Fantasy Football Debate: Which player is the biggest wild card going into the 2026 NFL season?
Variance is a term thrown around quite often in fantasy football. There’s always a wide range of outcomes with each player season-to-season, whether it’s injuries, a new offensive environment or a potential breakout. Yahoo analysts Justin Boone, Matt Harmon, Joel Smyth and Scott Pianowski share their biggest wild-card player (or players) for the 2026 fantasy football season. Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2026 NFL season It’s easy to forget that the Bucs’ struggles last season were largely related to all the injuries on offense. Mike Evans, Chris Godwin Jr. and Jalen McMillan missed significant stretches, while Baker Mayfield and Emeka Egbuka played hurt part of the year. Even the offensive line battled injuries, which is an often-overlooked variable for fantasy production. Heading into the 2026 season, the team is much healthier, but they no longer have Evans to rely on. That means the target distribution will look a lot different moving forward. Egbuka will be trying to replicate his incredible early-season results when he averaged the third-most fantasy points per game at the position through the first five weeks. Godwin will attempt to reach 1,000 yards for the fifth time in his career. And McMillan will look to get his career back on track after a scary neck injury sidelined him after an eight-touchdown rookie season in 2024. All three Tampa wideouts are intriguing values at their current ADPs — with Egbuka and Godwin having the clearest path to top-24 WR stats and best-case scenario outcomes that could lead one of them into fantasy WR1 territory. — Justin Boone Back in 2024, rookie Brian Thomas Jr. was not just one of the best first-year wideouts; he was flat-out one of the more dynamic players at the position overall. For reasons we’ve covered extensively at this stage of human existence, Thomas was a massive letdown in Year 2. The real question for Thomas is which version is the real player? The rookie year phenom or the sophomore disappointment? Typically, I’m a “truth is somewhere in the middle” guy, but in this instance, I do think he can clear the median outcome and at least be considerably closer to what he was in 2024 than the version who played through injuries in a new offense last year. Even so, while he should be better individually in his third season, he is also in a receiver corps that’s quite crowded on paper. The Jaguars go four-deep at receiver with Thomas, Parker Washington, Jakobi Meyers and Travis Hunter still destined to mix in. They also want to play more with 12 personnel after extending TE Brenton Strange and drafting Nate Boerkircher at 56th overall. That is going to create a real squeeze for targets in this room. And yet, because both of Thomas’ individual ceiling and his skill set as an X-receiver allowing him to be on the field for most of the snaps, I’m relatively convinced that if there’s a big hit in this room, Thomas is the obvious right answer. It’s just up to him to be the next version of himself and force the snap and target allocation to skew heavily in his favor. — Matt Harmon After an excruciatingly frustrating second half of the season, Irving’s ADP for the 2026 season has fallen to near RB3 territory. While the drop is justified, the upside at that range is tremendous. Believe it or not, the Buccaneers running back averaged over 20 opportunities per game last season (targets + carries), behind only the top-three scoring running backs in fantasy. He averaged RB1 numbers from the time he took over as a starter in 2024 to his 2025 injury, rare numbers to find in the fifth round. However, the concern is real. You don’t want to completely waste a pick, even if its a Round 5 selection instead of his Round 2 ADP from last season. The shoulder injury is a major red flag heading into the season, and with Kenneth Gainwell and Sean Tucker in the building ready to take valuable work at the goal line and in the receiving game, it’s difficult to fully trust Irvin [... truncated ...]