14 Players to Unlock 2026 Auctions

Welcome to the auction brief. There's a joy in this game, is there not? Taking you on a journey through Fantasy Football, the law, and life. This is all yours, and it depends on how much you want. And now, your legal analyst and auction draft expert here to help you dominate your fantasy drafts. Your host, Drew Davenport. Clear off, full hearts. Let's go play some football, let's go! Hey everybody, welcome in to the auction brief. As the lady said, I'm your host Drew Davenport, and thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the auction brief this summer. And I am Solo on the mic today talking to you about the 14 players that unlock 20-26 auctions. And we're going to talk about exactly what that means, and then we're going to go through all of these players because it is that time. We're on the mic this week. We have a show next week, and I believe we have John Degel coming in for next week for discussions with Drew. I'll have my solo show, and then we just have one more show after that. That is the auction manifesto, and that will wrap the draft season for the auction brief podcast that allows me a couple weeks to get to some par sheets to push content to the Patreon. And you know, I need that time to get you all ready for your drafts. And one thing that I learned since being a football guy is that if you put out good content to late in August, it really just irritates some people because they've already done their draft. So we don't want to be doing that. We don't want to be putting out content after you've had your draft. And I know that a lot of people are going to draft that last weekend in August and early September, but plenty of people are drafted in the next couple of weeks too. So we're trying to get that stuff out, and that's why the auction brief will end with the final episode on the 20th. There won't be any discussions with Drew that week as I perfect my manifesto. But today we're going to talk about 14 players that unlock 2026 auctions. And that word unlock is doing some heavy lifting for us because it's really important that you understand. These aren't just 14 players I like. You know, we did that earlier in the summer. My guys for 2026, which we're going to update a little bit for the Patreon. But today's is about unlocking your auction. And that means finding another level. And I believe these players can do it because in large parts, some of them are tweeners. Or there's massive, massive value with their current ADP. And you know, I hate using ADP, but we're going to talk about it because it is a good barometer for what we're dealing with in the room. And frankly, most of you aren't walking into a room full of analysts and experts from around the, you know, some of you are. That's totally fine. And this is still going to help you. But a lot of this is based on homeligs too that you can go in and crush your homeligs because these values represent what people are doing right now in drafts. And I think that we're going to see that there are some massive gaps here that we can exploit. So before I get to that, I want to thank everybody involved with the salary cap summit this week. And I think that we've been an unbelievable success for the second year in a row. Very happy about how it turned out made a bit of a mistake. Night one, not not streaming to Twitter. Whoopsies. But hey, we corrected that mistake the last two nights. I think we were running about 700 people at one point on Sunday night. And then Monday night. I think we were running about four to five hundred. Hey, those are great numbers for a live stream. People got places to be and things to do. They're on vacation. I love those numbers. And it tells me that people want more of this content. So thank you all for being there for the salary cap summit. Year two is in the books. And hey, I'm not advertising for the expo for my poker tournament for the salary cap summit. All of that is behind us. Let's get down to the business of winning you some titles and get rid of the ancillary stuff. Shall we? You can find me on Twitter @drewdavenportFF. You can find me on the Patreon network, the fantasy football lawyer, just four bucks a month. We're pushing a ton of content over there and ripping off custom par sheets. I'll have my rankings for you up very soon with all of my pricing. And that is only available to you. My Patreon subscriber. If you want that, you got to get over there and pay the four bucks. The final thing is don't forget all of you out there ordering your draft boards. The best draft boards in the business are over at FJ fantasy. I use FJ fantasy have been using them for over a decade. And I still use them to this day. Use my code auction briefing at 10% off your order. So it's a few more bucks than the other draft boards you're going to see like you're going to go on Amazon. You can buy a crappy draft board for 18 bucks. I get that. These are going to be 50 with some shipping. You're probably going to pay 60. But then you get 10% off of that. It really works out to about five bucks a piece in your draft. So hey, throw down a link and go get your draft board from FJ fantasy and use my code auction brief. All right folks, that's going to do it for the preliminary stuff. What do you say we get into the 14 players that unlock 2026 auction. Auction talk. So the best way I know how to describe what it means to unlock your auctions is to make a little bit of a poker analogy. Now this isn't a story because you know, I don't like telling stories this time of year because we need to get into this thing. But the analogy helps with understanding what I'm talking about here because the word unlock like I said in the opening does some heavy lifting here. And it's important that we understand what it means because I'm not talking about when I say unlock. I'm not talking about hey, these guys are awesome. Guys are values and hey, these guys know that's not what I'm doing what I'm doing is I'm saying that if you want to build an elite roster. You have to find the players that are falling through the cracks of the public opinion. An incredible value and upside at their current price that they completely unlock your roster if they hit. So now we're not going to talk about a bunch of $2 lottery tickets here. We're talking about some very good players. The most important thing that I've learned to date is that these players are going cheaper than they should be. And for the most part now some of these guys you're going to hear and