Preseason Breakout Watch: 4 Potential Breakouts To Watch This Summer

It’s a lot of fun to pluck players from the depths of the ADP rankings that become key contributors to a winning season. This isn’t an easy task, but when you find these gems they typically lead to playoff berths. It’s too early to be super confident in who will break out, but as the preseason really gets into gear, these are four players to monitor this summer for potential major value.

Jack Bech, WR, Raiders

Bech did next to nothing as a rookie despite the path being pretty clear on a Raiders offense that was mostly bereft of impact at the WR position in 2026. That was a shame, because the Raiders did spend fairly high draft capital on him (Round 3 pick), and his Reception Perception profile showed that he did good work with extremely limited opportunity. Everyone who watched any of his film understood that Bech is a dog out there, and a technician who lacks the burners to be a major deep threat or consistently stick as an X receiver. The Raiders’ staff did not get the memo, and only put him in the slot for 28% of his snaps. That led to 15.4% of his routes run being nines, where he turned in a success rate of 36.4%, which is ghastly. Bech’s success rates on most of the deep stuff is stomach churning, but again, that’s not what he does. When he was running digs, curls and slants he was chewing defenders up at an 80%+ clip on all three routes. Bech’s overall success rate vs. zone was at 80% (63rd percentile) and his win rate against man was at 68.7% (51st percentile).

Those are good marks, and even though the sample is limited, it’s proof of concept from his college tape. Bech is a slot receiver/flanker player who can win at will in the short and intermediate areas. He’s a chain mover through and through, and in his senior season at TCU he was extremely productive with 62 receptions, 1,034 yards and nine touchdowns. We now have a new staff in Las Vegas, and this group did not make any major additions to the WR room. The passing game will revolve around TE Brock Bowers, but opting against bringing in big names means they’re likely going to war with what they’ve got already. That means Bech will get his chance to shine, and I believe he’ll wind up being a high priority waiver addition very early in the season. The lucky folks who saw this first might want to spend their final pick on Bech and save that FAAB dump.

Isaiah Likely, TE, Giants

Likely has been a tantalizing player for years now, consistently overshadowed in Baltimore by fellow TE Mark Andrews, and held back by years of a run-heavy approach. This is a player who, for all his gifts, has never caught more than 42 passes or hit the 500-yard mark. Still, one of fantasy football’s cheat codes is having an elite TE without paying the elite TE price in drafts. Long story short, Top 5 TEs are usually present on the best fantasy teams, but TEs drafted in the very early rounds rarely return as much value as WRs or RBs drafted in the same range. Of course, it’s nice to have a Brock Bowers but the goal is to get him before he costs a second round pick. So yeah, there’s risk in waiting and drafting Likely, but he’s got the tools to put up high-end fantasy production and now he figures to have the opportunity.

The Giants offense was messy last season, but they’ve brought in John Harbaugh to bring order after years of chaos. This offense was without superstar WR Malik Nabers for most of the season, and TE Theo Johnson was one of the players who filled that void. He was second on the team in targets (74), which is a good deal more than Likely has ever seen in Baltimore where his career-high was 58 targets. Likely should usurp Johnson immediately, not least because Johnson frustrated Giants fans and fantasy managers alike with a 6.8% drop rate that was cut nearly in half from his rookie campaign (11.6%). Likely has shown far surer hands in his career, and has also been a reliable fantasy weapon when Andrews was not in the lineup. In nine games Likely has played where Andrews was inactive, he’s averaged 3.4 receptions and 50.2 yards and scored at least one touchdown in five of them. These are pretty solid TE numbers, and the volume should be higher in a Giants’ offense where he’s a featured option with an ascending QB (Jaxson Dart). Likely’s usage will be worth monitoring this summer, because he strikes me as a major potential value.

Travis Hunter, WR, Jaguars

Hunter entered the NFL with so much hype, but if you were clued in, you probably understood that it would take time for him to become an actual fantasy option. This is a player who was primarily a CB in college with Colorado, and who was able to put up big numbers as a WR due to pure athletic superiority and an offense designed to get him the ball in space to out-athlete opponents. He’s still an eye-popping athlete, even at the NFL level, but he absolutely needed refinement to contribute consistently as a WR and the Jaguars threw far too much at him for that to happen even before he got hurt.

His numbers on the season sucked, and for managers he was mostly useless, but if you can get past the hype he had and be objective there remains a lot to be excited for, especially since he’ll probably be basically free in drafts. In his final two games before a season-ending injury he saw seven targets vs. Seattle, and then 14 targets vs. the Rams. In that last game, Hunter caught eight passes for 101 yards and a touchdown. It was a real breakout game in which he was a featured target and the offense appeared to be expanding his role. There was reason for this shift; Hunter was smoking man coverage at a 75% rate (81st percentile) and destroying press at a similar clip (76.9%, 82nd percentile). Hunter was killing opponents on slants (81.1%), digs (84.6%) and posts (87.5). These are places that Trevor Lawrence isn’t afraid to go to thanks to his laser beam right arm, and it’s an area where Brian Thomas Jr. seemed to develop the yips when he traveled there.

It’s been a strange offseason of news for Hunter, with reports saying he would barely be playing WR anymore to reports stating that he’s going to be very involved. We won’t know until the season starts, which should keep his ADP in the basement. Don’t be afraid to gamble with a late pick on a guy who is talented enough to probably be a legit WR2 in 2026 if given enough of a chance. With Jakobi Meyers manning the slot most of the time, Hunter, who was pigeonholed there in the early going, can be more effective as a flanker who is moved around and schemed into space where he was electric as a rookie and should only improve.

Chig Okonkwo, TE, Commanders

Okonkwo is a player I just can’t quit, and despite him being in the NFL for quite a while now, I still think he should be respected as a potential fantasy factor. Okonkwo has been stuck in low-output Tennessee offenses his entire career that were extremely run heavy and featured mediocre to bad QB play. Still, he’s been able to scrape his way to 50ish catches and 500-550 yards with TD numbers that removed him from relevance. He’ll now head to Washington, where Jayden Daniels will be, by far, the best QB he’s ever played with and where the pass-catching hierarchy is, as of this writing, not established beyond Terry McLaurin.

Washington’s second-most targeted pass catcher in 2025 was TE Zach Ertz, who turned 72 looks into 50 yards, 504 yards and four touchdowns. That’s right around what Okonkwo has been doing annually for the Titans, and at this point in his career Okonkwo has way more juice than Ertz. There are rumors of Brandon Aiyuk eventually making his way to the Commanders, which would surely affect Okonkwo’s outlook, but as it stands the WR room behind McLaurin involves Luke McCaffery, Jaylin Lane, Treylon Burks, Van Jefferson and rookie Antonio Williams. It’s not a Murderer’s Row. If a significant addition isn’t made, expect TE to be a central part of the passing game, and if those Ertz targets go to Okonkwo, we can expect more fireworks.