The Herd with Colin Cowherd - FantasyPros - 6 Fantasy Football Must-Drafts for 2026: The Players We’re Taking EVERY Time (Ep. 2145)

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Alfredo Brown, Derek Brown and Andrew Erickson break down their six favorite must-draft targets — players they’re willing to take ahead of ADP because they simply don’t want to miss out on them. The guys start with Chase Brown, who could have legitimate top-three RB upside in Cincinnati, before diving into Jalen Waddle and why his move to Denver could unlock a much bigger fantasy season. Then it’s time for Kenneth Walker, a player the guys believe could be one of the biggest league-winning picks of the 2026 fantasy football draft. They also identify three players outside the top 75 who could provide enormous value: Jonathan Brooks, Carnell Tate and Malik Willis. If you're preparing for your 2026 fantasy football draft, these are the players to know, especially if you're looking for targets who can outperform their ADP. Timestamps: (May be off due to ads) Intro - 0:00:00 Erickson's Must-Have within the top 75: Chase Brown (CIN) - 0:01:38 Dbro's Must-Have within the top 75: Jaylen Waddle (DEN) - 0:04:09 Alfredo's Must-Have within the top 75: Ken Walker (KC) - 0:06:13 Draft Simulator Promo - 0:09:37 Dbro's Must-Have in later rounds: Jonathon Brooks (CAR) - 0:10:24 Erickson's Must-Have in later rounds: Carnell Tate (TEN) - 0:13:48 Alfredo's Must-Have in later rounds: Malik Willis (MIA) - 0:17:15 Outro - 0:20:37 Helpful Links: Draft Wizard - Dominate your fantasy football draft with Draft Wizard. Run fast mock drafts, test different strategies, build custom cheat sheets, get pick-by-pick draft advice, and learn your leaguemates' tendencies before draft day. Just download the FantasyPros App or head to fantasypros.com/draftwizard Start Your Free FantasyPros Premium Trial - https://www.fantasypros.com/free/ -Get three days free to unlock premium draft tools, rankings, analysis, and personalized advice. Watch and Subscribe to The Tailgate  - https://www.youtube.com/@tailgatenfl - Just friends talking football. Get NFL storylines, weekly analysis, giveaways, and more from the FantasyPros team. Subscribe to FantasyPros on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@fantasypros - Watch the latest fantasy football rankings, mock drafts, sleepers, breakouts, and draft advice. Support the FantasyPros Fantasy Football Podcast - https://www.fantasypros.com/review/ - Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help support the show. Real-Time ADP - Track up-to-the-minute draft trends across all major platforms: https://fantasypros.com/realadp View the Latest Fantasy Football Rankings - https://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/rankings/ - Compare expert consensus rankings, tiers and player values before making your draft-day decisions. Follow us on Twitch - The team here at FantasyPros is taking questions all week, every week on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch at twitch.tv/fantasypros and never miss a stream! Discord – Join our FantasyPros Discord Community! Chat with other fans and get access to exclusive AMAs that wind up on our podcast feed. Come get your questions answered and BE ON THE SHOW at fantasypros.com/chat BettingPros Podcast – For advice on the best picks and props across both the NFL and college football each and every week, check out the BettingPros Podcast at bettingpros.com/podcast, our BettingPros YouTube channel at youtube.com/bettingpros, or wherever you listen to podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. Welcome into the Fantasy Pros Football Podcast. I'm Alfredo Brown, joined by Debrough and Erickson. Guys, we're taking a look at the six must-have fantasy football draft targets today.

These are players that we are taking every single draft and well. ahead of ADP because we just don't want to miss out on them. These are the guys we do not want to leave our drafts without. Debrough, what makes a player a true must have for you when you are sitting in your fantasy drafts? When it's a confluence of talent, opportunity, volume, and then I feel like the ADP is wrong, then I'm just going to continue drafts in the guy in almost every spot. Erickson, what about you? when I feel sick to my stomach when I don't get that player. That's how I know that I want the player more than anything.

Anyone else. I think that I can, oh, maybe I can push this player another round and then they immediately go and I just feel this pit in my stomach. And I say to myself, no, I'm not letting happen to the next mock draft. No, these are my must-have players because I cannot fathom not having them all my fantasy teams. I think one of my favorite quotes about fantasy rankings was you don't actually know your rankings until you get in your draft because then when you get in the draft, all of a sudden,

that guy you have at running back 15, you'd rather take him ahead of your running back 13. And that's how you truly feel, right? Like those are your must draft players that you don't want to be without. So what we're going to do today is we are each going to give you players that we must have within the top 75 and then some players outside of top 75. So some early round guys, some late round guys. We're each going to bring two to the table here. So six players.

