be notified every time we drop a brand new episode. Now we can get into things. Mello, give me your first hot tape. I'm going to start real spicy here for you.

I got something real hot I'd be cooking out. I can't wait. I'm ready to share it. I think in 2026, Isaac Tesla is going to lead the lions and receiving touchdowns. Well, I'm going to like that. you state your case. I know this is hot. This is real hot right here.

Hot off the presses. But I'm telling you, it's going to be Isaac Tesla, not Amin Rossi Brown, who was second in the entire NFL last year. Not Sam Laporta, who caught 10 touchdowns as rookie year, which led all tight ends. Not Jameson Williams, who's this electric home run hitter who could score a touchdown any given play. I'm going with Isaac Tesla as the leading receiver for Lions in terms of touchdowns. This regime paid up.

huge to trade up in the third round in the 20-25 draft to grab them last year. And I think now they're finally at the point where they're just going to unleash him. He averaged 15 snaps per game in his first six games last year and then 44 snaps per game in his last six. So the usage increased substantially. I think that is going to carry over into year two as we frequently see with these rookie receivers. The usage goes out throughout the year and then a bigger role in year two as well. And this really stood out to me. He tied for fourth in red zone touchdowns last year among all wide receivers despite being 40th in targets. So 40th in red zone targets, but fourth in red zone touchdowns. Why is that? Because he is an incredible red zone weapon.

That is his skill set. Contested catch kind of guy, tight space, get open, score a touchdown. That is the role he is going to play in this offense. And I think his role in general is going to expand a year two with the Lions. I think Dan Campbell and this whole regime really like him a lot. They're ready to unleash him. And I think especially down by the goal line is where they're going to be more aggressive. We talked about how good he is down there. And then you have a guy like I'm going to Rase Brown, who he himself was very frequently used in the red zone last year. He's going to be drawn all the attention away from a guy like Isaac Tesla. He's going to beast and lead this team in receiving touchdowns.

This one is insane, but I get where you're coming from completely. And I do, I mean, that's a wild sap that he was fourth in red zone touchdowns and 40th in red zone targets. I'm in. I do like him as a talent. And we're big Ammon Ra St. Brown guys. But like touchdowns are going to have to go somewhere in that lion's offense and we're expecting a big push this year. And so they got to go to somebody. Yeah.

And hey, I mean, Ammon Ross St. Brown's great. He's still going to get all those receptions, ton of yards, same as James and Williams. But down by the goal line, it's going to be Tesla time. I'm calling it right now. Tesla time. All right, well, before I go too crazy

and start calling you a sicko, let me give you my first hot take. I think Jackson Dart is not only going to finish as a top three fantasy football quarterback, I also think he's going to win the MVP. The real hot take here is that I think he's going to win a neck-and-neck race with Parker Washington, but I'll save that for our extra hot takes episode.

But to be actually serious here, for anybody who thinks I'm insane, did you see that after Jordan Tyson got drafted, Tyler Shuck became the most bet MVP pick on sports books? I did not. That's outrageous. Absolutely bananas. So the obvious argument here that we have, and many people have mentioned it this spring as well, is that the blueprint was already kind of laid out for Jackson Dart to do what Drake May did last year in his second season. Drake May, of course, the quarterback two in fantasy, fell one vote short of the MVP to Matthew Stafford, who threw the most touchdowns in the NFL since Aaron Rogers in 2020.

So if we're looking to replicate the same Drake May framework in year two in terms of fantasy production, we can look at Mello's proprietary stat that he talked about earlier this spring, that from 2015 to 2024 there were 12 second year quarterbacks with over 400 rushing yards as rookies. All 12 of them hit on their ADP. So now, Jackson Dart gets back Malik neighbors that he never even got to play with, tack on Isaiah likely.

He also brings in John Harbaugh, who knows a thing or two about turning a dual threat quarterback into an MVP and fantasy football gold mine. And then of course, one of the big things we look at, and it's kind of like an unofficial rule to winning the MVP award as you do kind of have to win your division. The Giants Vegas line for wins is up to seven and a half. I am smashing that along with DART's MVP at plus 7,000. I think those odds are too good to pass up. I've been kind of like, I'll self-promote myself to voice a reason, although that's probably unfair.

