Analysis of the 2026 PQBFL Draft
BeaudoinBrothers
The BeaudoinBrothers will attempt to repeat as PQBFL champions in 2026 and the team projects to have one of the two best teams in the league. The saved players were already good and the draft did not create many holes, in fact if anything Beaud might have closed the pre-draft gap with league favorites Bas a little during the draft.
Strength: Defense. This could have been foreseen already last year when Beaud went heavy with defense so now the saved team is returning lots of top rated players such as Roquan Smith and Crosby. Travis Hunter could become a top DB depending on how much he is utilized on offense. Beaud's strategy of emphasizing defense has now given them a team with one of the best IDP groups. And then the draft added Jack Campbell. This LB group is now no doubt best in the league.
Weakness: RBs. Compared with the rest of this roster it is the place most likely to need help during the season. Beaud went with quantity over quality with D Swift being RB1; Swift would be no better than RB3 on more than half of PQBFL teams.
Best Pick: Jack Campbell. He was a clean fit to pile on a great IDP roster and helped make this LB group the best in the PQBFL.
Worst Pick: Jacobs Rodriguez. He's on the same NFL team as rookie WR Caleb Douglas drafted one round earlier so it did not take a genius to realize they would both have the same bye week. This had ramifications later in the draft because it forced Beaud's hand into drafting 4 rookies not 3, and therefore only 2 QBs not 3.
GloriousBastards
The GloriousBastards are the league favorites going in. Bijan Robinson, Jayden Daniels and Ja'Marr Chase are a ridiculous place to start, and the saved core promises to do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Strength: WRs. Chase, DJ Moore, Mike
Evans, Garrett Wilson and Emeka Egbuka are the league's best
five-WR group.
Weakness: Backup RBs. Bijan and
D Henry will most likely be set and forget all year long, but if
one of them gets injured that will be a major problem because the
backup group is in the bottom quartile of the PQBFL with Tuten,
Chris Rodriguez, and Justice Hill.
Best Pick: Derrick Henry.
Multiple teams shied away from D Henry due to age. Bas being
set up to win now, they made the logical pick to take Henry.
Beaud had the same thought process in 2025 and it paid off when
Henry clinched the title in the final week with a monster
performance. At Bas' expense.
Worst Pick: CJ Carr at 79th overall. A
second COL QB as early as the 9th round is a future bet on a team
built to win now; it was not the pick most likely to help the 2026
lineup.
Decepticons
Dec was the team most hammered by injuries in 2025 so this year they had the benefit of drafting first in most rounds, which helped. Dec projects to be fourth in starters and third once key backups are included so this season should be better than last year. Jonathan Taylor, Patrick Mahomes and Trey McBride give the weekly lineup a proper foundation, while the roster has enough RB cover to survive normal attrition which tends to hit the vast majority of PQBFL teams at some point.
Strength: RBs. Taylor, Kyren Williams, Cam Skattebo and Rico Dowdle form the league's best RB1-4 group.
Weakness: WRs. Dec was the only team
in the PQBFL to only draft 4 WRs so there could be issues if
injuries hit like last year. Not to mention that D Adams is
old and Flowers is brittle.
Best Pick: Myles Garrett at 78th
overall. Dec needed a DL anchor, and Garrett was a low hanging
fruit in the 8th round. It is incredible that 8 LBs and 2
DBs were drafted before Garrett so he was not even top 10
IDP. What a deal.
Worst Pick: Davante Adams at #54. He
is still a playable WR, but the roster needed more long-term juice
at the position and this was an expensive veteran bet.
WaxOnWaxOff
Wax is eighth in projected starters but second in key starters.
That is the profile of a team that may be more competitive than
its starter rank suggests once the season turns into a depth
contest particularly once bye weeks start. So expect a slow
start for Wax followed by a comeback.
Strength: QBs. Joe Burrow, Jordan Love
and Jaxson Dart give Wax three useful QB options, not only for
2026 but they are also decent 2027 assets to hold.
Weakness: WRs. Jefferson comes
with many question marks after his very bad 2025 season.
Then all backups project to less than 10.0 pts per game: Metcalf,
Sutton, M Wilson, and Downs. This is not impressive and the
WR2 spot might end up being an endless carousel of
mediocrity.
Best Pick: Joe Burrow at #16. Wax got
a true QB anchor instead of trying to patch the position
later. Last year Burrow might not have been fully healed and
his WRs were banged up as well. If everybody is healthy
Burrow has potential for QB1. He was 3rd QB drafted, and if
we count franchise player Josh Allen, in reality he was 4th QB
taken.
