IDP Fantasy Football Breakouts, Sleepers, and Busts (2026)

August 18, 2026

Patrick McGrath identifies the fantasy football IDP sleepers, busts, and breakout candidates for 2026. His IDP analysis and expert tips for 2026 fantasy football focuses on Nick Emmanwori, Dallas Turner, Devin Lloyd, and more.

There's a meme of a guy standing alone in the corner of a party thinking, "They don't know..." You know who knows? IDP managers. While most fantasy hobbyists are whooping it up over some pedestrian 80-yard touchdown strike, we’re in the corner smirking because one of our guys was closest to the scene when the quarterback stepped out of bounds a yard behind the line of scrimmage.

The magic of IDP is the multipliers added into every play. Your quarterback throws a checkdown to your running back? Well, that’s pretty neat. Your safety comes barreling downhill to plant him three yards later? My, oh my, there's something deeply satisfying about watching your own roster tackle itself.

Just like the more heralded players on the other side of the ball, though, you still need to know who to target, who to avoid, and who has the potential to win your league from the last round of your draft. Here are this year’s IDP breakouts, sleepers, and busts.

Fantasy Football IDP Breakouts

Dallas Turner, DL, Minnesota Vikings

For two seasons, IDP managers have been begging the Vikings to give Dallas Turner a full-time workload. In 2026, they’ll likely have no choice. With Jonathan Greenard now in Philadelphia, Turner should see close to an every-down role in Brian Flores’ kitchen-sink defense.

Turner was an efficiency monster on a per-snap basis last season, and when enough injuries piled up to force the Vikings into giving him a snap count befitting the third defensive player selected in his draft class, he could hardly be slowed.

In the eight games in which he saw at least a 70% defensive snap share, he averaged 0.8 sacks, 1.4 QB hits, and 2.0 pressures per game, essentially All-Pro numbers when extrapolated over a full season.

If the 23-year-old third-year player can maintain that efficiency as a full-time player, he will blow past his DL22 price tag like he’s about to do to offensive linemen.

Devin Lloyd, LB, Carolina Panthers

A modest disappointment through his first three seasons, Devin Lloyd was allowed to play out 2025 as a contract year, which in turn allowed him to make bank and land in one of the league’s more linebacker-friendly environments following a second-team All-Pro season.

No. 27 on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2026…@Panthers LB Devin Lloyd! @NFLFilms pic.twitter.com/vSnFlbtqN6

— NFL (@NFL) August 11, 2026

Even in his best year to date, Lloyd underperformed by expected tackle numbers, as he had in every season of his career, presumably a byproduct of playing beside tackle hog Foyesade Oluokun. In Carolina, he should become the unquestioned centerpiece of Ejiro Evero’s man-averse, tackle-rich defense.

The Panthers ran man coverage on just 11.3% of their defensive snaps last season, allowing their linebackers to play with their eyes in the backfield and helping Christian Rozeboom rack up a career-high 8.1 tackles per game.

While Rozeboom is probably not quite deserving of a JAG label, he certainly does not stack up athletically to the former Jag who intercepted five passes a season ago. Bringing legitimate playmaking chops to a table already serving up ample tackle opportunities, Lloyd has a chance to make his current LB23 ranking look downright silly. Like dog-wearing-pants silly.

Nick Emmanwori, DB, Seattle Seahawks

Nick Emmanwori sprained his ankle four days before the Super Bowl and required offseason surgery. He opened training camp on the PUP list before recently passing his physical and returning to practice, putting into question the early season availability of a future IDP king.

If the situation sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Emmanwori missed time early in his rookie season with an ankle injury, leading some impatient managers to cut bait before discovering exactly the weapon the Seahawks had at their disposal.

The absolute stallion became a full-time player in Week 6 and developed into one of the most versatile pieces of one of the league’s most versatile defenses. Seattle lined him up wherever it pleased, and the fantasy production followed, with Emmanwori finishing as the DB1 over the final five weeks of the season.

His injury history introduces some legitimate risk, and while Emmanwori is hardly a secret anymore at DB3, he’s still a weapon. And he’s about to go full send on the league.

Fantasy Football IDP Sleepers

Dre'Mont Jones, DL, New England Patriots

The weakest spot on the New England Patriots roster can inarguably be found at edge-rusher, but that didn’t stop a similarly constructed defense from running roughshod through the AFC playoffs, racking up 12 sacks and 32 QB hits in three games against the Chargers, Texans, and Broncos.

Defensive coordinator Zak Kuhr was thrust into the role earlier than expected due to Terrell Williams’ health concerns, but by the postseason, he’d evolved into B-Flo 2.0. He took advantage of the extra time provided by one of the league’s best secondaries and leaned heavily on the strength of his interior defensive line to use all manner of stunts and line games to manufacture pressure.

Jones now stands as the most obvious beneficiary of this continued approach, as second-round pick Gabe Jacas is still playing catch-up after missing all of OTAs and most of training camp, while Harold Landry III remains on the PUP list and could very well be in trouble.

At 6-foot-3 and 270 pounds, Jones has the size and versatility to kick inside and become a piece that rarely leaves the field. With a full offseason of tinkering, Kuhr could have some serious fun with a player unlike any he coached last year.

