3 Fantasy Football Rookies to Draft in Dynasty Leagues: Underrated Players to Target (2026)

May 21, 2026

Patrick makes the case for fantasy football dynasty sleepers -- three undervalued rookies to draft and stash. Player analysis for Eli Raridon, De'Zhaun Stribling, and Bryce Lance.

Dynasty managers have many interests, chief among them hoarding future picks, spamming the group chat for advice in any one of their 14 other leagues, or posing with the championship trophy in ways they probably wouldn’t if they knew what I’d done with it the year before. But above all else, dynasty managers love planting their flag on unheralded rookies.

Anyone can look smart by opening a rookie draft with Jeremiyah Love after months of hype and the reassurance of top-3 NFL Draft capital, but that’s not the type of pick that lives forever in league lore. The type of pick worth screenshotting the draft board three years later and casually (blatantly) reminding your league of all the fantasy goodness they allowed to slip to you … well, that requires a little more digging.

In a class as uniquely flat as this one, opportunities are going to present themselves throughout the later rounds of your draft, and when they do, these three undervalued sleepers belong at the top of your queue.

Eli Raridon, Tight End, New England Patriots

When balancing landing spot, upside, and draft capital, Eli Raridon has a legitimate argument as the TE3 in this rookie class, and yet he’s routinely going two full rounds later than Kenyon Sadiq and Eli Stowers in dynasty rookie drafts.

The 6’6”, 250-pound Notre Dame product fell to New England at the end of the third round, and there’s a strong chance he would have gone considerably earlier if not for a brutal injury history. Raridon first tore his ACL as a high school senior basketball player, which, by the way … basketball-playing tight end? That doesn’t do anything for you?

After undergoing a hamstring-graft procedure that had him back running routes just four months later, he re-tore the same ACL during his freshman season at Notre Dame. Since returning to action by the end of the 2023 season, however, he hasn’t missed a game.

Raridon started all 12 games as a senior, and while his production profile still requires some projection, the athletic profile absolutely does not. His 9.46 Relative Athletic Score puts him in the 94th percentile of all tight ends since 1987, and that athleticism shows up regularly in his ability to stretch the seam, contort his body on back-shoulder throws, or extend his massive frame along the boundary.

Raridon walks into a Patriots offense tied to 23-year-old MVP runner-up Drake Maye, whose willingness to attack the middle of the field has already made tight ends a featured part of the offense. More than 30% of Maye’s career touchdown passes have gone to the position.

Why might Patriots third-rounder Eli Raridon be able to function as a quarterback’s best friend in Foxboro?

We spoke to Notre Dame offensive coordinator and tight ends coach @MikeDenbrock to find out.

Check out the latest Next Pats here. ⬇️

📺: https://t.co/1mV2a0osIG pic.twitter.com/LQWEZmeFGq

— Phil Perry (@PhilAPerry) May 4, 2026

Raridon also lands with the reigning Assistant Coach of the Year, Josh McDaniels, who has become an ideal dynasty pairing for young talent. He remains one of the most respected offensive minds in the game, while his well-documented allergy to head-coaching success makes him unlikely to leave for another job anytime soon.

While the rest of the league has only recently rediscovered the joys of 12 personnel, McDaniels has been on that kick since taking the league by storm back in 2010 with Rob Gronkowski and the less affable other one.

With elite athletic traits, Day 2 draft capital, and a future opening atop the depth chart with 31-year-old Hunter Henry in the final year of his contract, Raridon checks nearly every box of a successful fantasy tight end.

And because much of the fantasy community still seems to believe that ACL repairs are being done with Civil War-era technology, all that developmental dynasty goodness comes at a discount.

De'Zhaun Stribling, Wide Receiver, San Francisco 49ers

De'Zhaun Stribling was the 33rd pick in the NFL Draft and the sixth wide receiver selected, yet in most dynasty rookie drafts, he’s lingering near the end of the second round and sometimes sliding well into the third.

In a normal year, that would qualify as odd. In a draft class weak enough to push Day 3 running backs into the top-15 picks of rookie drafts, it borders on negligence.

Stribling’s selection at the top of the second round came as a surprise to much of the fantasy community, but not necessarily to the NFL. By draft week, momentum had been building behind the scenes, with several plugged-in evaluators projecting him to sneak into Round 2, including The Athletic's Dane Brugler in his final mock draft.