Worst Pick: C Loveland. Yes he
was the best TE available on the board at that point in time, but
a 3rd round pick was quite a hefty price tag to pay. Prof
was able to get Pitts much cheaper by trading a 5th round pick and
Fannin was taken in the 6th round by Adm. If somehow
Loveland has a so-so season, his 2027 will fall off a cliff if he
ends up being ranked around TE10 in twelve months from now and
that 3rd round pick will look foolish. Unlike Bowers and
McBride, the potential for being as productive as a WR does not
exist due to the other WR weapons on the Bears team.
Admirals
Adm projects to be third in starters and has a real chance to
contend and 2026 has potential to end up best season in Adm
franchise history. Josh Allen and Jahmyr Gibbs supply the
headliners and are either best franchise player duo in the PQBFL
or second best, depending on opinions compared to Bas J Chase +
Bijan. In addition, Breece Hall and Rashee Rice mean this is
not a two-player roster. If only Rice can stay out of legal
trouble.
Strength: Team Defense. The
Texans are probably ranked #1 on everybody's defense list.
It was a bit sneaky that HOU fell out of the cut player list
because they are not a key position but the Seahawks dominance in
2025 and the Broncos' dominance in 2024 including their impact on
weekly PQBFL results mean it's a hidden force.
Weakness: Rookies. Adm's top three
rookies project to be dead last in the PQBFL. The rookie
slot is the least dependable part of an otherwise contender-level
lineup. A trade might be sorely needed once Adm realizes
that their high hopes for these rookies is misplaced (J Coleman, N
Singleton, D Claiborne).
Best Pick: CJ Stroud. Yes Adm
already had Josh Allen so the backup QB position was not critical,
but considering how the QB room became completely bare moments
later in the draft, this turned out to be a stellar move because
obviously Adm needed a 2nd QB on the roster. Great value for
2027 as well.
Worst Pick: Jonah Coleman. A 4th
round pick for a rookie RB stuck behind Dobbins and RJ
Harvey? Sounds pretty bad and one of the worst values in the
entire draft.
OldNo7
Old projects to be a middling team in terms of starters.
That said, Caleb Williams, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jaxon
Smith-Njigba can and will win weeks all by themselves. The
question is whether can Old's defense keep up? If not then
it will be a bumpy ride.
Strength: WRs. JSN, Amon-Ra, Tetairoa
McMillan, Terry McLaurin and Chris Godwin are a top-two WR
group. Possibly only Bas can do better, otherwise Old should
dominate any other team.
Weakness: IDPs. The LB group ranks
ninth despite having star Carson Schwesinger as LB1, that's how
bad the other LBs are. The DB group ranks tenth, and total
IDP starters dead last. That means it's a complete one-man show:
Carson Schwesinger. The rest of the defense is simply a
collection of names. At least for now.
Best Pick: Carson Schwesinger at 48th overall. Old needed LB help, and this was a direct attempt to fix it.
Worst Pick: Jeremiah
Owusu-Koramoah. Late in the draft Old had a serious need on
defense and intentionally picked an injured LB, wait, what?
There would have been a better position for Old to choose to rack
up injury points intentionally.
FlyingElvis
The year started on the wrong foot with franchise player Josh
Jacobs being put on commish exempt list and a long suspension
looming, only days after the FE GM missing the deadline to put
Jacobs out of franchise player status when dark clouds were
starting to form on the horizon. Nonetheless, FE was able to
salvage something out of the draft being tied with a couple of
other teams for the best improvement in odds to win the league
between pre-draft and post-draft.
Strength: DBs. DeShon Elliott, Brian
Branch and Nick Emmanwori give FE the league's best projected
DB1-3 group. Unfortunately Elliott is injured to start the season
but he will not be missed.
Weakness: WRs. Chris Olave is the lead option and will be an every week starter. Unfortunately, after him it's slim pickings. FE's WR group ranks tenth out of 11 teams and FE needs a prayer and hope that someone will surprise with upside between Diggs, Golden, Shakir, or A Pierce.
Best Pick: Drake Maye at 13th overall.
FE got a high-end QB option early, and Maye is the kind of player
who helps now while still carrying real future value - he
potentially be FE's franchise player for years to come.
Worst Pick: Nick Emmanwori at 58th
overall. He is probably a good DB to have from a long-term
perspective, but for 2026 alone it is quite unclear whether he was
on anybody's top 5 DB list besides FE himself. So there was
absolutely no need to rush to draft him that early, he would have
probably been available several rounds later.
FlyEaglesFly
Being an expansion team, no miracles can be expected but FEF came
out of the expansion draft with Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley and
Christian McCaffrey which is not bad at all for 2026. The
problem is that this core is highly questionable for 2027 and
beyond due to age, so was FEF drafting to win now or build for the
future?
Strength: RBs. Barkley, McCaffrey,
Corum and Perine make FEF's RB1-4 group third best in the league.
