2026 Team Previews: Kansas City Chiefs
Kansas City Chiefs 2026 Preview
All ADP data is courtesy of Fantasy Pros.
** = target in drafts at this ADP
Drafted Everywhere
**Kenneth Walker III, RB (ADP: 17, RB11): Walker finally was handed the keys to the full workload the Seattle backfield had to offer in 2025 after Zach Charbonnet suffered a late-season injury and Walker carried the team to a Super Bowl victory. Ball-knowers have known for a long time that Walker is on the highest level at the position in a real-life sense, and is truly one of the best RBs in the game. When he wasn’t having his role limited, he showed it, and now he’s joined an offense that desperately needs exactly his skill set. We cannot pretend he’s leaving some kind of RB jail from Seattle, but in Kansas City he will have as much work as his body can handle and he’ll have the NFL’s best QB running the show.
Last season Walker topped 1,000 rushing yards for the second time in his career, and went for more than 1,300 yards from scrimmage. His TDs were the lowest of his career (5), but that was a product of Charbonnet monopolizing red zone and goal line opportunities. Charbonnet was effective, so can’t knock the hustle, but Walker showed that he’s just as capable if those carries belonged to him. In Kansas City, they will. Walker was PFF’s No. 1 RB, and he actually posted his best yards per reception mark (9.1) of his career. Sure, durability has been a concern in his career but all RBs are high-risk for injury. In Walker we’re seeing an explosive, technically sound RB in his physical prime entering an offense with an elite QB, elite mind designing it (Andy Reid), and a backfield with zero credible threats to his share of the workload or goal line chances. He’s teetering on the ADP range where it’s just difficult to provide value, but I actually think he’s underrated here.
Rashee Rice, WR (ADP: 30, WR12): Rice has been generating negative headlines for a few offseasons now, and for as much as he’s produced in bursts, he’s never put together a full season of elite play. As a rookie he put up 79 receptions, 938 yards and seven touchdowns. It was a nice season, but he only made it through four games in 2024, and had offseason surgery on his knee again, which he had to rehab through a jail stint. That’s not a sentence you read every day, but it’s the reality with Rice. While acknowledging his productivity is strong when he’s on the field, and that his role is secure and unique, players at this ADP should feel safe and reliable. Rice, to this point, is anything but that and his game itself also raises red flags.
Essentially, Rice is a football designated hitter. WRs in this range are typically full field threats with robust route trees and elite separation skills. Rice posted a 55.2% success rate vs. man, a 9th-percentile mark, and had one intermediate/deep route that wasn’t red on his Reception Perception profile. Marks like this are disqualifying for most WRs from even being drafted, let alone Top 30 overall picks. But as a DH, the one thing he does is beat zone like a government mule. He’s in the 83rd percentile vs. zone, with an 82.7% success rate, and he did so mainly on slants (30.1% of his routes) and screens (13%). Rice played in eight games in 2025 and racked up six or more receptions in six of them, got to 80+ yards in four of them and scored five touchdowns spread out among three different games. He may be a one-trick pony, but it’s a damn good trick. Still, when you only do one thing you run the risk of defenses figuring out a way to stop it, leaving you with no answers. There are also talented players on the team who are similar players to Rice, with less baggage and injury history. A slip up from Rice could offer an opportunity to someone behind him and get him Wally Pip’d. While I cannot say with a straight face that his production, with that QB isn’t enticing, there’s too much that can go wrong for me to be excited about him at this high of an ADP. Had his ADP dropped due to the myriad issues facing him, he might even be a value but fantasy managers are paying a premium for what looks like a cheat code. If the code stops working though, the floor is subterranean.
Travis Kelce, TE (ADP: 96, TE10): Kelce is still around, and he’s still productive. We’re long, long past the halcyon TE1 days where Kelce was arguably a first round pick, but his name value has now diminished to the point where he could actually be nice value. He’s continued to be a startable TE for managers, largely because he’s durable. He has not hit 1,000 yards since 2022, and after scoring 12 touchdowns that year Kelce hasn’t made it past five since. 2025 was the first time in seven years that he’d posted fewer than 90 receptions, and with his yardage and TDs declining, that’s a number that needs to stay high if he is going to remain a locked-in starter.
We’ve got to be real, he’s 36 years old. Father Time is undefeated, and Kelce is waging a valiant war, but he’s clearly losing. A few things help: this team isn’t exactly stocked with target hounds besides Rice, and if the receptions do continue to tail off, there’s the upside of a TD spike for no reason beyond he’s big, athletic and has rapport with Mahomes. I wouldn’t say he’s an exciting pick anymore, nor do I see impactful Top 5 upside for him in big 2026, but I think he remains a fine floor play. I wouldn’t like drafting him around the Top 100 overall because of the low ceiling, but back-end TE1 does feel right.
Interesting Players
**Patrick Mahomes, QB (ADP: 107, QB13): Mahomes has finally convinced fantasy managers he’s just not that guy anymore for fantasy. I don’t buy that, and I’m thrilled to see his ADP drop to this range. It’s well documented in my fantasy musings that I value QBs who can throw for 4,000+ yards and get 35+ touchdowns. Mahomes has been well below both of those marks the past two seasons, but we’ve seen that at his peak Mahomes has hit 5,000+ yards and 50 touchdowns! That’s upside that nobody else in fantasy has proven, so on that alone I’m willing to gamble on his talent.