you're going to say well that guy's not cheap. I'm not saying cheap they're cheaper and I believe that they have massive upside for the price that I'm seeing in auctions. And I've done a ton of them this summer and now I've actually done some actual drafts here as well and well ahead of when I was last summer. I've noticed some things that I think are going to help us. But let me make the analogy here to poker about unlocking your 2026 auctions because something that I have noticed in my game that's a leak in my game. It probably wasn't a leak five years ago but the game of poker has changed quite a bit. And one of the things that people are doing and stressing more and I really believe in it is opening up your range for three betting pre flop. So let me make just a quick explanation out of this so that you know what a three bet is. But when somebody raises before the flop, let's say the blinds are 50 and 100. The big blind puts in 100 and then somebody raises to 300. When you say you three bet that person, it's not a reference to the size of your bet. It's a reference to the fact that you're putting in a third bet before the flop. The initial bet is the big blind at 100. The second bet is the raised to 300. The third bet your bet is a raise from the 300. Now I'm generally a really tight three bet player and this creates a problem for me with really good poker players. And what I've been trying to do is stress playing higher buy in higher guaranteed events because I don't have very much time to grind the lower stakes. I used to grind the lower stakes and that gave me a bank role for some of the bigger tournaments. But I can't go down there and play two to three tournaments a week anymore and grind out a nice little profit at the $100 tournaments. I can't do that anymore. I don't have the time. You know I don't have the time. So instead I'm going to these higher buy in events where the players are much better. And if you're only three betting when you have aces, kings, ace, king, and queens when you're in position, they know that right? They know that. So it's a leak in the game, not just because they're going to fold when you three bet. But on top of that, you can unlock the upside of your game by opening up your three bet profile. And your three bet profile is learning to open with a wider range of hands on a three bet and learning to in position really expand your three bet range. I saw a solver the other day. I don't know if you guys know what solvers are. They talk about what you should do preflop based on what's happened in front of you. And I saw a solver the other day saying if you're on the button with king eight suited or better, you should be three betting more often than you think. And I don't disagree with this. And I don't know if I can get to that level of aggression, but I can certainly get a little bit further there. And what does that do? Well, in unlocks your ceiling, because then when you get the actual hand where you three bet and you have it, then you get paid off. And when you only three bet the aces and kings, you don't have a ceiling unless you get incredibly lucky to have a cooler on somebody. And a cooler is just getting lucky to have kings against queens or aces against kings or flopping a set on somebody when they flop top two pair. You can't rely on coolers. the entire time you're playing poker or else you'll never make money. So unlocking your ceiling at poker is all about learning to unlock your three-bet range. And that's what we're doing in the auctions today. We're trying to find the situations where we ordinarily might feel a little bit uncomfortable with what's going on in front of us, but if it works out and if we continue to stress the idea and the theory of going after these type of players, it will unlock monstrous rosters. It will unlock these massively successful championship rosters. Anybody who knows Jim Coventry, who's a good friend of the show, he had an unbelievable season in the Kings Classic last year and really what it came down to was he made some of those bets and they all paid off at once. That's going to happen sometimes. You're going to have that magical season. And even if they don't all pay off exactly, most of the players I have in today's show are about unlocking the rest of your roster because of the correct price and/or upside that allow you to spend elsewhere. And sometimes you're going to have to go spend for a player that you don't necessarily think is a quote-unquote value. Like when I paid for Amon Rosset Brown for $49, that's not a value, but you don't get value on elite players. So if you get some of these other players on your team, you can go for elite players or you can build deeper or you can select multiple players from this list and have an incredible roster. So that's what I mean by unlocking our auctions. These aren't the best players or else I just go say I like Beige on Robinson. These aren't the most valuable players or else I go pick some chump in the 14th round and say hype him up and say he's going to be great. And these aren't the players that I think that everyone hates either because I think people like a lot of these guys. But I kind of don't care because I still like where they're being drafted and I still believe people are sleeping on them to a degree. And so part of the unlock feature that I'm talking about for today is that we do have a little bit of missed price players. I will say that that's part of what we're doing here. And when I say unlock, let me say the final comment here. Which is that when you land these players, it opens up a new avenue of upside for your roster. And that's why I use that term. So finding these players for the correct price, unlocks an upside for your auction draft that you didn't know you had before. So let's hit the 14 players that unlock 2026 auction. All right, we're going to go right down the board here just like you're looking at a fantasy roster quarterback first, running back second, wide receiver third, tight end last. And we're going to hit every one of these guys. And I'll tell you what, I don't know how long it's going to go. We're about 15 minutes into the show. It may go 38 minutes. It may go an hour and five minutes. I'm not really sure. But I will tell you this. I looked up some pretty dank stats for all of these guys. And oh man, some dank stats, bro. Duke, where have you been all summer, my blood? Where have you been? Oh my gosh, Duke's here. Yeah, I'm here, bro. Give me the dank stats, bro. Okay. Let's