Cody Simon, LB, Arizona Cardinals

As a rookie in 2025, Cody Simon was thrust into the green-dot role when Mack Wilson Sr. missed the final nine games with a fractured rib. Excluding a Week 15 game in which he suffered a knee injury after just eight snaps, Simon averaged 8.4 tackles per game, topped double-digit fantasy points in half his starts, and finished the year as an extremely usable LB3.

What a play by Cody Simon to force the fumble

AZvsDAL on ESPN/ABC
Stream on @NFLPlus and ESPN App pic.twitter.com/0aM4WaCm97

— NFL (@NFL) November 4, 2025

Even if communication responsibilities return to Wilson in 2026, Simon demonstrated that he can handle an every-down role, playing wire-to-wire seven times. With the Cardinals favored in just two of 17 games, he should also see plenty of tackle opportunities as opponents spend the fourth quarter grinding out the clock.

Simon is young, tough, and coming off a rookie season that demonstrated considerably more fantasy utility than his current ranking suggests. At LB52, he’s precisely the kind of player you should be adding to the back of your roster for a potentially substantial payoff.

Kevin Winston Jr., DB, Tennessee Titans

Kevin Winston Jr. made just four full starts as a 21-year-old rookie, but those games offered a pretty compelling glimpse of his 2026 upside. Even in a Dennard Wilson defense that used a single-high safety at the league’s 10th-lowest rate and forced Winston to play with more depth than he was accustomed to at Penn State, he still averaged 7.3 tackles per game.

Enter new defensive coordinator Gus Bradley.

With new head coach Robert Saleh in San Francisco last season, the 49ers played with the middle of the field closed at the league’s seventh-highest rate, and Bradley has a veteran in Amani Hooker better suited to handle the deep safety responsibilities.

Look at the effort from Kevin Winston Jr. on this play.

This is why he’s gonna be a cornerstone piece for the #Titans 😤#TitanUp pic.twitter.com/UdVo0ggDD5

— SharmSports (@SharmSports) December 7, 2025

Winston already demonstrated a nose for contact as a rookie despite the schematic limitations. If Bradley puts him in position to operate closer to the box, the second-year safety has easy triple-digit-tackle potential and a DB1 ceiling hidden behind his DB29 price tag.

Fantasy Football IDP Busts

Jeffery Simmons, DL, Tennessee Titans

Jeffery Simmons is firmly in the conversation of the league’s most disruptive defensive players. Still, his 11 sacks in 2025 were more than his previous two seasons combined and came against an expected sack rate close to half of his actual total.

That kind of season is particularly difficult to repeat from the interior. Since 2020, the only defensive tackles to post back-to-back double-digit-sack seasons are Aaron Donald, Cameron Heyward, and Chris Jones, three behemoths likely to cause a global wool shortage when they’re inevitably fitted for their gold jackets.

Simmons remains an elite player. In leagues requiring a DT starter, he is still worthy of consideration near the top of the position thanks to his dominance against both the run and the pass. But in formats with all defensive linemen lumped together, he’s being drafted in a range of edge-rushers with considerably more predictive sack upside.

Simmons can absolutely make this call look foolish, but at DL13, you're essentially paying for him to repeat the best season of a career with an already high bar.

Zack Baun, LB, Philadelphia Eagles

Zack Baun spent four seasons in New Orleans primarily playing special teams before exploding onto the scene in Philadelphia in 2024, filling the stat sheet with tackles, forced fumbles, backfield disruption, and, if memory serves, at least one attempted Stone Cold Stunner. The result was a first-team All-Pro selection and an overall LB2 finish.

After predictably rising to the LB6 in 2025 drafts, the splash plays dried up. While he still recorded 123 combined tackles, his solo total fell by more than 30%, resulting in a 3.1-point-per-game dropoff from the previous season and an LB16 finish.

Impact plays are notoriously difficult to predict year over year, and Philadelphia is hardly an ideal environment for tackle accumulation with an offense designed to control the clock and a defense capable of distributing production among the playmakers at all levels.

Baun is still a good player with a strong tackle floor, but without the guarantee of the game-changing moments he seemed to induce every week in 2024, he profiles more as a high-end LB2 than the LB1 he’s currently being drafted as.

Antoine Winfield Jr., DB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Antoine Winfield Jr. was the DB1 in 2023, but he has since followed an injury-shortened 2024 campaign with a DB24 finish in 2025. Past production and name recognition are mighty drugs, though, and they’ve kept him lingering on the fringe of DB1 territory in 2026 drafts.

Winfield’s All-Pro season came alongside Ryan Neal, a part-time starter before landing in Tampa Bay. But the emergence of Tykee Smith has introduced another playmaker near the box, and one all too comfortable siphoning away the tackle opportunities that once belonged to Winfield.

The Buccaneers used a single-high safety on just over half their defensive plays in 2025, right around the league average. While there is some interchangeability between the two safeties, that responsibility generally fell to Winfield.

Like everyone else in this section, Winfield can leave me with egg on my face. But when relying on talent to rise to the top, it’s an easier bet to make the closer you get to the line of scrimmage.

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