But I've been the one who has been like taming some of these Jackson Dart expectations. But let me tell you, I could see it. I'm not going to sit here and say he can't win the MVP. He absolutely could win the MVP. I don't even know if it was that hot of a take. I think I'm, I think I defended it well. Well, I mean, if you look at the odds right now, there's probably, I haven't looked, but there's probably a significant number of players.

ranked above him. So I do think it's a hot take. But I think for a hot take, it's one I can like absolutely buy into and believe. I think it is a hundred percent possible Jackson Dart could be the MVP. Well, don't worry. Stick around because mine are about to get like a lot crazier as we keep going. I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to take a step back. I'm like sweating from the Tesla take. Like I feel the heat within me. I'm going to take a step back. Be a little bit more tame, but still a hot take nonetheless, and that is that Derek Henry is going to lead the league in Russian yards and route to a top three fantasy finish and offensive player of the year. Last year, which felt so disappointing, we've talked about that, it felt like he was

so disappointing in fantasy last year. He was still second in the NFL in Russian yards and second in the NFL and rushing touchdowns, both yards and touchdowns. And sure, that could, just be based on volume, right? He might have just gotten enough carries to kind of stumble forward to those metrics. Sure, that could be the case, but it's actually not the case. He was third in the NFL in yards per carry among all running backs with at least 30 carries, which 30 carries is even a very high threshold. So you had the majority of NFL running backs in that, oh yeah, casted net, and he still was third in yards per carry. Now you get Lamar Jackson back. Now you get the defense healthy and you're not playing catch up every game where you have to throw it late.

Derek Henry is going to absolutely feast despite the age concern. The talent is still there. The efficiency is still there. And now with everything coming back together here in Baltimore, I think we're going to see Prime Derek Henry all over again. And he is going to be an absolute league winner. I think this is a perfect hot take. I think this is somewhere in between.

I feel like we were on hot ones and you just did the last dab with Tesla. but like I feel like this is somewhere like a little safer than Jackson Dart, not too crazy like the Tisla one. I mean, we've talked about ad nauseum like this summer. Like he was efficient last year. He was great last year. We think the offense is going to take a step forward compared to last year having Lamar Jackson back. And I still think people are sleeping on Derek Henry. So is he going to do that?

We'll see. That is a really tall task to say leading the league in yards and touchdowns. But I genuinely do not think it's that crazy of a pitch. No, and I've talked about it in this show, I'm too much of a coward to like consistently pull the trigger on him in redraft. But I'm going to regret being a coward because I've fully convinced myself he's just going to be phenomenal going into next year. And I think he could win offensive player of the year very easily. I'm ready to get hurt. I'm absolutely ready to get hurt by Derek Henry, much like any linebacker that is preparing to tackle him.

All right. Let me get extra spicy. Let's move on. Let's do the ghost pepper buffalo wing here. Let's talk about how Mackay Lemon is going to win offensive rookie of the year with the Philadelphia Eagles. And for a true daily double, I'm going to say Jalen Hertz finishes the top five quarterback as well. But the real point here is Mackay Lemon. In the NCAA last year, whose pro football focuses number one receiver by receiving grade with a 91.4 rating plus 79 receptions ranking eighth in all of college football. I'll get back to why I think the 79 receptions is important. Originally, when we talked a little bit earlier here in April about his dream spot,

we were talking about Miami. Nobody there, absolute opportunity for all of the volume in the world. And if I'm being honest, that would have been a better situation than Philly. But let's talk about why people aren't giving this situation enough credit. You literally just talked up Jalen Hertz on Friday's episode. We're going to keep repeating it that we expect a huge bounce back for this offense and this team completely after the departure of Kevin Petula. And he is such an obvious part of this team's plan, despite a lot of people saying,

oh, the draft capitals at 20 compared to Carnal Tate or Jordan Tyson. They traded up with a division rival in the Dallas Cowboys to move up and grab him while Mackay Lemon was on the phone with the Pittsburgh Steelers. They want him and they have a plan for him. And the other thing I keep hearing is now they have their AJ Brown replacement. Yes, that's true in the sense that they have the person who is going to soak up those vacated targets from A.J. Brown. But if you haven't watched Mackay Lemon or don't know about his profile, he's very much not A.J. Brown. He's a very different build and plays a very different game.

He's a volume machine that we've likened closer to an Amin Rae St. Brown, who's getting a lot of play this episode for some reason, ancillarily. But he's the type of guy that's going to open up the field for Jalen Hertz. He's got a great feel for zone coverage. And Mello, do you want to hear a crazy stat similar to the one I mentioned a few weeks ago with Carolina? I would love nothing more. Even with the push, Philadelphia ranked 25th in third down success rate last year, which felt like a

fake stat to me. And so a guy like this who beats zone coverage, who can open up the middle of the field for Hertz, I think he's going to quickly become his best friend out there, and he's going to volume his way to a rookie of the year finish. I'm feeling the heat radiating off this take, but it's not scaring me

away, because I'm a leaden head, which I think a lemon head is a candy. Oh, lemon heads? Oh, I love that. I like, I don't know if someone's already coined that. I just came up with it on the spot, like, on accident. I'm printing up shirts for us. A couple of lemon heads over here. We're going to be the limit ahead guys now. But I think he's on a good team, which doesn't matter like it does for being an MVP, but it does matter to some extent if you're trying to an offensive for key of the year. It can certainly be a tiebreaker. Yeah, definitely. Like if you're actually winning and contributing

to that winning team. So that matters. We both like the talent. We both like the profile. I don't know if that's the first guy I would pick for offensive rookie of the year, but that's why it's a hot take, and I do think it's an educated one for sure. All right, give me your last one. Let's get spicy here. Give me something. All right.

