# Seattle Seahawks Fantasy Preview 2026: The Field Has Piled Onto a Rookie Back, and RB Sleeper Calls Are Its Worst Category

*Published 2026-08-30 — MissedTakes*

Seattle enters 2026 off a 14-3 season and a Super Bowl title, and the fantasy industry has responded the way it usually does with a champion: by hunting for the cheap piece. There are 50 graded-or-pending sleeper calls on Seahawks players in our database and 11 bust calls, and they cluster hard on one name.

Here is what the field is saying, and then the part this site exists for — how much of it has historically been worth anything.

## The running backs: one rookie, an avalanche of hype

Seattle took Notre Dame running back **Jadarian Price** at pick 32 of the [2026 draft](/nfl), and he is far and away the most-discussed fantasy Seahawk of this offseason. He is the subject of 39 takes in our database, more than any other Seattle player.

The tone is uniform. [Rich Eisen](/pundits/rich-eisen) said Price is "in the catbird seat... Seattle's gonna use him." [Derek Brown](/pundits/derek-brown) called him ["an intriguing RB2 with a ton of upside in 2026"](/opinions/9ec57457-8ad5-420a-8bc0-32bfe2d53035). Evan Tarracciano wrote that Price at RB26 in expert consensus rankings is behind "committee/rotational backs" and he'll "invest in Price wherever possible." Jake Ciely went furthest: ["he's guaranteed RB two in my opinion."](/opinions/d28bbbe1-24a8-40ed-985c-710638a7d3ca) Mike Fanelli, Liz Loza, Matthew Berry, Lawrence Iacona, Austin Swaim, Bob Harris and FantasyPros' consensus all filed some version of the same call.

The lone dissent on record is Scott Pianowski: "So long as Yahoo drafters consider Price a mid-60s pick, I'll be sitting this one out." That is one bust call against roughly a dozen buys. When a rookie's price has already moved to the seventh round and the consensus rank is RB26, "he's undervalued" is a much thinner claim than it was in May.

**Zach Charbonnet** is the split. Ralph Vacchiano expects him to be Seattle's "unquestioned No. 1 back" and put up "Walker-like numbers." Eric Moody frames him as the value *because* of the Price hype: "Rookie Jadarian Price is being drafted as Seattle's starter, making Charbonnet the better value in the double-digit rounds." Against that, Derek Brown is fading him — ["This unknown/moving timeline has me shying away from Charbonnet for 2026"](/opinions/492065e5-3674-4253-88da-b01cdcc11ec5) — and FantasyPros' consensus lists him at RB45, thirteen spots below his ADP, as a back to avoid. Emanuel Wilson gets one throwaway consensus mention.

## The receivers: everyone agrees JSN is great, nobody agrees what that's worth

**Jaxon Smith-Njigba** is the only Seahawk drawing real top-of-draft debate, and it is a genuine disagreement. [Rich Hribar](/pundits/rich-hribar) has him in Tier 1 of his WR rankings and "fully expect[s] Smith-Njigba to lead Seattle in targets." [Bucky Brooks](/pundits/bucky-brooks) says his ["reign as the top pass catcher could extend into 2026 and beyond."](/opinions/9dce69f4-c925-4d0d-b49d-32ca527be9e3) Jason Katz accepts regression and drafts him anyway: "a partial step back still leaves a high-end WR1, and that is exactly what the fifth pick should buy."

The fade side is specific. Kyle Soppe: "Asking JSN to repeat what he did a year ago... is difficult." FantasyPros' Featured Pros prefer "Amon-Ra St. Brown or CeeDee Lamb in that same range." [Brandon Carney](/pundits/brandon-carney) put a number on it — [WR13 or WR14](/opinions/41101974-41e2-4ee4-99ab-6aa985d3489e) for a player going as a WR3.

**Rashid Shaheed** is the WR2 dart the industry has collectively agreed on: five separate sleeper calls, including [Nathan Jahnke](/pundits/nathan-jahnke) ("a fine, high-upside late-round option"), Alex Kay ("one of the true late-round steals"), Kyle Soppe ("the easiest click I'm making in the later rounds") and Jason Katz, who expects him to overtake Cooper Kupp for the clear WR2 role at a WR56 price. Kupp himself draws no positive fantasy call in our data.

## The tight ends: the one place there's a real fight

**AJ Barner** has six sleeper calls attached to him and a bust call, and the range of stated outcomes is absurd. Kurt Blakeway lists him among tight ends with "the upside to finish in the top five." Lawrence Iacona says red-zone usage "could push him into top-10 territory." [Pat Fitzmaurice](/pundits/pat-fitzmaurice), across four separate pieces, keeps landing on ["a midrange to low-end TE2."](/opinions/c01d9331-d53c-4f38-90fe-06a4b254c330) Ryan Conway's PFF camp report goes the other way entirely, flagging Barner as a risk because "Arroyo's early emergence may have some managers sweating."

