The flip side of succeeding with value players is failing with overvalued players. These players will not put up stats commensurate with their draft spots, and avoiding them is another important key to a successful fantasy team. To identify these players, we asked our staff to review highly rated players and identify those who should underperform their draft position.
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Here are the players who received votes.
Tee Higgins, Cincinnati Bengals
Gary Davenport: Higgins is one of the best No. 2 wide receivers in the NFL. Last year was something of a roller-coaster for the 27-year-old, although some of that may have had something to do with the chaos under center in the Queen City. The bad news was that Higgins missed time for the fifth straight year, saw under 100 targets for just the second time in his career, and caught a career-low 58 passes. The good news is that he found the end zone 11 times, a career best.
The issue with Higgins at ADP is glaringly present in those unbalanced scales.
Higgins is well-compensated to be the Kato to Ja'Marr Chase's Green Hornet, and he plays on one of the scarier offenses in the NFL. He ranked just outside the top-15 wide receivers in PPR points last year and finished in about the same range the season before. But that's it. That's the ceiling. Higgins hasn't had 1,000 receiving yards in a season since 2022. He doesn't just take a back seat to Chase--Higgins is in the trunk. There's just no value present at cost. Only risk and the opportunity to be disappointed.
Jason Wood: Tee Higgins is an unquestionable talent, and the Bengals pay him like an alpha receiver; his $28.8 million AAV ranks 10th at the position. But in six full seasons, he has never eclipsed 110 targets, 75 receptions, or 1,100 yards. Those are all baseline benchmarks for ranking fantasy wideouts at or above Higgins' current ADP. His 21 touchdown catches over the last two seasons are carrying a lot of implied fantasy value, yet we know touchdowns are highly volatile and not predictive year-to-year. Look no further than his own career box scores; he averaged a modest six touchdowns per season from 2020 to 2023.
Let's also not forget he is six years into his career and has never started more than 14 games in a single season. Don't misconstrue the message. Higgins has one of the highest floors in the WR2 tier, and on a per-game basis, you will be happy he is in your lineup most weeks. But unless Ja'Marr Chase misses significant time, Higgins simply does not have the target share, role, or durability to justify stretching for him as someone inevitably will on draft day.
Tetairoa McMillan, Carolina Panthers
Jason Wood: It is easy to look at Tetairoa McMillan's 1,000-yard rookie debut and assume his WR15 finish makes his 2026 ADP logical, if not conservative. The problem comes from mistaking raw full-season statistics with per-game numbers. Per-game production is far more useful as a predictor of future success, and McMillan ranked as the WR23 per game.
While I have zero issue targeting him in the mid-to-late WR2 tier as the unquestioned alpha of the Panthers' passing game, the team construct heavily caps his ultimate upside. Despite the narrative that Dave Canales has fixed Bryce Young, the stats say otherwise. The Panthers ranked a dismal 31st offensively in 2023 before Canales took over, showed real improvement in 2024 by climbing to 23rd, but then regressed right back to 27th last season.
Expecting Young to be anything more than a middling game manager at this stage is setting yourself up for failure. When your franchise passer sets career highs with just 3,011 passing yards and 23 touchdowns, expecting McMillan to better his rookie stats asks him to carve out a historically unusual piece of the target share and touchdown output. Is that impossible? No. Is it probable? Absolutely not.
Andy Hicks: McMillan can improve and should, given the traditional development of young receivers. That doesn't mean it will show up in his fantasy numbers in 2026. Only ten wide receivers caught more touchdowns than his seven last year, and a drop in those will be impossible to make up unless the passing numbers for the team take off. Jalen Coker also came on strong over the last half of the season and threatens McMillan's target share. Coker has also shown the ability to beat the best coverage from opposing defenses.
This point is something Footballguys' Matt Waldman consistently wrote during McMillan's rookie year. He struggled against man-to-man coverage. The Panthers did a great job of using him creatively to avoid such scenarios, but opposing defenses will make it a priority to put him in positions where he must. McMillan does have the potential to be a strong complementary receiver in the NFL, but as for leading an offense, he isn't there yet.
McMillan's ADP is just outside the top 12 fantasy receivers and way too high for my liking. Finishing 23rd again will be a good and more likely result.