I'm going to go a little spicier here. I went a little too tame my last one. And I am going to say, Dejan Stribling finishes top four in fantasy points among all rookie wide receivers. And everyone has him ranked so much. much lower than that right now. Oh my God. So much lower. And I think the reason people have him rank so low is they expected him to go later in the draft than he did. They expected him to be a late day two or even a day three pick. But the reality is he wasn't. The reality is he was the

33rd overall pick. The first pick of the second round to the 49ers who have a great offense and now he is going to be part of it with high draft capital. John Lynch and Kyle, Shinnahan are in love with him. They were totally willing to quote unquote reach on him to make sure they got him at pick 33. Now there's some reports that other GMs viewed stribling more in line with what the 49ers did as opposed to the media or these draft experts that had him ranked lower. So you can start to buy yourself into the talent.

And when you look at the rest of this 49ers team, which is a good offense and they should be productive. You have Mike Evans who will no doubt eat. I think he's going to have a great year. But then you have George Kittle, who's not healthy. Christian McCaffrey, who is obviously phenomenal, but he's struggling to stay on the field. And even when he does,

I just can't see his usage being consistent with what it was last year, especially in the past game. Yeah, they've even mentioned that Shanahan's come out a few times. Exactly. And you saw, I mean, they drafted a running back in day two this year as well. So, like, they are trying to ease CMC down a little bit

to keep them fresh. Ricky Pirsall, I know some people still have hope, he was selected only a few spots higher than Sribling was a couple years ago. So it's not like the draft capital is all that different, even though Pierce's technically a first rounder. And it really hasn't worked out the first couple of years. He's starting to feel like an afterthought in this offense. Yeah.

You have Christian Kirk they brought in, but like, I don't think he's a real threat to significant volume at this point in his career. So all this leads to Stribling having a very realistic path to fantasy relevance. I could see it being a Brinan-Iuk-esque rookie year. where you saw Brendan I. He's rookie year in the same team, same regime, started slow, wasn't super involved, but down the stretch was just sensational.

They got him way more involved the second half of his rookie year. Actually, Debo Samuel was the same exact thing the year prior for the same exact team, same exact regime. So I think we could see it with shribling here. He'd get more involved down the stretch. People are sleeping on him way too much.

I'm not saying he's going to be the highest scoring rookie in fantasy when you have the Cardinal Tates and the Mikhail Lemons who you mentioned and Jory Tyson. but I could see him absolutely finishing top four, and I'm going to make the hot take that he will, in fact, finish top four in fantasy points this year among all of these rookie receivers.

But I'm not sure if I should trust Kyle Shanahan over Joe Assholes mock 3.0 from two weeks ago, Mello. I am Joe asshole, and I'm telling you to trust Kyle's Shanahan more. No, I think this is a great one. And, like, yeah, if you wanted to have gotten really spicy, you would have said something insane, like he was going to be rookie of the year over Mackay Lemon, which isn't realistic, but like, to have him finish fourth, you're basically

saying it's Mackay Lemon, Carnal Tate, and Jordan Tyson, and then you're saying that he's going to finish above some of the guys that got either drafted above him or around him, like Omar Cooper, Casey Concepcio, or Denzel Boston. Like, I think this is one of those takes that when you say it out loud feels insane, but I actually think you broke that down very well, and it didn't require as insane of an argument as I thought it would. Yeah. I think you're right.

It's like the initial shock factor of hearing it because he's not as well respected as any of those names you just said. But he has higher draft capital than at least Denzel Boston, who you mentioned, close to as high draft capital as Cooper and Concepcion. And I'd argue he's in a better situation too. So I think he's a guy that's getting really criminally underrated right now, which is why it is ultimately a hot take to say. But I don't think it should be that hot of a take. No, I agree. All right, let's get into our final hot take. I got to tell you I'm really angry because I was considering a bit that I forgot to do

where I was going to pour like a big glass of milk and just start drinking it in the middle of when you were giving one of your takes because I need to cool down. But Sele-Vee, let's remember that for next time. Put that in the old tickler file. We'll shot it down. So for my final hot take, we've all been debating all summer long. David Montgomery's gone. Tyler Algear's gone.

