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Around the Watercooler

The latest fantasy and NFL gossip, news, memes and more from our merry band of football nerds …

👀 THE late-round QB of 2026? Might need to slow your roll …

📈 Is Ricky Pearsall the WR2 with the most dynasty upside? He might be.

🔥 Introducing the newest 1-2 punch at WR. Elite upside in 2026 and beyond.

📝 A deep dive into everything you can find in our draft guide. Absolute insanity.

🤑 And speaking of the guide, get 20% off FL+ with code FANTASYGUIDE.

💪 There could be two viable RBs in this backfield, but one is going unnoticed.

⚜️ Will the Saints produce fantasy goodness in 2026? Signs point towards yes.

🤔 Guess who is practicing with the WRs? Crazy!

🚀 Takeaways from Bucs OTAs. Kenny G is crushing.

The 2026 Fantasy Life Draft Guide Is Live!

Most draft guides treat every league the same. This one doesn't. See which players are tagged by our experts, My Guys, Sleepers, Upside Plays, or Fades, plus filter by different draft strategies. Sync your league and the rankings adjust to your scoring and roster. Expand on each player for season-long projections and a detailed written overview. Plus ADP trends and mock drafts.

This ain't no generic top-200 list. It's the closest thing to having our experts in your ear on draft day.

Free with FL+.

Pete’s News and Notes 

We continue to make tweaks and calibrate our outlooks for these players based on a steady stream of camp news. Here are six that caught my eye yesterday …

• Former Bearcat QB Brendan Sorsby is applying to enter the supplemental draft, per Tom Pelissero … This is a sizable update since we last heard about Sorsby after a legal saga regarding his NCAA eligibility. Gene Clemons outlined a handful of potential landing spots, and Sorsby’s widely regarded first-round talent should make him a hot topic amongst the dynasty community. Time to brainstorm how to handle this in your leagues!
  

• “I wouldn’t sleep on Dontayvion Wicks as a key piece to the Eagles’ puzzle to replace A.J. Brown. Talent was never his issue in Green Bay.” - Albert Breer on the Eagles WR2 situation … I still fully expect Makai Lemon to be the guy down the stretch, but there’s plenty of room for Wicks to enjoy early-season WR2 production and some WR3 spike weeks late. I’m buying at his current price.
  

• Tank Bigsby szn? One other interesting note from Philly … Will Shipley isn’t a lock for the roster? If so, that would represent a huge bump for Bigsby stock as the clear RB2.
  

• George Pickens is back at minicamp (kind of). Any concern about a holdout should dissipate at this point. He’s a strong buy at the 2-3 turn—especially in TD-heavy formats like standard and half-PPR.
  

• Pump the brakes on Calvin Ridley? Bad QB play and a lot of target competition aren’t ideal for the veteran.
  

• George Kittle might not be ready for Week 1 … but that’s only because the game is in Australia. He remains a screaming target right now until everyone wakes up and realizes it.

ADPs Are Rising And Falling

Each passing week gets us closer to the start of the NFL season. At the time of writing, we’re 86 days until the season kicks off on September 9th in Seattle, which is less than three full months. That gives us plenty of time to get our ducks in a row for fantasy purposes, including filling out our best ball portfolios across the industry.

Each new week also brings a handful of additional pieces of information. Things like injuries and unexpected production during training camp are going to impact fantasy football ADP in the marketplace.

Let’s dive into some of the biggest risers and fallers on Underdog and how you should approach these players moving forward.

🚀 Rachaad White | WAS | RB (+6.0 spots)

Adonai Mitchell (+7.6 spots) and Greg Dulcich (+5.9 spots) were two of the biggest risers this week, but they were repeats from last week. Their price tags are likely to keep rising, so they continue to look like solid values.

White was sandwiched between both players to round out the three biggest risers over the past seven days. He was acquired by the Commanders this offseason, reuniting him with collegiate teammate Jayden Daniels. He’s expected to be part of a committee in Washington, with Jacory Croskey-Merritt, Kaytron Allen, Jeremy McNichols and Jerome Ford all potentially factoring into the equation.

However, Croskey-Merritt missed OTAs with a soft-tissue injury, and it’s unclear whether or not he’ll be ready for the team’s three-day mandatory minicamp from June 16-18. It doesn’t seem like there’s any real risk to him missing the start of the season, but soft tissue injuries have the potential to linger.

If Croskey-Merritt were forced to miss some time, White could be the next man up. Allen was a sixth-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, while McNichols and Ford have never really been featured players.

