Las Vegas Raiders Fantasy Football Team Preview For 2026

The 2025 Raiders were mostly expected to be one of the league's worst teams … and they were! Whether you want to judge this from the record (3-14, worst in the NFL), point differential (-191, 3rd worst in the NFL) or the simple eye test: This was a BAD football team.

2026 Fantasy Football Team Preview for the Las Vegas Raiders

Good news: The Raiders hired ultra-successful Seahawks OC Klint Kubiak to help lead a hopeful turnaround. Credit to Kubiak for getting the most out of Derek Carr and Sam Darnold during the last two seasons. His new goal is to get reigning Heisman winner, National Champion, LinkedIn lover, No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza ready to replicate all that success at the professional level.

Of course, Kubiak and Mendoza aren't the only new faces wearing silver and black ahead of 2026:

The front office made sure to make a splash in free agency to help this brutal offensive line, making former Ravens C Tyler Linderbaum (3-year, $81 million deal) the league's new highest-paid player at his position.
Additional eight-figure annual deals were thrown at former Colts EDGE Kwity Paye, former Packers LB Quay Walker, former Eagles LB Nakobe Dean and former Bills CB Taron Johnson.
This WR room is still probably right there with the Dolphins as the worst group in the league, but hey, at least they added former Vikings WR Jalen Nailor!
The Raiders used their additional top-100 picks on Arizona S Treydan Stukes (2.38), Auburn DE Keyron Crawford (3.67) and Texas A&M OT Trey Zuhn (3.91). They also managed to land Tennessee CB Jermod McCoy (4.01) and Arkansas RB Mike Washington (4.122) on Day 3–two prospects who were viewed as potential Day 2 talents before the draft.

What follows is a fantasy-focused team preview of the Las Vegas Raiders ahead of the 2026 season. Make sure to check out Fantasy Life's rankings hub for updated player ranks all year long.

As always: It's a great day to be great.

How long will Fernando Mendoza spend on the bench?

QB1: Fernando Mendoza (QB27 in Fantasy Life ranks)
QB2: Kirk Cousins (QB36)
QB3: Aidan O'Connell

Mendoza might be the Raiders' QB1 in fantasy land, but it sounds like the Raiders fully plan on having him hold a clipboard behind Kirk Cousins to start out the year:

Kubiak in March: "You’d love him to be able to learn behind somebody. That’s in a perfect world."
GM John Spytek in February: "I think you want to limit the amount of pressure you have on that guy from the start … Now, if you have a young quarterback, I'm not necessarily in favor of running him out there right away, either, so [you want] another quality player that can play the quarterback position."
ESPN's Adam Schefter: "I think they’re going to want Kirk Cousins to start the season … And if you’re going to want to turn to Fernando Mendoza, the No. 1 overall pick, at some point in time, I don’t know if you’re going to want to do it in November when you have to go play four road games."

All this chatter has been more or less confirmed by the Raiders literally having Mendoza on an entirely different practice field as QB1 (Cousins) and even QB2 (O'Connell).

Regardless of when Mendoza actually takes over the starting job (my money would be on Week 6), history tells us we should see him sooner rather than later.

How long before Fernando Mendoza takes over?

Is Ashton Jeanty poised to erupt in Year 2?

RB1: Ashton Jeanty (RB9 in Fantasy Life ranks)
RB2: Mike Washington (RB51)
RB3: Dylan Laube

It'd be pretty cool if he did. There were some fun flashes in Year 2 in blowup performances against the Bears (155 yards, 3 TDs) and Texans (188 yards, 2 TDs), but ultimately PPR RB16 production on a per-game basis wasn't exactly what drafters had in mind considering his pricey RB6 pre-draft ADP.

And yet, it's hard not to assign most of the blame for Jeanty's relatively mid rookie campaign to the team's lackluster scheme and offensive line. Consider …

OC Chip Kelly was fired after just 11 games into his tenure.
The Raiders came in at 26th in my "Running Back Supporting Cast Rating." This was highlighted by 31st-place ranks in RB yards before contact per carry. Only Browns RBs had worse runways in 2025.

The offensive environment around Jeanty is much better

Is this the single-worst wide receiver room in the NFL?

WR1: Tre Tucker (WR73 in Fantasy Life ranks)
WR2: Jalen Nailor (WR75)
WR3: Jack Bech
WR4: Dont'e Thornton
WR5: Malik Benson
WR6: Dareke Young

Maybe. It's them or the Dolphins. Tre Tucker and Jalen Nailor profile as the leaders of this wide receiver room, which is just such a ridiculous sentence to non-ironically write out. Kubiak has led run-heavy offenses during each of his last two stops in Seattle and New Orleans, and whoever winds up leading this group will still be the offense's No. 2 pass-game option behind Brock Bowers.

Who will be WR1 out of this group?

Is Brock Bowers in play as an early Round 2 fantasy pick?

TE1: Brock Bowers (TE1 in Fantasy Life ranks)
TE2: Michael Mayer (TE44)
TE3: Ian Thomas

Abso-lutely. Bowers' encore campaign was unfortunately undone by a lingering knee injury, bad QB play and a scheme that was rough enough to warrant OC Chip Kelly getting fired in November. And yet, Bowers still somehow finished as fantasy's TE2 in PPR points per game!

It'd certainly be a lot cooler if the latter QB and scheme variable were guaranteed to be in a better place this season, but hey, they're at least moving in the right direction.

Bowers makes his play for TE1 overall

Predictions for the 2026 Las Vegas Raiders

Win total prediction: This is a new-and-improved roster that managed to make some serious strides in the scheme, QB, offensive line, and defense departments. There's at least some room for positive regression in the one-score department (2-5 in 2025), although the team's fourth-place schedule got a bit of a rough draw with divisional draws against the NFC West and AFC East. That said, there are a handful of games on this schedule where we could actually see the Raiders favored (MIA, NO, NYJ, CLE, TEN, ARZ). Don't confuse this squad as a contender of any shape or size, but I'll take OVER 5.5 wins out of respect to Maxx Crosby and an improved overall offense that at least has two blue-chip talents to work with in Bowers and Jeanty.

Bold fantasy call: Brock Bowers cements his status as the most productive tight end on planet Earth, breaking 2020 Travis Kelce's single-season record for receiving yards (1,416).

Last season predictions: OVER 6.5 wins (whoops), and Jakobi Meyers parlays another triple-digit target workload into his third top-24 fantasy finish in as many years (Meyers posted overall PPR WR32 and WR39 per game finishes overall BUT before the trade he was the … WR49 in PPR points per game).