​Every fantasy football draft is decided as much by the players you avoid as the ones you land. The expensive picks carry the most risk, because paying a premium for a player who returns middling production sets your roster back in a way a late-round miss never could. Value works in both directions, and spotting the names priced well above their likely outcome is just as important as finding the bargains. Based on current ADP, here are the players I am fading in 2026.ADP: QB4Let me be clear about Joe Burrow, the football player. He’s a perennial top-five quarterback in real life, and if the league held a draft tomorrow, he’d go in the first handful of picks. Fantasy football is a different exercise, and it’s the one place where a QB4 ADP on Burrow doesn’t add up for me.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe issue is that Burrow generates almost nothing on the ground. Just 2.9% of his fantasy points came from rushing last season, in an era where nearly every elite fantasy quarterback leans on his legs.Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, and Jayden Daniels all offer a rushing baseline that Burrow simply cannot match, which caps his ceiling right around 22 to 23 PPG. We’ve already seen the top of his range, too. Even in his monster 2024, it took 43 passing touchdowns to finish as the QB3 at 22.5 PPG.START PREPARING: PFN’s Fantasy Mock Draft SimulatorThat’s the trap. Burrow’s value is almost entirely tied to touchdown volume, and touchdowns are the most variance-prone stat in the sport.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Cincinnati Bengals threw for 76.5% of their touchdowns last season, and even a modest regression toward the league norm takes a real bite out of his numbers. Add in the injury that wrecked yet another season, plus a deep quarterback pool where QB1 upside is available several rounds later, and the opportunity cost is too high. He’s my QB6, and I’m not paying a top-five price.ADP: QB14Matthew Stafford just posted a top-five fantasy season, and I want no part of the encore. Stafford is a genuinely great quarterback, but his fantasy value has always been a touchdown mirage, and 2025 was the biggest mirage of them all. His touchdown rate was 7.7%, the highest of his career, buoyed by Davante Adams operating as a de facto goal-line back.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementRegression is not a maybe here; it’s a certainty. Stafford’s career touchdown rate is 4.8%, and history could not be clearer on the pattern: every time his rate spikes, it craters the following year. That happened after 2011, after 2019, and after 2021, when a 41-touchdown, Super Bowl-winning season still only produced a QB11 finish. Banking on a 38-year-old pocket passer to repeat a career-outlier touchdown rate is not a bet I’m making.The bigger structural problem is the lack of a floor. Stafford contributes nothing with his legs. His percentage of fantasy points to come from rushing last year was literally negative. 12 of the top 15 quar