be serious, Drew. These stats, I believe, are why these players unlock your roster. Okay. So I'm not just throwing a bunch of stuff at your ear hole, but I will say in the next 30 minutes, I'm going to cram some stuff in that brain. So buckle up, get ready. Let's go. At quarterback, the first guy I want to talk about is Drake May. But he is not my key strategy here. The thing I've noticed though in the Mox this summer and in the drafts I've done is that there are some rooms where they really respect Drake May. And there are some rooms where they just don't care. So if you think that Drake May is an option for you, you need to nominate him before Josh Allen and hopefully before Lamar Jackson. If you don't get him out there before those two guys, then you just need to wait as long as possible to get him out there and kind of mentally reserve what you think you're going to for the pay for him. Drake May is the first one. I guess I just don't understand at this point what people want in order to say that May is a guy that they want to be in on this year. Because I really thought after his performance last year that we'd see a crazy runaway train of hype for May and yet we're not seeing it. And here's the weird part. It's not as if he lost some guys or that the offensive line got worse or that the coaching staff got worse or anything like that. In fact, it's quite the opposite. You've got another year under his belt for Traveon Henderson, an explosive player. They still got Rwondra Stevenson. They have the same coaching staff and offense in place. And they went and added two veteran explosive wide receivers. They added AJ Brown and Romeo dobs. Both of those guys are veterans, man. They're both really good players. What are we doing? Drake May needs to be in the top two or three conversation in every draft and I'm not seeing that people care enough. All right. If you can get May for a reasonable price and I know I'm going to say that a lot, I'm going to try to give you some examples, but I don't really want you to stick exactly to the prices I'm telling you. But I really like May around $10 or less. If I can get him for $10 or less, I'm going to feel pretty good. I'm not that excited about being in the $12 to $14 business. Even though I think that's okay. I think that's okay. But I'm not sure that unlocks your roster at that price. I think it unlocks your roster at $8 or $9 or $10. So get him out there before the top two guys or wait as long as you can. The next two guys are the guys that my strategy really revolves around. I think one guy is not going to surprise you. One guy might surprise you. The first guy that probably won is Trevor Lawrence. And once again, I can't really get my mind around why people don't like Trevor Lawrence more. Now, he has gone for a few more dollars than I thought he would go for in a couple instances. But for the most part, I've been seeing people land Lawrence for less than $5. More likely, three or four in most draft rooms. That is an insane value. Let's not forget what he did last year. At the end of the year, he was on an incredible run where I think he finishes the QB2 after their buy last year. And I don't want to undersell the fact that Liam Cohen likes his running back, excuse me, likes his quarterbacks to run. I guess that was a Freudian slip. He likes his quarterbacks to run. He had nine rushing TDs last year. But let's step back from that. I mean, he had 29 passing, nine rushing. The guy had 38 touchdowns. And you can get him for three bucks. Like what? Like he didn't have some crazy insane TD rate. Now nine rushing touchdowns, that's a lot. Okay. I expect that to fall back, right? But over the course of his career, he's a guy that gets 300 rushing yards and four touchdowns on the ground. That's his, basically, that's his floor. And we're discounting the fact that this is a rushing quarterback. And if you can get him for three bucks, that's what I want you to do. That unlocks your whole roster because there is a very good argument that Trevor Lawrence has a top five or six option this year. A quarterback and you're getting him for $3. That's what I mean by a lock-in stuff. The second quarterback is a guy that I wouldn't mind you pairing with Trevor Lawrence. And that's Bonyx. And I think that you can get Bonyx for a similar price to Lawrence or less. I think that you could write on your par sheet, six or seven dollars and get both of these guys. And if you end up paying eight for him, so what? Listen to what Bonyx has done in the two seasons that he's been in the NFL. He's finished as a top ten quarterback, both seasons. He has almost 800 rushing guards through two years and he has nine rushing TDs through two years. Now I didn't mention his passing stats because they're not super special. But see May comma Drake about my next comment. Why don't people care more about a guy who just got an incredibly explosive young talented receiver? Bonyx just got Jaylen Waddle. This matters. I mean, we may not see them firing on all cylinders in the first couple of weeks, but if people are down on him after four or five weeks, go get Bonyx and Jaylen Waddle. These guys, I don't understand what we have to do for these guys to be valued higher. And I understand there's other guys standing in the way. But when you're in an auction, you don't care. Go get Lawrence and Bonyx. I think it's going to unlock the rest of your roster because you have this incredible rushing floor from both of these quarterbacks. And you're going to do it for five or six bucks. That's how you unlock the possibilities for the rest of the skill positions. All right, those are my three quarterbacks. At running back, I've got four for you. And I have what I would call an honorable mention. That doesn't figure into the 14. It's just an honorable mention because I want to mention it. I want it. It's my show and I want to. The first player that I want to talk about at running back is Breeze Hall. Now I don't want to don't grow and roll your eyes and turn the podcast off. Let me tell you that I don't love investing in the Jets offense. I get it. But Breeze Hall is one of those guys that I think qualifies exactly as a tweener. Let me say this that football guys have him projected as the RB 12 this year. Now I'm not saying that's the gold standard or that's the Bible but we have some smart guys doing projections over at football guys and if they think he's the RB 12 I'm listening. Now we don't even need him to be a low end RB one because right now his price