The Most Risky & Polarizing 2026 Fantasy Football Picks Featuring Zach Charbonnet

The biggest failure by fantasy football managers, I find, is that they do not effectively value risk and reward. Everyone drafts based on mental estimates and recency bias from social media posts, which are often misguided and designed to catch readers' attention. I like to skip the fluff and read the facts. In doing so, I created a "Risk Rating" model to measure the factors below that determine whether a player is valuable or useless.

Injury Risk
Depth Chart Volatility
Offensive Scheme Fit
General Variance
Age

In running this analysis, we find very safe picks, which can be read all about by clicking HERE. I also find some extremely high-risk players that you ought to either avoid or draft well below ADP. As you will see below, the featured names are mostly running backs. The reason is quite simple: they touch the ball upon contact far more than any other player on the football field.

Christian McCaffrey

Risk Rating: 35/100

We all know how injury-prone McCaffrey can be. Despite playing 17 games in 2026, the likelihood of that happening again is quite low. Over the past 6 seasons, McCaffrey endured 9 unique and impactful ailments. Over his career, McCaffrey has nearly 2,300 total touches and 380+ in three of his last four seasons. The other year, he was hurt.

Cam Skattebo

Risk Rating: 38/100

Skattebo is coming off of a brutal knee injury. Here are similar bouts of recovery and how long they took:

Chris Godwin (2024): 49 Weeks — Fibula fracture, ankle discloation.
Dak Prescott (2020): 48 Weeks — Compound Fracture
Lewis Cine (2023): About 47 Weeks — Compound Fracture

The Giants' running back is 44 weeks removed and would logically be good to go. If Skattebo is healthy, he should be able to play normally. However, it is definitely going to be a mental battle to take those hits to a previously torn-up part of his body.

John Harbaugh has indulged in signing Najee Harris. He wants a great pass protector, which Tyrone Tracy Jr. definitely is not, as seen by allowing Jaxson Dart to be blown up last season. Skattebo is also very bad in that sector of football. PFF's pass-blocking grade was an unheard-of 11.6.

Do not be surprised if Harris gains the trust of the coaching staff and trumps Skattebo in playing time by midseason.

Aaron Jones

Risk Rating: 36/100

At 31, Jones is ancient for an NFL running back. His stats were clearly inferior to Jordan Mason's from one year ago. Jones can very easily lose his split to Mason for that reason. In 2025, Jones ranked 43rd among running backs in yards after contact and averaged just 4.15 yards per attempt. Not to mention, his injury history is endless.

Josh Jacobs

Risk Rating: 52/100

What can I say... Jacobs is on the Commissioner Exempt List. He will probably miss at least 6 games. Jacobs could miss all 17; we don't know. The only reason that Jacobs doesn't rate worse is that, when healthy, he is a top-10 fantasy football asset. If he does return midseason, I would not be surprised to see a split between Jacobs and MarShawn Lloyd, should the backup play well and the team win games.

Zach Charbonnet

Risk Rating: 37/100

The Seahawks begin 2026 with Charbonnet on the IR. He will miss at least four games. Charbonnet is less than 8 months post-ACL repair. The average time of return from this injury is usually at least 9 months and as long as 12. There is a real chance that we will see zero effectiveness from Charbonnet until Thanksgiving.

Alvin Kamara

Risk Rating: 46/100

Kamara is dealing with an MCL sprain, and he will miss multiple games at the beginning of 2026. That right there is a huge risk, on top of the fact that Kamara is 31 years old, just like Aaron Jones. He will not start as Travis Etienne Jr. owns that role. Kendre Miller also returns from injury and does threaten for touches.

We cannot know for certain what role Kamara has when back healthy. We do know it won't be high-level football. In 2025, Kamara ranked 49th in yards per attempt (3.9), 50th in yards after contact (2.56), and 36th in running backs' yards per route run (0.78).

JK Dobbins

Risk Rating: 53/100

Dobbins has never played a full NFL season. There is no reason to expect that to happen now. He may be just 27 years old, but that body is as burnt out as anyone in the NFL. Even then, the Broncos drafted Jonah Coleman, referenced as a scheme fit for Sean Payton's offense. The rookie may eat into Dobbins' role with much more gas in the tank.

Tank Dell

Risk Rating: 40/100

It is not every day that someone tears the ACL, MCL, and LCL. Dell has not played football in nearly two years. He is not a go for Week 1. We cannot know how good Dell will actually be. We cannot know if there will be a mental hurdle for him to overcome.

That being said, Dell does have rather valuable upside given that Jayden Higgins tore his ACL. Dell will have to compete with Jaylin Noel for the WR3 job.

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