Erickson, why don't you kick us off with the guy who you must have? within those first 75 picks in fantasy drafts. Chase Brown, RB1, Sisson for the Cincinnati Bengals. He's currently ranked as my RB5, and I think that he is the perfect pick at the end of round one or beginning of round two, if you're going to grab a running back with one of your first two picks, which is what I would highly recommend.

Talk about it in my perfect draft strategy guide article over on fantasy pros. Last year, when Joe Burrow returned to the lineup, Chase Brown, we saw a production spike for him. Over 20-half ppr points per game was the RB3 across weeks 13 through 17, the average is 61% snapshot. So that was also considering that, yes, he does see some of his touches and snaps to Samajai P-Rine. What we saw in the preseason was close to that similar split, 70% for Chase Brown, 30% for

Samajai P-Rine. But what I'm showing you here is he still was hitting over 20-half pvr points per game, despite the fact he wasn't playing 90% of the snaps of the Cincinnati Bengals. This is a super high-powered offense. Chase Brown has a three-down skill set and has improved every single year of his NFL career. To the last two years, Chase Brown has averaged

just size of 1,000 rushing yards and nearly 1,400 yards from scrimmage. He's entering the final year of his contract. I think he's going to get paid. And the receiving, I think, is what helps

separate him from some of the other running backs that go in the similar range. List of running backs last year with at least 400 receiving yards and 1,000 rushing yards. CMC, Bejohn Robinson, Jamir Gibbs, Devon A. Chan,

Chase Brown. I love it. I love it. I'm a big fan of Chase Brown as well this year. Same. It sounds like you are too. Yeah, I've got him at RB5.

And for all the reasons that Erickson kind of stated here. And I think that the touchdown variance could swing back in Chase Brown's favor this year because everybody likes to worry about Somaget P-Rine. But when we saw both of them on the field, so weeks 13 through 18 last year together, yes, like Chase Brown had 17 red zone carries versus P-Rines 13, but he played 71% of the red zone snaps. So just war of attrition. like it's going to swing back in Chase Brown's favor if he's playing that much more like

the volume of snaps near pay dirt for a player also like as good as Chase Brown has been, he's never scored more than 11 total touchdowns in a season. So he's kind of due for one of those outlier seasons where he scores 14, 18 touchdowns. And if he does that, he's a top three back this year. Yeah, I mean, we hope so. A lot of those guys, the one two turn have that potential to be a top three running back in fantasy. Debrough, you've got another guy here. a running back, but a player within the top 75 that you must have every single time. Jalen Waddle,

I have him as a wide receiver one in my ranks. I'm willing to draft him as high as that. Like right now, I've got a wide receiver 11, 25th overall. So I'm willing to almost pull the trigger in the second round. You don't have to do that. Beginning of the third round, you're still going to be ahead of most drafters. He's going to be the clear wide receiver one for the Denver Broncos this year. Like for a player that everybody talks about, he's not an alpha. He hasn't put up like true alpha stats. Really. Because last year in a run centric offense that held down the volume for the

dolphins, he was top 12 in target per route run rate, yards per route run, first downs per route run, separation score and route win rate. And everything outside of like route win rate, which he only was 0.2% behind Cortland Sutton. He bested Cortland Sutton and all of those metrics last year. So top 12 and every basically every per route metrics we should care about for a wide receiver, that's not elite to people. and he's going from a run-centric offense to an offense that was top five and pass rate

over expectation and passing rate last year. And people are like, oh yeah, but the Broncos are going to slow it down. Really? Because that's all the buzz out of camp. They're going to be a slow-paced offense. Everything out of camp says they're going to be a high-paced offense and they're going to still throw the freaking ball. I just don't understand why Jaylon Waddle is a wide receiver two held like when we enter draft season at the very beginning of it guys he was a wider three wide receiver three and some rankings and adp sets i'm just going to keep drafting jalen waddle every single time that i get the opportunity i think the most impressive thing you said there was route wrong win wait like you could the fact that you could do that so many times i can't even say it

once and waddle and wide receiver and i like i'm here just like just stuttering all over my w's here that was peak performance lots of practice lots of of practice, sir. Route, run, win, great. That's, yeah, that'll be my new pre-show warm-up there. All right. I'm going to give you my guy who is a must draft for me. It's one of those where I feel sick if I don't have him. And it's Ken Walker running back from the Kansas City Chiefs. And it's, he's going in the exact same area as Chase Brown, a guy that we mentioned earlier in drafts. He's going 14th overall near that one to turn. If I'm at the end of round one, I want to take Ken Walker. I don't, if I'm not at pick 12 and then the one pick in the second round, I don't want to let anyone

