Pay the Right Price: 8 Redraft Calls Before Draft Season Heats Up

Buys, Fades, Holds

LAB REPORTS

By: The Lab

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Most drafts aren't lost because someone picked a bad player. They're lost because someone paid too much for a good one. That's the whole game to me. I don't care as much about who a guy is as I care about what he costs. Here are 8 names I keep coming back to this summer. Three I'm buying right now, three I'm fading at their price, and two I'm holding onto for now while I watch how camp plays out.

The Buys

Christian Watson, WR, Green Bay Packers

Watson is going in the 5th round on Underdog right now, sitting around WR28. I don't think that price survives August. He missed the first 7 games of last season recovering from a torn ACL, but the moment he came back, he immediately became Green Bay's number 1 fantasy scoring option at receiver, not just a complementary piece. Over his 10 games, he averaged the 17th most fantasy points per game among all receivers in the league, mostly because he was pulling a 34% share of the team's air yards as their designed deep threat and preferred red zone target.

Here's the part that gets me. Doubs and Wicks are both gone this offseason. Watson is walking into the biggest target share of his career, and he was already ranked 4th among 109 qualifying receivers in yards per route run last year on a route share that only cracked 68%. Give him a full-time role on top of that efficiency, and the ceiling gets scary. Health is the one real question mark, and it's a fair one given his injury history. But a 5th round price for a guy this efficient with this much target volume coming his way is a discount I'm taking every single draft.

Trevor Lawrence, QB, Jacksonville Jaguars

Lawrence finished last season as the overall QB4, but that full-season number actually hides how good he was. Before the bye, he was QB18 in points per game. After the bye, he was the number 1 quarterback in football over his final 10 games, and not by a little. He beat the QB2 by more than 4 points a game down the stretch.

Right now, he's going around QB10 in composite ADP, which lands him in the 7th or 8th round for most drafts. So you're basically getting the guy who just torched the league for 10 straight weeks at a mid-round QB price. I don't need to overthink that one.

Tyler Warren, TE, Indianapolis Colts

Warren's rookie year tells two different stories. Through his first 10 games, he averaged 11.1 half PPR points a game and looked like a top 3 tight end. Then Daniel Jones went down with a torn Achilles in Week 14, and over his final 7 games, Warren fell off to 5.6 points a game. Even with that stretch dragging his numbers down, he still closed the year as a top 5 or top 6 tight end, depending on your scoring, which says a lot about how good the first half really was.

Jones is expected back healthy for 2026, and Indianapolis just traded away Michael Pittman, which clears out a big chunk of targets, with nowhere else to go but Warren. Most rankings still have him outside the top 5 at the position. I think that's a mistake. I'm personally holding him as a keeper in one of my home leagues, and I'd rather buy him now than wait for the rest of the industry to catch up.

The Fades

Davante Adams, WR, Los Angeles Rams

Adams is a future Hall of Famer, and I'm still not paying what he currently costs. Last year, he caught just 60 passes for 789 yards, which is a quiet season by his standards, but he somehow led the entire NFL in receiving touchdowns with 14. That's not a normal ratio. That's touchdown luck stacked on a low target total, and touchdown-heavy seasons like that rarely repeat the same way twice.

He's also going into year 2 in that Rams offense at 33 years old, sharing the field with Puka Nacua, who is clearly the alpha there now. His ADP still prices him like a guy who's going to score 14 more touchdowns on limited volume. I'd rather bet on a receiver going a round or two later with a real path to targets than bet on Adams doing that again.

Malik Nabers, WR, New York Giants

This one's just about health, and right now nobody inside the building even agrees on the timeline. Giants GM Joe Schoen has said publicly he expects Nabers to be ready for Week 1. Head coach John Harbaugh has been a lot less committal, saying only that the goal is to have him back at some point during camp. He's coming off a second cleanup surgery on the same knee, and realistic recovery windows for that kind of procedure stretch anywhere from mid-summer into October.

Nobody's questioning the talent here. But a recurring issue on the same knee, plus real disagreement in the building about whether he plays Week 1, is exactly the kind of situation I'd rather someone else draft into. If he slides far enough because of the uncertainty, I'll take another look. At his current price, I'm passing.

Saquon Barkley, RB, Philadelphia Eagles

Barkley went from 482 touches in his historic 2024 season down to 346 in 2025, and the efficiency dropped right along with the volume. His explosive run rate fell from 7.2%, which was 4th best in the league, all the way down to 4.6%. His yards after contact per attempt dropped from 2.26 to 1.96. He still finished as the overall RB14, which tells you how thin running back is right now more than it tells you Barkley is fine.

He's 29 now, closing in on 2,000 career carries, and he's still going off the board early based mostly on name value and a great offensive line rather than what actually showed up on tape last year. A healthy Lane Johnson and a new offensive coordinator might help some. I'd still rather spend that pick on a back with fresher legs and a clearer path to touches than bet on this specific bounce back at this specific price.

The Holds

Jaxson Dart, QB, New York Giants

Dart made just 11 starts as a rookie and still finished as the overall QB14. 2,272 passing yards, 15 touchdowns, only 5 interceptions, plus 487 rushing yards and 9 rushing touchdowns on the ground. In the games where he actually played real snaps, that works out to 24.7 fantasy points a game, and he did all of it with almost nothing at receiver for most of the year.

He can really zip the ball when he's on. And with so many questions still hanging over that receiver room outside of a hopefully healthy Malik Nabers, I could see him leaning on his legs even more this year. That rushing floor is real. My only real hesitation is the Matt Nagy offense. I'm not sold on the scheme yet. But between the arm talent and that rushing floor, I think we might have a league winner sitting outside the top 12 QB conversation.

Rashee Rice, WR, Kansas City Chiefs

When Rice is actually on the field, he's a real WR1. That part has never been in question. It's everything else that makes this complicated heading into camp. He served a 30-day jail sentence this spring for violating probation tied to his 2024 crash case, and he had knee surgery to clean up debris right before he was booked. The league has reportedly shown no real interest in piling on more discipline on top of that, so a suspension doesn't look likely at this point.

Still, he's missed a lot of football the last few seasons between injuries and suspensions, and this offseason cost him all of the Chiefs' OTAs and minicamp. But this Chiefs offense runs through its receivers, and Rice is the guy Mahomes trusts most when he's healthy and available. If he shows up to camp right, this is a sink-or-swim situation at a real discount. I'm betting on swim.

Busy Dad Fantasy | X: @BusyDadFantasy

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