And while the 49ers have earned a dogpile-worthy reputation by unsuccessfully breaking from consensus, it’s not difficult to see why Kyle Shanahan would fall for this particular skill set.

First look at De’Zhaun Stribling in a 49ers uniform pic.twitter.com/0F8DSEkaUh

— David Lombardi (@LombardiHimself) May 8, 2026

Stribling is a big-bodied possession receiver who plays with no fear over the middle of the field, which just so happens to be Brock Purdy’s favorite place to throw.

With the ball in his hands, he adopts a running back’s mentality, piling up over 1,200 career yards after the catch while playing with the type of forward-leaning violence that will also suit him well in Jauan Jennings’ vacated role as a close-to-the-action blocker.

He also produced for three different programs, topping 50 receptions and 800 yards at both Oklahoma State and Ole Miss, while consistently saving some of his best work for the biggest stages. During Ole Miss’ three-game College Football Playoff run, he averaged nearly 93 receiving yards per game, and his two best performances of 2025 came against SEC rival Georgia.

The route tree still needs cultivation, with hitches and nines accounting for more than half of his total routes run at Ole Miss, but his athletic testing suggests there’s more available than what he was asked to do in college. At 210 pounds, Stribling’s 4.36-second 40 time helped him earn a Relative Athletic Score in roughly the 96th percentile among wide receivers.

While he may not step immediately into a featured role, the 49ers’ current offensive nucleus of Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, and Mike Evans is a combined 95 years old and has been synchronously healthy with the regularity of a cicada emergence.

San Francisco is going to need its next wave of pass-catchers in the near future, and Stribling has a real chance to be the one fantasy managers regret letting slide.

Bryce Lance, Wide Receiver, New Orleans Saints

Once this rookie draft falls off a cliff after the first handful of picks, one trait worth gambling on at any point in the flattened-out later rounds will always be athleticism, and few players in this class bring more of it than the Saints' newest wide receiver, Bryce Lance.

Lance posted a 9.94 Relative Athletic Score in the predraft process, placing him among the top-25 wide receiver testers of the past 40 years. At 6’3” and 204 pounds, he ripped off a 4.34 40-yard dash and went full-Tigger in posting a 41.5” vertical and 11’1” broad jump, confirming that the man-among-boys athletic advantage seen all over his North Dakota State tape was more than just beating up on FCS competition.

Because New Orleans had already spent premium picks on Jordyn Tyson and tight end Oscar Delp, Lance’s fourth-round selection arrived with considerably less fanfare. But he’s spent most of his football life operating from the shadows as the younger brother of former third overall pick Trey Lance, and the landing spot itself could not be better suited to his abilities.

"You just got the steal of the draft!"@NDSUfootball WR Bryce Lance on his call from the #Saints pic.twitter.com/c5o8QLfsiZ

— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) April 25, 2026

Kellen Moore has consistently built offenses that attack vertically. During his time running the Cowboys offense from 2019-22, Dallas routinely finished near the top of the league in downfield passing. In his lone season in Los Angeles, Moore increased Justin Herbert’s average depth of target by 1.3 yards from the previous year.

Unsurprisingly, those same philosophies carried over to his first year as the head coach in New Orleans. Even as split-safety shells dragged passing production across the league into the mud, Moore’s pace and aggressiveness still helped Tyler Shough eclipse 300 passing yards twice over his final three games.

He averaged 293 yards per contest over the final month of the season, which is going to matter for Lance’s fantasy future. Across his final two seasons with the Bison, Lance averaged over 17 yards per catch.

He thrived as a deep ball specialist whose skill set should feel right at home in an offense that saw Rashid Shaheed tracking toward a 1,000-yard pace before he was traded away for a pair of picks, including Seattle’s 2026 fourth-rounder.

Though, unfortunately, not the specific fourth-round pick the Saints used on Lance. No, that selection was spent several picks earlier on a guard whose name I’m pretending not to know out of personal spite for ruining the clean little bow I’d planned for this ending.

Regardless, Lance is exactly the type of athletic upside swing worth chasing in the later rounds of rookie drafts, especially in an offense built to let vertical threats fly.

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