Who's the 101? Is it Bejohn Robinson? Is it Jemir Gibbs? and we're all wasting our time because the number one overall running back this year is going to be Ashton Genty and he's going to lead the league in touchdowns while he does it. You're going to go grab a glass of milk? I might need it. That one's pretty spicy for me. So I've been on the Ashton Jenty hype train all summer long. The entire history of our show I've been on the Ashton Jenty hype train. The entire reason I've been saying this is because the offense has to improve with Pete Carroll, Gino Smith, and Chip Kelly all out of the building.

Now we finally have a little clarity there and we're replacing them with Clint Kubiak, Fernando Mendoza, and Andrew who, if you're not familiar with him, he is the new offensive coordinator. That was the quarterback's coach of Seattle brought along handpicked by Clint Kubiak. So all of this to say, I'm expecting this offense to take a giant step in the right direction for Genti, specifically because of Clint Kubiak's offensive scheme and what he allowed for Kenneth Walker and for Zach Charbonnet, who ranked as PFF's first and third most efficient running backs in the NFL respectively. Then you look at it from a personnel standpoint when they were the third worst offensive line by

PFF's run-blocking metric last year, to which they addressed that issue by spending big on center Tyler Lindenbaum from Baltimore and even spending small on a guy like Spencer Burford from San Francisco. I know Ashton Genti's RB13 finish was a disappointment, but that's because you paid an RB4 price tag for him. This year, you're paying an RB7. And let me state my case about why you should be way more excited about what happened last year than people are letting on to believe. Let's start with the running game, obviously. He averaged a dismal 3.7 yards of carry. But where it gets interesting is, among running backs with 75 or more carries,

basically any fantasy football running back with a pulse, Gentie was second to last in yards per carry before contact with 1.6. He never had a chance to get going. I think if you watched it with your eyeballs, you were seeing Ash and Gentie just get swallowed up behind the line of scrimmage, pause every single time he was trying to carry the ball. And so there was a lot of criticism with the Raiders drafting Ash and Genty with the fourth overall pick last year because it was a team not ready to compete that shouldn't be spending high draft capital on a running back Arizona. And to outline how abundantly clear that was last year, I would like to read to you the bottom three running backs in the entire NFL and their total EPA.

At number 132 was Woody Marks at negative 29. at 133 was Bucky Irving at negative 35.5. And then finally, I'm sure you guessed it at this point, was Ashton Genty, but this is the part you didn't guess, at negative 64.2. Ashton Genty was not only not put in a position to help his team win, he was put in such a bad position. He was literally hurting his team.

We have alleviated those issues. We have a much better system here in Vegas, and the talent was not the issue with Gentie. If you even look at his passing game, now that we looked over the rushing, Genti ranked seventh in the entire NFL in targets per game as a rookie amongst all running backs. He is the perfect dual threat running back with high touchdown upside. And I think especially if this offense can click and get him actual high value touches

in the red area, he's being drafted as the RB7. This is an absolute smash play. I think he has genuine potential to be the number one overall running back. And I think he will be. you sold it well. I'm still sweating a little bit over here because that's a pretty hot tag. I mean, he's in a league with Bejan Robinson and Jemir Gibbs and even Christian McCaffrey, who was the RB1 last year. So it's going to be an uphill battle for him. He's going to need the Raiders as a hold to probably step up. But I agree with you, the talent is absolutely there and the Raiders are absolutely trending in the right direction.

So there is a path. I'm not going to sit here and say there isn't. Do you want to, before we get out of here, do you want to give everyone just our super Hot Takes, I figure we should be doing that now that it's like the middle of May are way too early, way too early picks. Let's do it. I'm all in. I'm going to go a little wild here. You talked about one guy on this team which makes me super excited because I didn't realize

we're going to be overlapping here. I have the Baltimore Ravens winning the Super Bowl. And who they're winning over is less of a hot take. I think they're going to beat the Rams. Ty Simpson, of course, playing in the Super Bowl. But I'm kidding. But I think Lamar Jackson is just going to turn heads this year. year. I think this offense is going to kick it up to a new notch. And I think that we're going to see

them finally get over that hump in the postseason. I think a different ASC team is going to get there and finally get over the hump to get to the Super Bowl. And that's the Buffalo Bills. But I don't think they're winning it. I think they lose yet another Super Bowl in their franchise's history. And it's Kyle Shanahan who finally gets over the hump and beats the choke allegations and the San San Francisco 49ers are holding up that Lombardi in February. I love how we just took two teams that are just like notorious for choking over the past decade in the postseason we're saying this is their year. That's a perfect hot take though. That's what the Cowboys have been doing for like 40 years almost. Yeah, maybe soon they'll get out of the divisional round. Yeah, maybe. Well, thank you everyone for

watching. If you loved our Hot Takes, let us know down below in the comments. If you hated our hot takes, please let us know down below in the comments. And Mello, we miss anything here? I think that's everything. All right. We'll catch you guys next episode.