Quite impressive for the position which was the most sought after
early in the draft.
Weakness: LBs. Drafting only 3 LBs is less than ideal to being with, but after Sherwood, it's dead wood. Bonitto might have been mistaken to be a DL by the GM? And Isaiah McDuffie does not belong in the PQBFL at all.
Best Pick: Blake Corum. Late in
2025 Corum was already seriously eating into Kyren Williams'
workload. If the trend continues Corum might end up
splitting 50/50 with Williams and came at a fraction of the price.
Worst Pick: Aaron Rodgers at #154. At
that point in the draft Rodgers became the third QB on FEF's
roster. FEF still had more urgent WR, LB and DL work to do.
BetterBallers
According to league odds to win, for an expansion team Bett did
not draft as well as FEF and have less of a chance to win.
The projections for starters rank last in the PQBFL, however one
key distinction is that Bett's roster is a lot younger especially
at the top. The first three picks were all guys who could
provide decent franchise rosters next year: Lamar Jackson, James
Cook, and Nico Collins.
Strength: Top 3 WRs. Collins,
Higgins and Luther Burden give Bett a legitimate trio at WR.
Half of PQBFL teams do not have three WRs which project into the
double digits per game, like Bett has.
Weakness: DLs. This was a complete afterthought during the draft and Bett only took two DLs with their very last 2 picks, one of them being an old dude coming out of retirement (A Donald) with very unclear outlook for the season.
Best Pick: Nico Collins at 19th
overall. Bett needed a dependable offensive cornerstone and got
one. He's still young and his QB is still improving as
well. That's the kind of roll of dice that franchise teams
need.
Worst Pick: Ventrell Miller.
Being already behind the 8-ball as expansion team, there are no
picks to waste but taking a LB who is not even young (27), who is
unproven, who is playing in the shadow of Oluokun, and who was
taken in the 7th round to boot, that's not far from the definition
of a waste.
ProfessorMJ
This might have been the story of the draft. Before the
draft Prof was projecting 3rd in the league in odds of winning, in
a tight pack from 2nd to 4th. Yet somehow the GM thought
their saved team sucked balls so they kind of threw the towel
already before the season even began. What was that
about? The strategy worked a few years ago when Prof drafted
with the future in mind when they were an expansion team.
But it is unclear that the timing was right to do this, unlike
when Prof was an expansion team. Time will tell. But
2026 will indeed be a throw-away year with Prof drafting 5 college
players but only 1 kicker, 1 team defense, and 1 DL, on top of
that, not one, but two WRs who are out for the year due to
injury. Ouch.
Strength: COL. How could the strength
be anything but the college position considering 9 PQBFL teams
only drafted two and Prof took 5? An embarrassment of
riches. And even better next year with potentially an orgy
of valuable rookies.
Weakness: Depth. Once bye weeks and injuries start to roll, Prof will pop more goose eggs on the starting lineup than the mother of all geese.
Best Pick: Dante Moore at 69th overall. He was the first COL selected in the PQBFL and fit the long-term strategy of the GM.
Worst Pick: Malachi Fields. If
the goal is to stack things up for 2027 then fine, but considering
Prof already has Jeremiah Love for 2026 there does not seem to be
much benefit of having other rookies. Using a 10th round
pick on a middling rookie WR is unlikely to improve Prof's 2027
saved team: it is hard to see how Fields can be worth more than
10th round in 2027 - heck X Worthy (FEF) was also taken in the
10th round this year and Fields is unlikely to have that kind of
value next year especially since Nabers is going nowhere.
Ballers
Ball projects ninth in strength of starters but has enough young
offense to avoid being a throwaway especially with Puka Nacua
being an above average franchise player. The problem is more
on the saved team side which has some players who would not have
been drafted such as Kendricks (unsigned) and Ollie Gordon.
Strength: Starting RBs. The key
will be whether RBs Omarion Hampton and Quinshon Judkins can stay
healthy, they came with a bit of a discount due to injury concerns
but if they are healthy one or both can develop into franchise
player quality. They are currently right on the cusp.
Weakness: QBs. Yes Darnold won
the Super Bowl but he ranked 21/28 QBs in the PQBFL last year so
nowhere near starter status. In addition, Kyler Murray and D
Watson might be out of a job by the end of this season.
Best Pick: Nick Bolton at 66th overeall. He added a useful LB to a roster that needed reliable weekly IDP points.
Worst Pick: Quentin Johnston in the
6th round. At that point of the draft Ball already had a franchise
WR (Puka), had used their 5th round pick on a WR (Jameson
Williams), and had two serviceable saved WRs Jeudy and Brian
Thomas. There was plenty of quality to be found at other
positions, in fact WR might have been the least position of need
for Ball at that stage.