The Philadelphia Eagles are (hopefully) bouncing back from a down year in 2025, but will embracing AI while moving AJB help things? It’s too soon to tell. Fire Nick Sirianni. Let’s take a look at the 2026 Philadelphia Eagles’ fantasy football sleeper, undervalued, and overvalued players!
Sleeper: Makai Lemon, Wide Receiver (WR39, Pick 89 OVR)
Rookie Makai Lemon can do a little bit of everything. The Trojans tasked him with the slot, out wide, getting routes and carries out of the backfield, and even throwing touchdowns (though he is primarily a slot receiver). He’s a versatile athlete who is a refined and polished route runner and who displays his exceptional athleticism when he breaks off the route at the top of his stem. Lemon is a fantastic contested-catch receiver, as he is a superb ball tracker and a tough, soft-handed receiver. Weirdly, I don’t have a lot to say about Lemon, because he is just fantastic at pretty much everything you ask him to do.
I do have a couple of quibbles with his game. First, if a defensive back can jam him at the line of scrimmage or quickly close the gap, Lemon struggles to shake him loose. Second, Lemon also struggles to find the proper spot in a zone, frequently drifting towards defenders and minimizing his space to catch the football. Lemon also lacks a top gear and the ability to juke multiple defenders in the open field.
All in all, Lemon has the ability to hit the ground running as a fantasy football-relevant receiver immediately. He will get the trust of his coaching staff right off the bat, because he never drops anything, lays it all on the field, and blocks his ass off. Lemon is a bit on the athletic side of the “athletic versus tough” binary, which drifts him towards the Luther Burden camp, and away from the Amon-Ra St. Brown camp (where many have him). He should contribute right away and have an exemplary and long career.
The Eagles previously focused their entire passing game around two receivers, with A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith taking a combined 234 targets in 2025. Like the two receivers taken before him, Lemon steps into a great situation to get a ton of volume in 2026. The Eagles took a renewed look at their passing game last season, and getting rid of malcontent A.J. Brown for the more versatile Lemon will allow them to mix and match with Lemon and Smith in the slot, giving them more unpredictability at wide receiver.
My favorite wide receiver in this class is going to a high-powered offense that has a renewed passing priority and will be without its #1 wide receiver last season. Makai Lemon is a priority add for me in fantasy football drafts, and is going to have a great rookie campaign for fantasy football purposes. I just hope the Niners beat them in the playoffs again.
Undervalued: Dallas Goedert, Tight End (TE12, Pick 115 OVR)
If Dallas Goedert is playing, then you play him. It is not a difficult thing to grasp. He has been TE5, TE12, and TE10, and TE5 per game in the last four seasons. Unfortunately, he missed five, three, seven, and two games in the last four seasons, as well. This is the rub with Goedert; he is a glass cannon, missing multiple games in each of the last seasons, and averaging just 13 games played per year in that span. However, in that span, he also averages 94 targets, 70 receptions, and 825 yards per season (with 6 TDs).
Goedert has a lot under the hood to like, as well. He finished fifth in red zone target share, the third season inside the top-seven in the last three years. He’s also on the field a ton, and not blocking, ranking tenth in routes run last season despite missing two games, while snagging the twelfth-most slot snaps last year. Goedert led the position in touchdowns last year (eleven), and you can’t go broke betting against that. However, if he drops that in half, he is still a top-ten option thanks to his consistent role in the passing game over the years. Goedert is TE13 and is outside of the normal starting tight end ranks. He’s a great option to pair with Isaiah Likely if you want to go with a one-two punch at tight end.
Overvalued: DeVonta Smith, Wide Receiver (WR12, Pick 27 OVR)
People are really excited about DeVonta Smith this season, and with good reason. Without A.J. Brown on the roster, DeVonta Smith has been very good. Over the last two seasons, without A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith has been bonkers good, posting an average of 9.6 targets, 6.7 receptions, 79.7 yards, and 0.25 touchdowns per game (these are, of course, without the Tanner McKee game). Those 16.63 PPR points would have been WR9 last season, and that feels extremely iffy. After all, it’s a lot like we are taking four games, tossing out the part of the sample size that we don’t like so we have three exceptional games, and then stretching them over a whole season. Oh wait, that’s exactly what people are doing.
Never mind taking pie-in-the-sky expectations as the basis for ADP; DeVonta Smith without A.J. Brown stats are really “DeVonta Smith without a viable WR2” stats, because in his games without A.J. Brown, these were the other WRs vying for targets across from Smith: Quez Watkins, Jalen Reagor, Greg Ward, Britain Covey, Jahan Dotson, Johnny Wilson, and Darius Cooper. Now, the Eagles have Makai Lemon in tow, who profiles more as a WR1 than DeVonta Smith does, and we all want to crown DeVonta Smith as a fantasy WR1. No thank you to that. It’s my easiest WR click to skip at his ADP.
