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Jayden Daniels Fantasy Prediction 2026: Only Worth It If He Falls to Round 7
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- Jayden Daniels Fantasy Prediction 2026: Only Worth It If He Falls to Round 7
Jayden Daniels Fantasy Prediction 2026:
Jayden Daniels enters his third NFL season carrying immense fantasy upside, looking to bounce back after a slew of injuries completely derailed his 2025 campaign. We already know exactly what the ceiling looks like when he is fully healthy: He finished as a top-5 fantasy quarterback in 2024, and he gave us a bit of everything in the process.
Should You Draft Jayden Daniels in Fantasy Football?
Daniels' ADP is 61.2 in PFN's Free Fantasy Mock Draft Simulator . His positional rank, which is a consensus of my colleague Kyle Soppe and me, is QB4. We have him projected for 20.73 fantasy points per game, which is awesome. The question is, do we want to draft him?
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Let's start with the obvious. Daniels is good at football, I like him as a player, and I do want to draft him. The problem, as always, is opportunity cost. Philosophically, I am mostly opposed to taking a quarterback anywhere early in the draft.
This season, the elite quarterbacks and even the sub-elite quarterbacks are going later than they have in previous years. But I think late-round quarterback is back, and quarterback is so deep that you can get quality QB1 or QB1-upside type quarterbacks very late, which makes it hard to take any quarterback early on.
With that said, rounds 6 and 7 are really tough this year, especially if you pick on the front end. There aren't any players I particularly like there, which makes taking a quarterback a bit more appealing. If you're in shallower formats, I endorse taking onesie positions earlier than you would in deeper leagues.
Daniels is one of only four quarterbacks since 2011 to make at least 10 starts as a rookie and average over 20 fantasy points per game. He joins a list that includes Cam Newton, Justin Herbert, and Robert Griffin III. These quarterbacks mostly went on to do good things. RG3 got hurt, but we're pretty confident he would have been a top fantasy quarterback for years to come had he not.
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Daniels, of course, was a league winner as a rookie. He was a double-digit round pick, and he had a massive Week 17. I remember that because he carried me to a title. Great season. We were all happy, excited to draft him the next year. Of course, we know it didn't go as well.
He averaged 16.8 fantasy points per game last season, but it was really 18.9 points per game if you remove that Week 14 game he returned in with that dislocated elbow, which he never should have played in. That, of course, is the story of Daniels' 2025 season: injuries. He dealt with a sprained knee, a strained hamstring, and a dislocated elbow.
While the injuries are not ideal, and we know hamstrings tend to linger, by all accounts these are one-off, fluky injuries. I'm not ready to slap him with an injury-prone label. I don't believe we can predict injury anyway, and I'm not fading him for that reason.
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I think the situation this year should be better. I believe in improved offensive play calling and improved offense in general, as the team now has a more confident running back room. They had a lot of injuries last year, which should help the passing game, and, of course, they have Stefon Diggs as a WR2. Daniels has not really had a true second option in the passing game aside from Terry McLaurin during his two years in the league. I think Diggs will help out a lot.
We know elite difference-making quarterbacks move the needle, and Daniels can be that. If you want to take him and he falls to that late-sixth, early-seventh-round area, I am okay with that. But as a general roster construction philosophy, I'm not really looking to take quarterbacks that early this season.
FANTASY RANKINGS: PFN's FREE Fantasy PPR, Half-PPR, and Non-PPR Rankings
Jayden Daniels' Week 1 Fantasy Outlook
Analysis provided by PFN Analyst Kyle Soppe .
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You drafted Daniels as a game-breaker and, for the record, I'm on board with that. You're going to need to stay patient.
Philadelphia's defense is tough, Dallas is improved, and the Seahawks won the Super Bowl last year because of the upside they had on that side of the ball.
That's a tough three-game run to start the season, but if Daniels is poised to be the asset that he was as a rookie, he manages the September stretch, rounds into form during the middle months, and then carries you to glory in the postseason (Falcons, Vikings, and Jaguars).
To get there, you might have to swallow an underwhelming Week 1.
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He's a fringe QB1 for me this week. This is a strong defense and an offense that can control tempo. If he's struggling for quantity and quality, even the best version of him will struggle to hang 20+ fantasy points.
That said, if you believed enough in this profile to pay up for him at the draft, this matchup shouldn't have you shaking. He had a five-touchdown pass against them in December of his rookie season, and he logged 6+ rush attempts in every meeting with the divisional rival.
Daniels is on the short list of QBs I give a real chance at unseating Josh Allen atop the QB position. If we see a healthy version of him threatening this dangerous defense in a variety of ways, I think you're thrilled with your decision to draft him, even if the Week 1 point total isn't eye-popping.
START PREPARING: PFN's FREE Fantasy Draft Simulator
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Where Daniels Ranks Among 2026 Quarterbacks
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Josh Allen | BUF
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Drake Maye | NE
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Lamar Jackson | BAL
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Jayden Daniels | WAS
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Joe Burrow | CIN
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Jalen Hurts | PHI
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Caleb Williams | CHI
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Justin Herbert | LAC
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Jaxson Dart | NYG
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Trevor Lawrence | JAX
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Dak Prescott | DAL
Analysts Jason Katz and Kyle Soppe rank every quarterback on PFN's 2026 PPR Consensus Board .
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network .
