Salary Cap Draft Plan for 2026

We've talked a lot this summer about winning the salary cap draft game, and we've covered some mispriced players, but we haven't yet discussed an overall salary cap draft plan that fits the current fantasy football climate.

A salary cap draft strategy relies far more heavily on public opinion than a serpentine format. In a typical serpentine draft, it's rare to see a player rise or fall multiple rounds because of the biases of the managers in the room. The reason is that serpentine drafts evolve in a mostly linear way. It would be strange to see DeVonta Smith go in the first round because everyone knows they can get him later in the draft for a much lower price.

That isn't how a salary cap draft works. Smith might go for as little as $18 in a league in Dallas, Texas, home of the rival Dallas Cowboys, or he might go for $37 in a random draft in Oklahoma because he was the last wide receiver nominated in his tier and multiple managers needed a WR2. It's exceedingly rare to see Smith go in the 2nd or 6th round, but it's not uncommon to see his salary cap draft price swing from $22 to $32. Seeing him go for $18 or $37 would be an outlier, but not outlandish, and a $10 spread is normal for a player like Smith. That difference between the two formats means our approach needs to focus heavily on public opinion to find our edges.

One thing to remember before reading on: No single salary cap draft plan can capture the perfect approach for every format, and this article doesn't pretend to be the only answer. There are, however, some trends developing this summer that we can exploit. While I believe any approach can work, this is my best effort to isolate the trends that should carry across all formats and give us a baseline for how to approach our drafts.

Here's my 2026 Salary Cap Draft Plan.

I Won't Have Jahmyr Gibbs or Bijan Robinson

I never say never, but the top fantasy football duo is more expensive than anything we've seen in recent years. Footballguys values them in the low-to-mid $50s, but in many cases they'll hit $60 or even $70. While I believe shallow formats can allow you to land one of these elite runners, I don't think typical league formats lend themselves to spending that much on a single player.

Allocating 30%+ of your salary cap to one player forces you to be pretty darn good at identifying enough values to avoid a hole somewhere on your team. Why raise the difficulty level on an already difficult task? Skip Gibbs and Robinson and watch how much stronger your team can be.

Quarterback Is Deep...but Let's Look at Josh Allen

The thing about trends in fantasy football is that they become trends because a large percentage of the fantasy community either believes in them or has already drafted a team with those trends influencing their draft decisions.

One of the biggest trends of the summer is how deep quarterback is. And that's true. But it also provides an opportunity in a salary cap draft. You should be open to the idea that, in many home leagues, managers will be more excited about the position than is warranted. If that's the case, your play is easy: Wait until the end of the draft and grab two cheap guys with upside.

Before we do that, however, I want you to take a look at Josh Allen and other quarterbacks with Top 3 upside, like Lamar Jackson and Drake Maye. See what price you can get on one of these three guys, and you might notice something a bit unexpected. With the persistent narrative about quarterback depth, the prices for the top guys sometimes end up lower than they should be. If you can land Allen for $20 or less, Jackson for $14 or less, or Maye for under $10, there is strong evidence that paying those prices for an elite fantasy producer at quarterback is the right play. It may not happen, but be on the lookout and take the deal if it does.

Otherwise, guys like Trevor Lawrence, Dak Prescott, Justin Herbert, Brock Purdy, Caleb Williams, and Bo Nix are all fairly cheap if you wait as long as possible to nominate them. It's entirely possible to land two of these guys for less than $10, and perhaps even $6 to $8 if you time it right.

There isn't much pressure to make any particular play at quarterback in a salary cap draft, but try to set the market for the top guys quickly and find out whether landing one is viable. If not, you can ignore the position until someone else nominates one of them, or you do later in the draft.

Running Back Set for a Central Role?

The purpose of this article isn't to take a deep dive into the distribution of fantasy points last year, but let's do the Cliff's Notes version. A few years ago, NFL defenses started adjusting to the league's prolific passing attacks by dropping into deep shell coverages and putting more defensive backs on the field. This finally forced offenses to respond with more heavy personnel—extra tight ends on the field—which has had the ripple effect of taking wide receivers off the field to run the ball at lighter defensive fronts. The result has been depressed fantasy scoring for wide receivers and renewed value for running backs relative to wide receivers in the salary cap draft room.

In the 2020 fantasy football season, the WR12 in PPR points per game scored 16.6 points per game, while the WR24 scored 14.6. The RB12 that year scored 15.7 points per game, while the RB24 averaged just 12.8.

This past year, the running backs looked fairly similar, with the RB12 scoring 15.6 points per game and the RB24 scoring 12.1.

The difference? The wide receivers came back to the pack. Last year, the WR12 posted 14.7 points per game, almost 2 full points fewer than just five years ago. Even more concerning? The WR24 (minimum eight games played) managed just 12.3 PPR points per game. That's a drop of 2.3 points per game.

So the trend isn't that running backs scored more. Instead, they were relatively stable, but their relative value increased dramatically with the dip in wide receiver scoring at the WR2 and WR3 positions. This should be pushing more money toward the running back position in a salary cap draft. Only that doesn't seem to be happening. Instead, serpentine drafters are making the shift toward running backs, but salary cap drafters aren't following suit.

The reason for this discrepancy isn't knowable right now, but it's either because people realize that wide receiver points are harder to find or, perhaps more likely, because salary cap drafters simply haven't adjusted yet. Whatever the reason, our approach should be to push more money to running backs this year.

We don't want to go overboard because acquiring strong wide receivers is still going to cost a lot of our salary cap, but this year more than ever, the most economical path is to chase fantasy points at running back, so we should lean into that idea.

If your league starts three wide receivers, you have to respect that, but regardless, it's no longer a slam dunk that your flex players should be wide receivers, especially in a salary cap draft where a mid- to low-end RB2 can be rostered for $10 to $18 while a similar wide receiver can fetch $15 to $25 or more. The wide receiver craze in a salary cap draft is still very much alive. As a result, we need to adjust to stay ahead of the crowd.

I'm building my rosters with more money invested in running backs than I have since at least 2019, if not earlier. I have no problem allocating $60 to $70 to my top two running backs, then following that up with another $15 to $20 on two more guys who have strong volume despite being in a committee (think Rico Dowdle/Jaylen Warren or Bucky Irving/Kenny Gainwell).

The approach to running backs in a salary cap draft should be changing, but the room might be asleep, and we can take advantage of it this year.

Wide Receivers Are Still Gobbling Up Our Salary Cap Draft Dollars