That is **Elijah Arroyo**, who has three sleeper calls of his own — Matt Bowen ("a top streaming option (and maybe even more)"), Jeremy Brener and Brendon Nelson, the last two both tying it to new play-caller Brian Fleury leaning on tight ends. Two Seattle tight ends being touted as the same breakout is the clearest signal in this whole file that nobody knows the usage split.

## The quarterback and the defense

**Sam Darnold** is the rare player the industry likes in life and not in fantasy. FantasyPros has said it twice in two days: "A real-life success who remains a fantasy avoid." Fitzmaurice is the exception, naming him a late-round target because "it's possible Seattle throws at a higher rate this year." Berry's rankings had him QB26.

On the defense: **we have zero fantasy-defense calls on Seattle, and zero graded fantasy-defense calls site-wide.** The category exists; nobody's claims have settled in it yet. There is nothing here to grade and nothing to tell you.

## Now: should you trust any of this?

Two structural facts first, both from the whole graded database rather than from Seattle.

![Fantasy sleeper calls, accuracy by position](/posts/visuals/f06a6669-9ffa-4aca-be4b-74795f7ae050.png)

Running back is the single worst position for sleeper calls in our records — 45.9 accuracy across 109 graded calls, and a skill delta of **-10.6**, meaning the average RB sleeper call has been *worse than assuming the player repeats last season*. That is exactly the category the Price consensus lives in. Wide receiver sleepers grade at 52.2 and tight end at 60.9, both on modest samples (134 and 23 graded).

Bust calls run the other way: WR busts grade at 64.3 across 42 graded calls with a +51.9 skill delta, RB busts at 55.6 across 27. On this record, the JSN fade is a better-supported *kind* of claim than the Price buy — which is not the same as saying it's right.

The lead-time picture is unhelpful for August drafters. Sleeper calls made **inside six weeks** of resolution grade at 42 accuracy (26 calls) — the *worst* bucket for that type, below the 55 posted by calls made four to eight months out (211 calls). Late camp noise has not made these calls better. Bust calls do improve close in (70 accuracy on 10 graded calls), but ten calls is not a finding.

### The people making these calls

Restricting to sleeper calls with at least five graded, here is where the pundits on Seattle's file actually sit:

| Pundit | Graded sleeper calls | Accuracy | Skill delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Pat Fitzmaurice](/pundits/pat-fitzmaurice) | 32 | 53.1 | +11.8 |
| [Derek Brown](/pundits/derek-brown) | 41 | 51.2 | +4.9 |
| [Jake Ciely](/pundits/jake-ciely) | 15 | 53.3 | +18.4 |
| [Rich Hribar](/pundits/rich-hribar) | 5 | 80.0 | +120.0 |
| [Joe Dolan](/pundits/joe-dolan) | 6 | 33.3 | -66.7 |

Fitzmaurice and Brown are the two highest-volume sleeper callers in the database and both sit near a coin flip. Hribar's 80 is on five graded calls — a number to note, not to act on. Many of the loudest Price voices (Fanelli, Tarracciano, Iacona, Swaim, FantasyPros' unsigned consensus) have no qualifying graded sleeper record at all.

### What last year's Seattle backfield calls looked like graded

The 2025 version of this exact story is instructive. Kenneth Walker III drew five graded sleeper calls and finished RB21. Whether that scored 100 or 0 depended entirely on what price the pundit named. [Mitchell Eisenstein](/pundits/mitchell-eisenstein) ("break Fantasy football wide open"), [Andrew Erickson](/pundits/andrew-erickson) and Derek Brown's May version all named no cost or a modest one and scored 100. Brown's August version — [the fourth round at RB2 prices](/opinions/fb4dac48-8a62-4706-b0a6-9e6e1af0a3c4) — needed RB13 and scored 0. Fitzmaurice's mid-fourth-round call scored 0 for the same reason. [Tom Strachan](/pundits/tom-strachan) took Charbonnet at an RB35 cost, got RB20, and scored 100.

The lesson transfers directly to Price: nearly every bullish Price take on file names the price as part of the argument, and the price has been climbing all summer. A seventh-round Price is a call this database says pundits sometimes win. A fourth-round Price is the call they lost on Walker.

Across all Seahawks takes of every kind, RB claims grade at 57.1 accuracy (28 graded) and WR at 60.8 (27 graded). Seattle's tight ends have exactly **one** graded take in our entire history. Whatever you decide about Barner and Arroyo, you are deciding it without a track record.