else get the chance to take him. Right now, he is my running back seven. I'm flirting with the idea of pushing out to running back six because I think the ceiling truly is there. Chiefs are planning on being centered around Ken Walker this year. He's the fourth highest paid running back in the league. You don't pay a guy like that coming off a performance like he had in the playoffs to then just not use him or, you know, protect him for the season and for the playoffs like

the Seahawks did. The Chiefs actually need to make the playoffs this year. And the only way they do that is by using Ken Walker. Last year, the Chiefs had just one run of 20 plus yards. They were just not a good offense, not an explosive team. They couldn't run the ball. Ken Walker had 10 runs of 20 plus yards all by himself in a limited role with Seattle. He was first and mistackles force per attempt. So we know we got a talented guy. We saw what he could do. And Andy Reid loves using a bell cow running back when he actually has one. He just hasn't had one. And Isaiah Pacheco and some of these other guys. You go back to his days in Philly.

You go back to his days with Kareem Hunt and Jamal Charles. He was willing to use these guys. You go back to 2018 with Kareem Hunt. That was the last time he was able to do it. 21 opportunities per game for Kareem Hunt at that time. During last year's playoff round with the Seahawks, Ken Walker was averaging 22 and a half opportunities per game. He was averaging 23 and a half fantasy points per game.

That would have made him the RB1 overall over Christian McCaffrey by a full point per game. So this is not. something where it's like, oh, well, he might sneak into being top three. We actually saw that when he gets touches, he can be the best running back in fantasy football. And that's why I do not want to leave my drafts without Ken Walker this year. I co-signed everything that you stated there. And I think the only thing that I'll add on top, Alfredo, because of how people viewed Kenneth

Walker, because very much like Judarian Price, they didn't know if he was a good receiver or not. And they were like, oh, I would have we not had a large enough sample to say that he is very good in the receiving department in the passing game, like for a player that was ninth and yards per route run, 12th and first downs per route run, and that's not the only season that he's done that. So again, going back to previous years of Andy Reed backfields

and running back usage in the passing game, Kenneth Walker will be used by the Kansas City Chiefs on screens and angle routes this year. I think we're going to see that. I think with Ken Walker, we might reflect on the 2006 season to be like, it was so obvious. Yeah.

Ken Walker was set to absolutely smash. A super talented player who gets paid, which suggests he's going to see adequate amount of volume, a three-down skill set, and we know he's good. And he's explosive. And he catches passes. It's just like checking off every single box. So, Alfredo, I have him as my RB6.

Like, I'm taking Ken Walker. I have a Mesa. I'm not, I'm taking him over, Christian McCaffrey. Like, I'm not doing the CMC thing. So I'm taking Ken Walker. So if I don't get Chase Brown, Ken Walker is the next guy I'm circling on my end of round one, round two running back list.

I'm doing it, guys. I'm going to be brave. I'm going to move them up to RB6. Thank you for... Let's go. Thank you for letting me have with you guys. Before we move on to some of these later round picks that are must-haves for us, guys, you can be practicing your drafts, getting ready for your drafts by using the fantasy pros draft simulator. Okay, practice is what makes the playoffs, right? Like, or practice makes perfect? I think that's the saying, right?

Practice makes the playoffs. Get ready for your fantasy football drafts this year with our free mock draft simulator. complete fast, realistic mock drafts in minutes, test different strategies, and practice from any draft position. I've been, listen, the beginning of the draft looks great. The end of the draft looks great as well. Practicing from the middle kind of stinks, but you need to know what you're in for when you get to your draft.

So this is the best thing for you to use. Start prepping now and enter your real draft with confidence. Go to fantasy pros.com slash mock or download the fantasy pros app today. Gentlemen, let's move outside the top 75. I think this is really where championships are won. Finding those players who are going outside of the first five or six rounds and you're saying, okay, this is the guy that's going to win it for me.

Okay, we each have a player here. Debrough, I'm going to have you start this one. Who is the guy that you need that's going outside the top 75 picks? I can't stop saying his name. But again, that's why he's on this much draft list.

This is Jonathan Brooks, man. I do not want to leave a draft this year without Jonathan Brooks. Where he still goes in drafts right now, real-time ADP, RB-30, looking at, so he's RB-30, 80th overall. Right now in my rankings, I've got him at RB-27, 69th overall, so take him in the sixth round.