Next, if you’re not a casual, then you know on a per game basis last season Mahomes was outscoring guys like Jalen Hurts, Trevor Lawrence and Caleb Williams. Mahomes was fifth in the league in yards per game (256.2), and he was one of the best rushing performers at the position posting very similar rushing production to Lawrence, Hurts and even Jayden Daniels. You may expect that rushing production to crater coming off a torn ACL late in the season, but Mahomes’ rushing is almost all scrambles vs. designed runs. If Mahomes is scrambling it’s because there are open lanes for him, and he won’t be on the field unless he’s able to fly. It’s true that Mahomes’ stats haven’t been the same since Tyreek Hill left, because the Chiefs haven’t been able to find a credible deep threat like Hill once was. But Mahomes should have a healthy Rice to start the year, and he’ll have the best RB of his tenure in Ken Walker to change how defenses approach the Chiefs in 2026. I realize that I’m fighting a downward statistical trend that’s probably one more middling season away from just being the reality, but Mahomes genuinely has No. 1 overall player upside and he’s not even being treated as a QB1 at all. I can’t ignore that dissonance, and I will happily grab a player many respected minds believe has a chance to go down as the best player of all time.
Xavier Worthy, WR (ADP: 125, WR48): Worthy was a hot commodity this time last season despite major concerns with his size and holes in his game. We didn’t get a fair assessment of where he was at because he collided with Kelce in Week 1 and demolished his shoulder in such a way that he missed a lot of time and returned diminished. His final numbers of 42 receptions, 532 yards and one touchdown suck, but it’s hard to really pinpoint how reflective they are of him because he was so clearly not 100%. Still, a look at his Reception Perception profile doesn’t paint a picture of a high upside pick.
He was a 15th-percentile man beater, 24th-percentile zone beater and 20th-percentile press beater. To quote the legendary comedy Office Space…what is it ya do here? Worthy profiles as a slot guy, but he was below average running slants (65%), mediocre on digs (71.4%), and just okay on go routes (55.6%), his most frequently run pattern. Worthy’s track star speed is impressive, but he’s so deficient as a technician he can’t properly use it to do consistent damage. Where Worthy was at his best was in the screen game and in the flats, and even there we see problems. His speed is devastating when he gets open lanes, but because he’s so small he goes down whenever someone can get their mitts on him. Ultimately, Worthy is this exciting player in theory. Real life hits you hard when you watch him though, because his best destination, the slot, is clogged by a player who does slot things infinitely better. He doesn’t have the chops to hack it on the outside, leaving him as a gadget player who can be used effectively for the Chiefs’ offense, but doesn’t make for fantasy usefulness.
Emmett Johnson, RB (ADP: 209, RB58): Johnson is a hard runner who was extremely productive last year at Nebraska. He’s a good player who amassed over 1,800 total yards and scored 15 touchdowns. That’s no joke, and if he had a clear path to work on this team I’d be bullish. The problem is that Walker is in his way, and Walker’s going to monopolize touches. If Walker doesn’t get a ton of work, that’s malpractice by the Chiefs, and they’re too smart to botch this. Johnson does seem like a strong handcuff given what else is behind Walker though, and considering Walker’s struggles to get through entire seasons unscathed.
Deep Cuts
**Cyrus Allen, WR (ADP: 246, WR79): Allen was a very, very productive player for Cincinnati in 2025 as a senior, scoring 13 touchdowns on 51 receptions and 674 yards. At 13.2 yards per catch, he made his opportunities count, and efficient as that is that mark was the lowest of his collegiate career. He put up impressive success rates against man and zone with his biggest flaw being his small stature. At 5’11 and only 180 lbs. he could be pigeonholed as a slot receiver, and on this team he’d have to get in line. But unlike Rice and Worthy, Allen has shown the ability to get open vs. any coverage and have success via route running at all three levels.
This is encouraging for two reasons. First, if given a chance he might surprise people by being able to win on the outside and offering a different skill set from Rice who should lead the team in targets. Second, the Chiefs have no issues with recognizing a player’s skill set and using them in a way that they were not used as a prospect. Rice was an outside receiver in college and now almost exclusively pounds zone defenses as a slot. Allen will be on the outside getting snaps if he shows the Chiefs he can hack it.
Tyquan Thornton, WR (ADP: 337, WR113): Thornton is yet another small, fast guy in the Chiefs’ assembly line of the same player. Thornton has first round pedigree, but really has never been able to cut it as anything more than an occasional splash play bomb threat. He scored three times last year, which was a career high, but it was short lived and his snap counts disappeared over time.
Brashard Smith, RB (ADP: 342, RB93): Brashard Smith is around, and he’s shown he can be useful out of the backfield as a pass catcher. In the event of a Walker injury there’s probably a role for him, but he’s not draftable.
Jalen Royals, WR (ADP: N/A): Royals, a fourth-rounder last year, barely got on the field at all. I can’t say I have seen a single snap of his, and it’s possible he earns time this year given the glut of same-ish receivers on this team. We can pay attention throughout camp to see if anyone breaks out, but my money’s not on Royals.