tag is roughly RB 14 or RB 15 and the reason that tweeners work out so well is because people don't want them and they don't know what to do with them so people don't really want pre-salt even though they know he's good and so they don't really know what to do with him so a lot of times we're seeing him in the neighborhood of 22 to 27 dollars and you're talking about a guy that has possible RB one upside so you can do whatever you want with him if you want to put him in the RB one spot and spend more money at receiver you can do that because he's going to approach RB one range if that offense is functional at all. I'm looking at fantasy points data suite Breeze Hall had the fourth highest explosive run percentage in the entire NFL last year. Explosive run percentages the percentage of carries where the runnyback took the ball for 15 or more yards. Fourth in the NFL on a dumpster fire offense he's fourth in the NFL an explosive run percentage. He was 10th in the NFL and missed tackles forced per attempt so when the guy got the ball he was making people miss and he was going for 15 or more yards at the fourth highest rate in the NFL. This guy still has it if Geno Smith makes this offense even remotely reasonably good. Hall scored four touchdowns touchdowns have been a problem for him at some point that's going to swing back in his favor and that offense is going to be a little bit better than we think and if that happens that unlocks your roster because you can do whatever you want with him you can make him your RB one and spend up elsewhere or you can make him your RB two and get a wonderful RB one to go alongside him and again that unlocks the explosive ceiling of an auction roster. RB two that I'm going to talk about is in the same boat price wise and for the same reason I believe that he can function as an RB one or RB two based on your build and that's Josh Jacobs. I understand the risk here okay and I just want to put this out there because I don't want people coming back to me and saying but you told me look I get it the lead to figure out and it's difficult to sign up for that when you know that there's a problem hanging over his head but there's a couple things that make me encouraged at this point that they won't be any trouble this year. Number one is that the Packers have had him with the team since a couple days after the incident. The NFL does not appear to have reached out to them and said hey we have a problem here and on top of that as a criminal defense attorney for the last 24 years 25 years Jesus I'm old for the last quarter century I have served as a barrister in the court but look when these when they got it they got it like they'd file by now right I mean there's always the chance that something nefarious is happening behind the scenes and they're going to the grand jury or something like that that could go really bad but I think that's like a 5% chance I at this point even if they were to file some misdemeanor charges I think the NFL is going to be like all right we'll wait and see what's going on and that he's going to push it out to Jane where he plays all year like I just really think he's playing all season going as low as he is because I think people worried and not everybody listens to me I have to constantly tell myself that I only have 28,000 followers there's millions playing fantasy football affecting that ADP they're not all listening to me and a lot of them don't believe me so Josh Jacobs is too cheap he's got 30 touchdowns the last two years he's been in Green Bay for two years and he's averaging 15 year it's not like the guys going into his age 31 season he's 28 years old last year he had the 12th highest expected fantasy points per game according to fantasy points I love that stat 12th highest expected fantasy points per game that means that he's getting RB1 workload and look at this fantasy points data also tells me that Packers have the seventh highest run rate inside the red zone and inside the 10-year line we know they love to run the ball in the red area and they're going to do it with Josh Jacobs the last two years he has 35 carries inside the five yard line 35! Breeze Hall has Breeze Hall dreams of getting seven carries inside the five this dude's got 35 and I realize I just uh craped on the guy I was recommending but I'm hoping that turns around a little bit but Josh Jacobs look there's no reason for him to be going where he is other than the legal stuff and if you have some confidence in me you can draft him but hey look we could wake up on August 25th and they drop a nasty charge and he gets commissioner exempted and he's out to week nine that can happen there's a non-zero chance that can happen don't forget your playing with fire here a little bit but hey I took him at the end of the second in the King's Classic snake draft and it's a 14 teamer so that's really like early third but hey I believe in him enough to make him my RB2 and one of my favorite leagues and you know that I play it so you can take that for what it's worth we can go down with a ship together if something were to happen all right the number three running back I want to talk about his chase brown and I can't stop talking about chase brown because I keep expecting to see the ADP rise a little bit with brown but I'm not seeing it and I think the reason for that is it's just too crowded ahead of him and I don't blame people for thinking that all right he was pretty bad at the beginning of last season through the first six weeks he was terrible I believe he was running back 30 through six weeks but once they figured out what he does well and and that they needed to be using him from week seven at week 17 he was the RB5 all right the RB5 this is a top five running back and yet nobody is talking about him as a possible first round pick are they and that tells me that we can use that sentiment to unlock our roster with chase brown as our RB1 so a wonderful play to make is to get brown as your RB1 and then take Jacobs or Hall whichever one's cheaper and make him your RB2 and we are off to the races so we sign up Trevor Lawrence and BoNix for a three or four hundred yard four touchdown rushing floor and then we turn around we get 15 touchdowns from Jacobs or 60 catches from Breast Hall in a better offense and we have chase brown sitting there as our RB1 my friend Dwayne McFarland over at Fantasy Life has a tool called the utilization tool and he gives every player a utilization score based on how much they're used in the passing