At a minimum, White’s pass-catching prowess gives him a chance to take over the “Austin Ekeler” role in the Commanders’ offense. That gives him some standalone value, and he could have more if Croskey-Merritt is out of the picture. He’s a low-risk investment that has some upside for a potentially explosive Commanders’ run game.

Buy Jahmyr Gibbs, The Future Is Bright

What a runway for Jahmyr Gibbs to continue an incredible runout to his NFL career. In his first three seasons, his total yards never dipped below 1,261, and twice he’s gone over 1,800 yards. In the last two years, he’s combined for 38 TDs. Oh yeah, he just turned 24. The time for forward-thinking fantasy managers to buy in on Gibbs was right after he was selected 12th overall in the 2023 NFL Draft. Now he’s vying to be taken as the 1.01 in drafts ahead of this upcoming season. With David Montgomery no longer in Detroit, there is no more sharing the spotlight (or touches) for Gibbs. And savvy managers who invested in him are all smiles.

UNest works the same way. You don't wait until your kid is 16 to start building their financial future. You start now, when time is your single greatest advantage. A tax-advantaged investment account that grows with your child, set up in under 10 minutes. The long game is always the smartest play, on the field and off it.

The Offense Everyone Will Be Watching

Teams switching play callers carry a similar vibe to moving into a new home. At an offense’s core, the QB is still throwing the ball to pass catchers running routes or putting the ball in the belly of an RB. But the patterns are different. Hopefully, better, but distinct from years past. And by looking at past tendencies, we can get a sense of how we should change our approach in drafts.

Who’s switching homeowners in 2026? …

Los Angeles Chargers

• Old: Greg Roman (Ravens OC)

• New: Mike McDaniel (Dolphins HC)

The football gods smiled on us by pairing the “robot QB” with the mad scientist in Off-White Jordans. Mike McDaniel’s desire to make things simple and easy for Justin Herbert should only enable him to do more of the impossible when the Chargers need it. But it’s the base tenets of the McDaniel offense that should have us all intrigued for the Bolts’ pass catchers.

Two things tended to stick out when watching the Dolphins' passing game under McDaniel. First, for not being a voluminous operation. It was efficient. The former 49ers’ OC had Tua Tagovailoa attacking the middle of the field early and often. But it wasn’t just Tua. There were shades of the same philosophy when McDaniel was on the West Coast.

• Jimmy Garoppolo, 2021 (on early downs): 1st (MoF Throw Rate Rank), 21st (EPA per Att. Rank)

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2022: 2nd, 4th

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2023: 1st, 3rd

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2024: 5th, 5th

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2025: 13th, 16th

Of course, this benefits a primary option like Ladd McConkey, who, after a down season, still ran 26.6% of his routes over the middle of the field. The most of any Chargers receiver currently on the roster. However, in those same scenarios, TEs earned over 20.0% of the looks in three of McDaniels’ five seasons as an OC or HC. Yes, the additions of Charlie Kolar and David Njoku are noteworthy. But neither has the same athletic traits that complement the other aspect of what we’ve seen from McDaniel in the past.

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2022: 2.48 (Average Time to Throw), 9.3 (Air Yards per Att.)

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2023: 2.24, 7.1

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2024: 2.23, 4.8

• Tua Tagovailoa, 2025: 2.49, 6.1

In Herbert’s own words:

“The first day, Mike might have given them a heads-up that if they didn't turn their heads around fast enough, the ball was going to hit them in the face. It was on us as quarterbacks to push the limits and see how quickly we could get the ball out.”

A quick trigger was a staple of the Miami offense. But it required the speed on the other end to build on the strength of the almost blind faith of the QB. McDaniel’s consistent pairing of a fast processor with receivers who are fleet of foot brings two ancillary options into the spotlight. 

Omarion Hampton’s top-20 consensus ADP points to how bullish drafters are about the second-year RB with McDaniel’s run-game designs. But that’s just his floor case. RBs have seen no less than 21.1% of the early-down pass attempts under McDaniel over the last five years. While that’d be a meteoric rise for Hampton, projecting him for the 13th-most targets of any RB is his path to challenging for an RB1 finish by season’s end. Along with Hampton, Oronde Gadsden, who matched Trey McBride and Colston Loveland in YAC per reception last season, should come back onto our radar, and I think Charlie Kolar is actually a solid pick going under the radar in his own right, due to his athletic ability (4.67-second 40 time) and utility as a blocker. Plus, with the reshuffling along the offensive line, Herbert has a path to quiet the naysayers for the first time since joining the league.