{"id":2488,"date":"2026-01-17T02:56:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T18:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/17\/five-key-dynasty-players-could-change-dramatically-this-nfl-season\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T08:45:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T00:45:53","slug":"five-key-dynasty-players-could-change-dramatically-this-nfl-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/17\/five-key-dynasty-players-could-change-dramatically-this-nfl-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Five key Dynasty players could change dramatically this NFL season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div>\n<p>It&#8217;s a funny thing about the game we play, Fantasy Football. The most important part of the NFL season, the playoffs, is irrelevant to most football executives. But for Dynasty management, this is a time to look to the future and there are still a few players playing in the Divisional Round who could see their value rise or fall, based on this weekend&#8217;s results and the remaining playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Unsurprisingly, most of the players on this list are young and unproven guys. That makes sense, right? The less information we have, the more open we should be to changing our opinion based on a few games. But there&#8217;s at least one veteran who could change that perception, and for me, that&#8217;s Sam Darnold. <\/p>\n<p>Darnold has put together back-to-back regular seasons. He is still only 28 years old. He is under contract until 2027. Sounds like he should be a top floor QB2 at the very least. But he turned a pumpkin in the playoffs last year, turned the ball over twice, and lost to the Rams in the Wild Card Round. And the Vikings moved on. This year, the Seahawks earned the top seed and a bye in the Divisional Round, so we&#8217;re still waiting to see Darnold in the playoffs. If he repeats last year&#8217;s performance then we have to wonder how long his leash in Seattle is. On the other hand, if he leads the Seahawks to the Super Bowl, he should have many years of safety as an NFL starter.<\/p>\n<p>In my first update of the January Empire rankings I had Darnold at QB25, behind Bryce Young, JJ McCarthy, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Tyler Shough, and Matthew Stafford. He could pass several of those QBs in the next month. <\/p>\n<p>This week on FFT Dynasty I did a one-man post bag answering your questions about the 2026 rookie pick, Rashee Rice, and more. We&#8217;re back to two episodes a week for the off season and have lots of great content planned for the Spring. Check it out:<\/p>\n<p><iframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/show\/2aHlmMJw1m8FareKybdNfG?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Luther Burden quietly began his 42nd straight playoff streak against the Packers. That came after he averaged 81 yards per game in the final month of the regular season. He was one of the best wide receivers in the class of 2025 and I&#8217;m not sure his rookie season did much to change that. Honestly I could have put any number of Bears in this article, but Burden seems to have the widest range of possible outcomes. After week 18 I have him ranked as WR17 in Dynasty and a month from now anywhere from WR12-25 seems possible. One Bears rookie, Colston Loveland, has already secured his place as a top five tight end for next year.<\/p>\n<p>Like Burden, Jayden Higgins had an uneven rookie season that was better in the second half than the first. Now he may earn a playoff spot against New England without WR1 Nico Collins on the field. There are Dynasty analysts who believe Higgins has as much upside as Burden, and there are others who believe he is the best Dynasty WR3. I have him in WR32 for now, but he can certainly change my mind with a great performance under the bright lights against a tough matchup.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve read any of my dynasty stories this season, you know I&#8217;m a big believer in TreVeyon Henderson. While it&#8217;s hard to say he had a bad rookie season, with 1,132 yards from scrimmage and 10 TDs, it was disappointing that he couldn&#8217;t handle more work from Rhamondre Stevenson. And Stevenson has been very good as of late. If that continues and Stevenson looks like he&#8217;ll be staying in New England next year I may have to re-evaluate my RB8 ranking of Henderson in Dynasty. But if Henderson looks like the star I believe he is, you&#8217;ll be hearing a lot more from me about him going into 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Ricky Pearsall is not a rookie, but it feels like we may know a lot less about him than the rookies above. He has played in 20 games in his two NFL seasons and has played less than 60% of the games in six of those. Pearsall is fighting to play this weekend and has the potential to increase his value if he matches his production in his last two games, when he caught 11 passes for 181 yards. As of now, I have Pearsall as a WR30, a pretty good picture of a boom\/bust WR3. That&#8217;s probably where he&#8217;ll stay unless he can give us a lot of good games in the playoffs.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a funny thing about the game we play, Fantasy Football. The most important part of the NFL season, the playoffs, is irrelevant to most football executives. But for Dynasty management, this is a time to look to the future and there are still a few players playing in the Divisional Round who could see &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2490,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488\/revisions\/2490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insightresearcher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}