Like when you get to this tier of running backs, where it's like, I mean, come on, guys, like Trevion Henderson, Gedarian Price, Jamlin Warren, Ramadre Stevenson, Tony Pollard, RICO, like all these different guys, just draft Jonathan Brooks. I'm not worried about Chuba Hubbard. Nobody should be.

Jonathan Brooks, again, and this still just, it's not getting mentioned enough. Entering week one, he will be 21 months past ACL reconstruction. He's 100%. Everybody's so worried about it. He's had two ACL surgeries. It doesn't matter when your knees are fully healthy. And we see him playing the bell cow role right now with Chuba Hubbard week one of preseason.

He was on the field for almost every freaking snap. So he's going to be that guy this year. His abilities in the past and game, Chuba Hubbard not being good last year because people could talk. about the injuries and stuff. It still doesn't change the fact that amongst 49 qualifying backs, Chuba Hubbard, zero explosive runs, dead last an explosive run rate, dead last and miss tackle rate, bottom three in yards after contact per attempt. Jonathan Brooks, the Carolina Panthers, have been waiting for this opportunity to feed Jonathan Brooks, a talented player going

in the wayback machine. They spent second round draft capital on. He's going to be the guy, and you get him at an RB3 price tag. Yeah, I love, I love seeing Jonathan Brooks fall to me in the sixth round or seventh round in drafts. And right now, real-time ADP, I mean, maybe we catch up and all of a sudden he's going in the top 75. But as of right now, people doing their drafts, I've still been able to get him a bit later than I expect. And Eric said, how high are you willing to take a guy like Jonathan Brooks? Because I've had some dialogue with people where I'm saying, you know, there are instances here where I think I'm willing to go fifth round depending on how early, other running backs are going and I want to have him as my RB3 on my team. Yeah, I think late

round five, early round six is the sweet spot for him. I know that he just went, I believe, I think it was to Jake Sealy in our flex draft where he went in the fifth round. Now that is a 14 team league. So the rounds are a little different than a 12 team. But that is the range. And I think it's really important to when you get into your draft room, figure out where Jonathan Brooks 80P is. Just get an idea. So, hey, I can reach one round ahead of its 8. ADP, make sure I get him because right now I don't think his ADP is really caught up to the fact that, yeah, Chuba Hubbard is dealing with a hamstring injury. And he gets to face the Chicago Bears in week one. He gets to cement himself as the RB1.

I know Alfredo, U.I, and Terra talked about guys that you want to get on to now before their ADP rises. Jonathan Brooks was one of my guys that we talked about. 100%. I think we're all three in agreement here. Let's move on to the next guy here. Erickson, a player we talked about a lot on the tailgate, all good things. And now we're going to say more good things about him. So talk to us about Cardinal Tate.

If I told you guys, you could draft a real-life top-five wide receiver rookie outside the top 30 fantasy-wide receivers in 2020. You would say, you're crazy. What are you talking about? Rookies are so expensive. You can't draft rookie receivers as cheap, especially ones that go top five. Well, welcome to 2006 because we are here and this is where you can get Cornell Tate. I love your narrator voice.

What if I told you? What if I told you. In a world. Especially when you consider that he doesn't even have amazing target competition. Like he is being dropped into an offense where he can step in from day one and be the alpha target leader on this offense. You could argue that he had more competition last year at Ohio State with Jeremiah Smith because now it's Wondell Robinson and then a bunch of second year wide receivers, second year tight ends, pass catchers, unproven players. Except for Cardinal Tate, who I think is going to emerge as the. alpha in this offense.

We've seen Brian Dayball before in the past lean on rookie wide receivers just a couple of years ago, Malik Neighbors. In an offense that Wanda Robinson was also part of, we saw Malik Nevers just absolutely peppered with targets. And I don't think Tate is getting enough credit for what he did at Ohio State. Last year, he ranked first in the class in EPA per target and in positive percentage of first man coverage. That was per sports info solutions.

And when you look at some of those metrics compared to guys that have come out in years passed with the same win rates. Emeka, Ladd-McConkie, JSN. Three players that I think a lot of people critiqued, are they real number ones? Can they really command high-targeters? Can they really be elite at the next level? Well, I mean, I know that not all of them have reached the peaks of JSN,

but we saw pretty impressive rookie seasons from both Egbuka and Ladd-McConkey. And I think that if Cardinal Tate were to do anything like those guys did when they were healthy the last couple seasons, I think you're going to be pretty pumped about taking him. So just looking at what a top 10 wide receiver has done over the last five drafts on average, 78 catches over 1,000 yards, 6.4 touchdowns. Wide receivers selected inside the top 5 since 2013 have finished as a top 36 option at an 80% hit rate. For me, this just screams.