game and how much they're used in the rushing game and their market share and all that stuff chase brown's utilization score was 91 from week seven on last year and let me give you some context 100 is the scale okay so it's a scale of zero to 100 he got a 91 score that's an elite number it points to over 20 ppr points per game if you have that elite utilization score it points to a 20 ppr point per game season and that's exactly what he had I believe he averaged 20.5 he was sixth in the league and expected fantasy points so you could put a Josh Jacobs and a chase brown on your team as your RB1 and 2 and you have two of the top 12 and expected fantasy points per game last year I don't see their utilization changing and that's the key to this whole strategy so if you go into your home league and you grab chase brown for 38 to 40 bucks hopefully you're going to get him for 35 or 36 but I'm not that worried about that pay up to 40 bucks for turn around and get Jacobs for 26 or 27 and you've got Lawrence and Nick's locked up for five bucks you are off to the races you're on the way to unlocking that elite roster the next running back is one that I'm sure you're tired of hearing analysts talk about this summer but it's Jonathan Brooks and look this is a hard one for me because I'm not a Brooks like the profile the archetype of who Jonathan Brooks is that's not me and that's not in my nature to be in on that kind of a player he's had his ACL ruptured twice he took all of last year off it's been a long time since he's played meaningful football but you know what when I watched him play some meaningful football man that kid looked good it's a really small sample size but the only thing that we need to know about Jonathan Brooks is number one he's going to be cheap and so you can make him your army for and get him for a reasonable price that's a lot of times going to be in single digits and a lot of these rooms a lot of these rooms you're not going to go into a home league and hear somebody get excited about Jonathan Brooks now you may and you maybe have some sharp leagues that do that but you're not paying 14 bucks for Jonathan Brooks and I don't want you to Brooks is all upside and it's okay to go in there and swing for the fences with your army for all right and a guy that can help you do that is my honorable mention that honorable mention is jalen warrant and I just can't shut up about jalen warrant because I'm not buying the rico doubtal thing when it comes to passing down work I'm not buying it my buddy brine Drake is in on rico doubtal and I like doubtal as well and I've heard from some smart people this summer who believe that doubtals going to get more work than we think. So I'm going against the grain here and I'm going to tell you I'm sticking it out with Jalen Warren because I'm just not buying it. Last year he was 34th in the league in Routes Run. He ran only 211 pass routes last year. But he was 6th in the league in Yards per Routes Run. He was almost 1.6 yards per Routes Run. That's a really strong number for running back. Okay, he was 6th in the NFL. He had Kenny Gainwell there last year and he still finished as the Army 19 in PBR points per game. He's going as the RB 27 right now. So he loses Gainwell who was hoovering up all these short Aaron Rodgers panic dump offs. And somehow you're going to convince me that the Steelers went out and signed Rico Doudel because they want him to come in and take the passing down roll from Warren. That doesn't even sound reasonable on its face. Now I'm not sitting here calling all these people dumb like you know my buddy Drake, I respect his instincts. So it worries me a little bit to go against his instincts. But I'm not really slamming him so much as I'm slamming the idea that the Steelers didn't really have an efficient early down runner last year. Jalen Warren wasn't very good at it and Kenny Gainwell didn't do a whole lot of it. They needed an early down bruiser. They thought that was going to be Caleb Johnson and then went whoopsie, we screwed up on this pick, we need somebody. So instead of Caleb Johnson they went and got Rico Doudel and now he's going to play the early downs and I know that Mike McCarthy likes him. But I believe that's why they brought him in. Now I'm not saying he's not going to catch any passes and he might be the goal I'm back and of course that limits Warren's upside. But he finished RB 19 while Kenny Gainwell was hoovering up 4,000 check downs from Aaron Rodgers. And I'm just going to tell you Rodgers is going to stop checking the ball down this year. He's going to keep doing it and the benefit here is going to be Warren more often than Doudel. So I think at RB 27 it's a little bit crazy. You can go in there and you can get Chase Brown, Jacobs or Hall or maybe both. Then grab Brooks or Warren hopefully both. I would love to see a Chase Brown, Josh Jacobs, Jalen Warren, Jonathan Brooks, Backfield. That sounds amazing. That unlocks your ability to go spend on these wide receivers I want to talk about. So really the entire plan, the entire idea of unlocking your auction focuses a lot on how we can get those wide receivers that we need without going into that wide receiver two, three murky zone that kind of started to fall off last year that we talked about all summer. And these five guys are guys that I believe are a little bit cheaper but also can far outperform their current value. And I think the most important part about these guys is none of them are really in the top 10 of ADP. So I know that we can get them much cheaper than going after a guy like CD Lam or Jamar Chase or Alman Ross ain't Brown. I'm not saying you can't go after those guys but I believe these wide receivers give you flexibility if you use them the right way. So a couple of them you're going to recognize a couple of them you might be a little bit surprised about. But let's start with my guy Devon Tasmeth. And I know that you know this already so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on him. I think he is the ultimate tweener this year. We talked about that earlier in the summer. Go back and listen to that discussion earlier in the summer. But the ultimate tweener. And I think that's because people don't know whether he can hold up as a wide receiver one over the course of a season. And I understand the concern and I understand the concern with the offense in general. But tweeners make their money because you can use them how you want to use them. And if you spend a little bit more at