​Jason Katz is comfortable being the last manager in his league to draft a quarterback, even if that means fading Josh Allen, who finished as fantasy’s overall QB1 in 2025 for the fourth time in six seasons. Using Pro Football Network’s Fantasy Mock Draft Simulator from the No. 5 spot in a 12-team, full-PPR format, Katz and co-host Kyle Soppe spent all 12 rounds building a roster without touching the top of the quarterback board. The reasoning wasn’t about disliking Allen; it was about the cost to acquire him.
Allen is the consensus QB1 again this offseason, coming off a season in which he rushed for a quarterback-leading 579 yards and 14 rushing touchdowns, and averaged roughly 22 fantasy points per game even as his passing volume dipped. His draft price reflects all of that. That discrepancy is what Katz keeps circling. “My biggest reason for fading Josh Allen is not that an elite quarterback doesn’t have value. Of course it does,” Katz said. “The issue is that those elite quarterbacks over the last two years were Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels. So I got the 20-plus points per game and didn’t have to pay for it.”
The math adds up. Maye finished as a top-three fantasy quarterback in points per game in 2025 after going late, around QB16, in most drafts. That’s the return Katz is chasing without spending an early pick to obtain it. “Odds are someone in your league is doing that,” Katz said. “And if you take Josh Allen, it can’t be you.”
Soppe framed it as a trade-off fantasy managers already recognize well. “That’s exactly the Travis Kelce argument for the past five, six, seven years,” he said. “You know you’re getting that positional edge. What is it worth to you? To me, I trust myself enough in the back half of the draft to overcome that.” His view of the ceiling was starker. “He has to basically be Superman. And it’s not that he can’t,” Soppe said. “I just don’t see a world in which he overachieves.”
The Allen fade fits a broader philosophy: take the best players and stop drafting around artificial constraints. “I find so many people draft for roster construction and not just raw talent, and they kind of tie themselves in knots,” Soppe said. Bye weeks fall into the same bucket. “In a managed redraft league, I could not possibly care less about [bye weeks],” he added, a sentiment Katz echoed. “If I had no idea when these bye weeks were, it wouldn’t bother me in the least.”
From the No. 5 spot, they opened with Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the 2025 Offensive Player of the Year who finished as the WR2 in points per game while commanding a 32%-plus target share in Seattle. “We saw over a 30% target share for JSN a year ago,” Katz said. “No reason to think that changes in 2026.” They continued by alternating picks, adding Chase Brown and then DeVonta Smith. “Without A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith,” Katz quipped for SEO purposes, noting the strategy of loading up on high-volume targets.