You're getting Cronaultate at his stone cold floor, and then it's just oozing with upside if Cameron Ward takes a step in his second season under a competent play caller, and if Carnell Tate is just that guy. Who is Cambron? Why would you? He went full government name with that, Cameron Ward. It's my narrative.

My narrative voice Cameron Ward. You know, we were going government names here. Geez, okay. I agree with you 100% on the Carnell Tate thing. I've got him ranked well above his ADP. And everything you laid out there, it's not just that there's this phenomenal ceiling,

but that the floor is so high for a player selected, this high in the NFL draft in this offense with this lack of target competition and the price is great. I mean, you can essentially draft him as a wide receiver three, but because of where he's going in drafts, like he's probably your wide receiver four on your roster depending on your build, right? So if he does have a big blowup, you get to put that guy in as your flex for wide receiver three in your lineup most of the time. So I love the pick of Carnal Tate here. All right. Let's go to the final player. This one's my guy and this is going to be a little more game theory than anything. It's not like I'm trying to take him four or five rounds above his

ADP, but I want to get Malik Willis in all of my drafts. And this is not a Dolphins Homer thing because I actually tend to avoid Dolphins players because they never mean anything good for fantasy except for that one Tyreek Hill year, the one Devon A. Chan year. But Malik Willis right now is being drafted as the quarterback 20 in the 13th round. He's essentially free. All he has to do is basically not get injured and he's paying off his draft costs. Malik Willis, we have a small sample size with him, but he's averaged nearly seven rush attempts per start over his career. Over a 17 game span, that would be nearly 120 rush attempts for him.

And over the last five seasons, there have been 19 qualifying quarterbacks to 100 plus rush attempts. Every single one of them finish as a top 12 quarterback in fantasy points per game. And that's what I want is a quarterback that can vastly outkick his ADP, a guy who, as I mentioned, is going as quarterback 20 and is nearly a lock to be a top 12 fantasy quarterback if he simply stays healthy and keeps rushing the ball, which nothing would indicate he would stop doing that. We saw, I know it's all been limited sample sizes with Willis, but we saw him in that first drive of the preseason, a scripted drive, of course, against the Washington commanders, let a 90 plus yard touchdown drive. two rush attempts in that drive alone, one drive, two rush attempts. We see what the ceiling could be with the Miami Dolphins offense. Now, I don't expect them to be a great offense, but I do expect him to be a very fantasy relevant quarterback. And what this really does is this allows you to build

your team where you don't have to worry about quarterback very early. You can just hammer away at running back and wide receiver in all of the earlier rounds, and that I love to pair Malik Willis with a Kyler Murray, a Jared Gough, a Brock Purdy, anyone else that's going in the double-digit round, But I don't have to even think about quarterback until I'm getting to round 10, 11 or 12. In the year of 2026, did Konami Coe just stop being a thing? Did did that just die? Like, did I get the memo? I think Justin Fields and Anthony Richardson hurt a lot of people.

I just, because that's, I don't understand it. Like I co-sign every single thing that you laid out there like Alfredo. Like QB 21, 157th overall in a real time ADP. He's my QB 14. I have him at a hundred and third overall. And you don't have to draft him like, fine, split the difference.

Take him in round 10. You're still going to be way ahead. And for a guy, like, he's going to freaking run. It's that simple. I did a mock draft yesterday. I got him in round 15.

Yeah. You don't even have to try and send him. It should not happen. But again, it keeps happening. Yeah. Erickson, where are you out with Malik Willis?

I know this is going to hurt your heart to say something. good about a Dolphins player. No, that won't hurt my heart because I think that after week one, the Miami Dolphs are going to be winning. Miami Dolphs are going to be winning the AFC East after week one. And that's because Billy Quillis, week one performance against the Raiders. Wow. Look at that. Look at that.

He said a nice thing. I'm so proudy. This is called growth, Erickson. That's very nice. We're all playing. Well, there you go. We gave you our six must draft players. These are all the players that we are willing to take above their ADP and we do not want to leave

our fantasy drafts with. out. As always, I want to thank everybody for watching or listening all the way through myself, for Erickson, for Debrough. We'll see you next time. Adios. Thanks for listening to the Fantasy Pro's Fantasy Football Podcast. If you love the show, the best free way to support us is by leaving a positive review on Apple Podcasts at Fantasypros.com slash review or on Spotify. Follow us on X, Instagram, and TikTok at Fantasy Pros and subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash fantasy pros. I'm Hoda Kotb. I'm Host of the podcast. Joy. 101 with Hoda Kotbe.

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