2026 Fantasy Football All-Bust Team: 7 Players You Must Avoid at ADP

The following players list the worst possible team that you can draft at ADP. These players are likely to experience negative regression. They are not primed for elite football in 2026. I would blacklist each and every one of them within the reasonable range of draftable outcomes. My Bust Team of the Year, unveiled.

QB — Matthew Stafford

🚨 Matthew Stafford is one of my biggest 2026 Fantasy Football regression candidates.

2025:
• 46 passing TDs
• Career-high 8.3% TD rate
• QB4 in fantasy PPG

No. 4 in the NFL Top 100 Players? Cool, but that does not translate to fantasy football....

📉Big inflation in the… pic.twitter.com/K9YmVaS2SI
— Tom Carelli | Fantasy Football (@TCarelliTakes) September 2, 2026

The Rams passed in the red zone over 7% more often in 2025 than in 2023 or 2024. They scored 12 touchdowns in the air from inside the 2-yard line. That is out of the ordinary.

I can provide all the numbers you want, but the case is very straightforward. Stafford's 46 touchdowns were an outlier. Vegas has his over/under at 29.5 touchdowns in 2025. Vegas is always right, right?

RB — Jonathan Taylor

Is this a bad pick? No. However, the Colts posted unsustainable output for the first half of 2025. Through Week 8, the Colts were averaging about 3.5 points per drive. That mark was the best in modern NFL history and will not be repeated. Their FPI rating projects roughly 22 points per game, or about 50% worse than their early-season 2025 output.

Taylor finished as the RB4 in 2025 fantasy football. He scored a stunning 18 rushing touchdowns. Now, in 2026, the Vegas over/under on Taylor's touchdowns is 11.5. I project Taylor to have 14 touchdowns on the ground, making him the RB6 and not worth the top-5 slots in any re-draft format. When the Colts were more normalized offensively in 2024, Taylor was just the RB12.

RB — RJ Harvey

Harvey managed to finish as last year's RB22 in points per game. He scored 12 total touchdowns, most of which came post-JK Dobbins' injury. 7 of those touchdowns were in three combined games. That makes for 14 other matchups in which Harvey spanned 5 touchdowns.

In 2026, Harvey will not be the lead back. Instead, he will be a third-down option while Dobbins and Jonah Coleman carry the early-down load. I have Harvey as the RB36 with a mid-level risk rating, mostly due to the stated limitation in workload upside.

WR — Davante Adams

In 2025, Davante Adams had 9 receptions inside the 5-yard-line. Every single one scored a touchdown on 16 total targets. That is 0.94 targets per game inside the 5-yard-line. Adams had 80% of the team's targets in that zone.

Sean McVay's strategy has not been rash by any means. In fact, Adams has now led or tied for the league-best touchdown count inside the 5-yard-line for four of the past five seasons. However, Adams' previous season-high was in 2020, when Aaron Rodgers won MVP, scoring 7 times. Otherwise, he has not scored more than 5 touchdowns in that time span.

Davante Adams had led the NFL in targets - Inside-The-5 - over 4 of the past 5 NFL seasons

The highest seasons included 9 touchdowns (2025) and 7 touchdowns (2020)

Both times, his QB won NFL MVP.

I have Adams at 8.4 total touchdowns in 2026, or about a 40% decrease.

Do you…
— Tom Carelli | Fantasy Football (@TCarelliTakes) September 4, 2026

Even if Adams remains a focal point of the Rams' goal-to-go strategy, the chances he hits 9 touchdowns again are very unlikely. I would suspect that the number is cut in half. So does consensus. Adams' ADP is WR23 with a Vegas touchdown total of 9.5 (Adams scored 14 times in 2025). I have Adams scoring 8.4 times and the WR25 in PPR formats. That would make for at least 2.0 fewer points per game, just in non-PPR formats.

WR — Michael Wilson

When Marvin Harrison Jr. was out in 2025, Jacoby Brissett was targeting Wilson 30.8% of the time. With Harrison Jr. active, that number fell to about 13%. Now, adding more risk via a new coaching staff, I believe it would be rash to be high on Wilson in 2026. While some fantasy managers play the "he is elite" card, I will not buy in.

Yes, the Cardinals did sign Wilson to a massive contract. No, he is not an NFL WR1 nor a WR2. In my projections, things normalize. Wilson is the WR38, or a Flex play, scoring 3.5 total touchdowns on one of the NFL's worst offenses.

FLEX — Alec Pierce

Pierce is a multi-time NFL leader in yards per reception, averaging over 20 yards per reception. Great it is; he has been rated a true WR1 in the NFL. One-dimensional, as Pierce has proven, that case is not very strong. Pierce cannot span a high target share that eyes up 30%. Here is why.

In 2025, Pierce had just 14 targets that came inside 10 yards. Player Profiler only finds Pierce to rank 52nd in yards after the catch (2.1 per target). If he does not get enough long balls in a single game, Pierce can have a flop of a week. The variance is high, and much higher than his friends at ADP (Chris Godwin, Wan'Dale Robinson).

Last season's WR27 is now projected as my WR47. That is added to the fact that Pierce is coming back from a tough ankle injury and has only just returned to practice.

TE — Dallas Goedert

If Kevin Patullo did anything right in Philadelphia, it was that he fed Goedert an all-you-can-eat buffet. The Eagles' tight end had 7 touchdowns from inside the 5-yard-line. That was much thanks to the "Brotherly Shovel," a shuffle pass where Goedert would motion out of an overload formation and "shove" his way into the end zone in place of Jalen Hurts.

Goedert only had 594 receiving yards in 2025. Yet, he tied for the league lead in tight end touchdowns (11) with Trey McBride. We know this won't happen again, especially with a new offensive coordinator. Goedert is projected to score 5.0 touchdowns as my TE18.

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