running back or let's say you end up landing Drake May and you have to shave money somewhere. I think you can come off of the Justin Jefferson's and the Nico Collins and those guys that are upper 30 mid to upper 30s. And you can get these guys that I'm going to talk about here in the low 30s to upper 20s to even down into the mid 20s. And Devon Tasmeth is the perfect tweener because nobody really wants to draft him as their wide receiver one. And they think that's a little bit too much for my wide receiver two. And I think that's okay to think that but what you need to do then is you need to turn around and say okay well who is then and who am I going to put with him if I were to get him. And again that's what people don't do ahead of time. And that's why you're better than most people right? Because you're going to think ahead of time well how does Smith play into my draft plan. If I end up getting him for 33 let's too expensive to be a two that's too cheap to be a one well then you got to decide okay is he going to be your one and then you're going to pair him with a really good two. And a couple of these guys are perfect candidates for that. That's why this unlocks a lot of possibilities. Let me just say this about Devon Tasmeth. He's had one season in his career where they fed him a bunch of targets. He got 136 targets. He went for 95 catches 1196 yards and about and I think it was seven touchdowns. He finished that year as the wide receiver 13 and PPR points per game. Now I know his current value right now is wide receiver 13. So it may seem like oh well that's how's that a value. Well I didn't say every pick that we're making here is a value. What I believe it does for you though is it allows you to make him a really good wide receiver two if you want to pay up for another another wide receiver one. I believe it can make you a fairly decent wide receiver one a low end one but then you can go spend on a couple other guys and you can really have a strong core across the board. And let me just leave you with this. I don't think it would be wild based on that target share. I think he's going to get at least 120 targets right. And so when we're talking about 136 targets led to 95 catches on a wide receiver 13 finish let's look at 2025 because that was I think four years ago in 2025 if he just had 85 catches for 1200 yards and seven touchdowns so fewer catches same yards same touchdowns he would have been the wide receiver seven last year and the wide receiver 10 and points per game. So as the wide receiver production has fallen off a 1200 yards seven touchdown season puts you firmly in wide receiver one territory and I think you can get Devonte Smith for right around 30 bucks. There are some rooms where you can even snag him for 27 28 29 dollars and if you have to go up to 32 or 33 that's okay if you have a plan for how you're going to play the tweener as a one or a two. All right so the second guy I want to talk about is a guy that you might not be thinking I'm going to talk about but it's a mecca buga and he's gotten a lot of steam lately so I'm a little bit concerned about this pick but I keep coming back to the same thing that when we saw him at the beginning of the year last year he was a top five wide receiver right I believe after four or five games he was like wide receiver two or three overall and then the cards just the house of cards just fell apart. At Bucke got hurt he struggled with that all year may field got hurt he struggled all year they just had injury after injury after injury that entire team got hurt last year things when as bad as they possibly could for the bucks so I think we just have to erase the second half of his rookie season. I understand that sounds a little bit simplistic but just zoom out a little bit with Egg Bucke and think about it he has the talent he has the draft capital he has the quarterback that can get him the ball he has a relatively bad defense and the thing I want to hang my hat on is the conversation that I have with Matt Harman about the new offensive coordinator there's a lot of motion in this office and there's a lot of getting Egg Bucke in the right situation for him to excel and the new role that he's going to play sounds like it fits him much better than the role he played last year so if we get a little bit of injury luck and we get a new offensive coordinator that knows how to use him better I don't think that top five start last year would be a crazy finish and so that's why I believe that despite the steam he's still a key to unlocking and elite roster because you can still get Egg Bucke right around 30 bucks or even in the top you know upper 20s and maybe in your homeligs they don't care about him that much and you snag him for 24 or 26 but if you have to pay up around 30 bucks that's okay and this is what I'm talking about when I say pair the tweener with somebody pair de Monte Smith with with Egg Bucke and hopefully you can get him for 60 or less dollars that even if you have to pay 60 or 62 I think those make two receivers for 60 bucks that could finish in the top 12 and yet you paid a little bit over what somebody's going to pay for Saint Brown or Chase and they just have one that's why it unlocks your roster and then you can go forward with players like a couple of the guys I'm about to name the next one is Parker Washington I realized the end of the season was a small sample size so I don't want to be labor the point with Parker Washington because I think throwing a bunch of stats that you doesn't do a whole lot for us because of the sample size but let me just tell you a couple things that jump off the page in the last two weeks of the fantasy regular season it's week 16 and 17 he had 20 targets 14 catches 260 yards on a touchdown in two games now he didn't really start getting a really good snap share until late in the year because he struggled with an injury in the middle of the season I think his breakout would have started a little bit earlier without the injuries that he had. suffered. But from week 9 on, he's still average 14 PPR points per game. He was the Y receiver 20. He's the Y receiver 33 now in ADP. That's a massive gap. If you think Parker Washington's a Y receiver 2, this is crazy. You can get Parker Washington for eight, 10, $12 at the most. Make him your four or make him your three. He's going to finish as a Y receiver 2 and there is nuclear upside here. I believe that with the amount of praise that we're hearing, the steady drum beat from Jacksonville camp, from Lee and Cohen, from Trevor Lawrence, from the beat writers, he's catching everything. You can't put this Jeannie back in the bottle. And in the last four games that the Jacksonville Jaguars play last year, he averaged a ridiculous 31 and a half percent target share. I believe Brian Thomas is going to run clear out routes and he's going to be the deep threat. Brian Thomas is good. Jacobi Myers is good. I get that they're going to spread the ball around. But Parker Washington has alpha written all over him and this is the kind of play that unlocks and elite roster. Get him as your wide receiver 4 and stick him in your flex every week and enjoy wide receiver 2 production. All right. Two more guys I want to talk about. I don't think you're going to be surprised by the next one. That's Jaylen Waddle. Now I will say that he was sitting at wide receiver 24 for a while and as things are heating up this summer, he's up to wide receiver 21. Now I don't really want to see this guy up at wide receiver 15 by the time we get done here. But I think in your home leagues, people are going to, they're going to have recency bias when it comes to this stuff. Because Waddle hasn't put up a big fantasy season in a while. It's been four years since we saw Jaylen Waddle put up a good fantasy season. And I think that's why his ADP is lagging. He's wide receiver 21 right now. And like I said, it's up a little bit. But I hang my hat again on the same thing I've been telling you all summer. Is that he's only had two seasons in his career where he had over 104 targets. That was 2021. He finished as the wide receiver 13 and PPR points per game. And then 2022, he turned around and finished as the wide receiver 11. And this was a minimum eight games played. All right. So wide receiver 13 and wide receiver 11 in the two games and the two seasons where he got over 104 targets. So in order to talk me out of the wide receiver 21 price tag, you're going to have to convince me he's going to get less than 104 targets. He's playing with Sean Payton. I mean, it's not like going from Mike McDaniel and Sean Payton is a big downgrade. Payton knows how to use them. They went and got him on purpose because he works in Payton's office. And the things that they do well in Denver are the things that Jaylen Waddle does well. So even at wide receiver 21, I don't like that the price is creeping up there, but I'm still seeing him in auctions in the mid 20s. And if you have to go to upper 20s forum, that's okay. It's perfectly reasonable for you to take Egg Buka, Smith, and Waddle and put them all together with Parker Washington. That can be done. And that can be done for about 110 bucks, I think. Maybe even less. Those four receivers and I absolutely love that build. When you're talking about bringing it back with Chase Brown, Josh Jacobs, Trevor Lawrence and Bo Nex. And it's a fun little stack there with Nick's and Waddle. So the last guy I'm going to talk about, I don't think it's going to surprise you either. But George Pickens is that guy that everybody needs to talk about more. And I realize this is crushing me for my own leaks because I'm not going to get George Pickens. And I'm not going to get to Montaise Smith. But hey, my duty is to all of you, my listeners, and here's the thing with George Pickens. I had a conversation with Scott Barrett from Fancy Points the other day. And he confirmed, he confirmed my bias. He confirmed what I've been thinking about Pickens and Lamb all summer. Because I can't stand the narrative that CD Lamb is just always going to go crazy. He's going to explode. Is there a chance that he does that and has a monster wide receiver one season? Yes. Yes, there is. But let me just talk to you about how they looked together on the field last year. From week 7 on, when CD Lamb came back from injury, George Pickens averaged 17 points per game. Okay. If you just said that overall by itself, he's worth the price he's going for in auctions right now. However, let me go a little bit further. He averaged 17 points per game. He was wide receiver 11. And he was actually wide receiver six overall for the, now look, I understand that wide receiver six is a little bit crazy because of the numbers he put up while Lamb was out. So we can just throw those out. Okay. But he still finished as the wide receiver 11 over the time that he was with lamb. The targets were really close. I think lamb out targeted him by eight targets from week seven to 17. So a little over, excuse me, a little under one target a game, not that big of a difference. And here's the thing that seals it for me. I looked at fantasy points data because I wanted to know what their first read target share was. I love first read target share. It tells me two things. Number one, that the offensive coordinator cares about getting that receiver the ball. And number two, that the quarterback likes the routes and likes the reads for that receiver. And he looks at him first. Now, a lot of that's by design or most of it's by design. Some of it's dictated by coverage at the line. The point being, Dak Prescott is very comfortable with George Pickens. And last year, Pickens had 107 first read targets and lamb had 93. Now I know lamb missed them time. So let's convert that to a percentage of their plays. Last year, lamb had 27.8% first read targets. And Pickens had 27.2%. They were separated by half a percent in first read target share. This offense likes both guys. I'm not saying lamb sucks. I'm not saying don't have lamb. I'm saying get George Pickens for 32. Get George Pickens for 31. Get George Pickens for 29. Get him in that upper 20 to low 30 range. And that's how you unlock your roster. So look at these five wide receivers and tell me that you can come out of there, come out of your auction with two to three of them. I would love if you came out of it with four of them. But if you get two or three of these guys, that's unlocking the rest of your roster. The honorable mention I have in this category does account towards the 14. But I want to mention him because again, I think he's being disrespected and that's Quentin Johnston. I don't know how I turned into a Quentin Johnston stand. But I will tell you this, when you watch Quentin Johnston, your biases are doing a lot of the work. Because if you watch him play, he's actually a pretty darn good player. And if you can get past the, you know, Lowles, L-O-L, he dropped another pass, tell me what you think he went for last year in yards and touchdowns. Shout it out to the speakers right now. He had 735 yards and eight touchdowns. That's not a bad season, right? And everyone thinks he was a disappointment. He finished wide receiver 28 and points per game. Guess where he's going right now? Wide receiver 39, 39. So once again, you've got a Chargers offense that lost Keenan Allen, gained Mike McDaniel. And somehow Quentin Johnston is going to finish 11 spots lower. When he had a healthy offensive line and the Chargers were doing what they wanted to do with the beginning of the season, Quentin Johnston was a top 10 player. He was a really good player at the beginning of the season. If the offensive line stays healthy and Mike McDaniel uses him like we know he knows how to do with receivers, Quentin Johnston could very end up being a top 24 receiver at the end of the year. Hell, he was wide receiver 28 last year. He had some weird games where he showed up with zero points and he was hurt. And he still finished wide receiver 28 points per game. He's going wide receiver 39. Do you think he's not going to show up in the top 24 if they get a little bit of injury luck next year? This year. So, you know, he's an honorable mention because I'm not sitting here saying that you need to plant your flag, but Johnston ain't expensive. And so if you go into your room and you get two of Pickens Egg Bukas Smith, then grab Waddle and Washington and bring it back with Quentin Johnston. And then you've got Chase Brown and Jacobs or Hall. Plus you got Brooks or Warren, Lawrence or Nix. This is a very achievable roster. It drips with upside. And I'm just here to tell you that the reason these players unlocked your roster is not only the price, not only the tweener potential that we recognize and not only both of those things, but the separation of public opinion and what these players can actually do is fairly wide. Okay? Fairly wide. And so let's end today by talking about some tight ends. And I'm going to cheat a little bit as we end today's discussion. The first guy I want to say is it's Colston Lovelin. This is not a crazy opinion. I don't even want to spend any time on it. We're running a little bit long. I just I don't even care to spend time on it. This guy's incredible, incredible raving in in camp. Once he started getting 80% target share. Excuse me. That would be pretty amazing. When I'm tired folks, I'm tired. Once he started getting 80% market chip. Take three. Once he started getting that 80% route rate that we like to see for tight ends, he absolutely exploded. And if you can get Lovelin cheaper than McBride and cheaper than Bowers and you can get them in maybe the upper teens, maybe 20 bucks. I think you can play it on that and I think that's going to open up your roster by allowing you to say, "Okay, I can slough off a little bit on receiver or running back and get Colston Loveland. But, but, but, but." This is kind of like the Drake May play. I want you to take a look at Loveland if it doesn't work and I want you to force anything with Loveland or May. The thing I really want you to do is I just want you to pick one of La Porta, Sam La Porta, Tucker Craft or Harold Fandon and just get the cheapest one. Just get the cheapest one because all three of these guys prove that they're elite talents. La Porta sounds like he's doing really well. We know he's got a tie-down one finish on his resume. Tucker Craft was the tie-down one when he got hurt last year and Harold Fandon as a rookie came in and just absolutely went berserk and I think that you can't put that Jeannie back in the bottle either. So that no need for long discussion or dank stats here. Sam La Porta, Tucker Craft, Harold Fandon, whichever one's cheaper, that's your tie-down one and once again, I think you can get these guys for $6.7. Maybe even $5. I saw Harold Fandon go for $4 the other night, Tucker Craft went for $4. You can get these guys cheap if you nominated them at the right time and if you're patient in getting one of the three. So if you see one of these guys going for $5 or $6, you need to be jumping in and just trying to grab them. I think that unlocks the rest of your roster because it's a cheap player who's got a tie-down one upside, the overall tie-down one upside or on their on their resume in the case of La Porta or Craft and in the case of Fandon. We know he can be a tie-down, he can be a top five tie-down. We saw it last year and we saw that as a rookie and if they get a slightly better quarterback play, which I'm not saying it's going to be awesome but slightly better because we know Sanders and Gabriel were trash. Watson can give them slightly better quarterback play Fandon could explode as well. So take a look at Loveland but really I just want you to take the cheapest one between La Porta Craft and Fandon and I believe that combines the price and upside that we want to see to help us unlock our elite auction roster. Alright folks, that's going to do it for today's episode of The Auction Brief. This is working out quite nicely. We're going to get you out under an hour. I hope you enjoyed the 14 players that unlock your 2026 auctions. I really believe in these guys as plays in your auction draft room. So before I let you go, don't forget you can find me on Twitter @DrewDabMportFF. You can find me on the Patreon Network, the fantasy football lawyer for just four bucks a month and don't forget to use my code AuctionBreathe at FJ Fantasy Sports to get 10% off of your draft boards. Folks, thank you so much for all the support this summer on The Auction Brief and support of the SauerCAP Summit. We're pushing through to the end. I hope you are learning a lot this summer. I'm learning a lot as I go through it and hey, this has been a lot of fun already. We've been a couple episodes left. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. We've only got a few more left. Don't be sad. Don't be sad. I promise I'm going to be here. I'm going to be here all season long. I'm going to be on serious. I'm going to be in the Patreon. I'm going to be on Twitter. You know where to find me. We're going to help you win titles. I love when I get messages from people after the season. Hey, I never did well in my home auction league. I found your podcast and I did well this year. I hope we get a lot of those messages at the end of this season. Let's go crush your auctions. Let's go win some fantasy titles. The auction brief is adjourned and I am out. The auction brief is adjourned. That'll do it for this week's episode. See you next time on The Auction Brief.