Mid-Season 2026 Fantasy Football Awards: Fantasy MVP, Biggest Disappointments & More
Fantasy

Mid-Season 2026 Fantasy Football Awards: Fantasy MVP, Biggest Disappointments & More

Joe Metz recaps the Fantasy Life staff's voting results on the mid-season fantasy football awards ballot.

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As crazy as it sounds, we're now officially more than halfway through the 2026 NFL season and just over a month away from the start of the fantasy football playoffs.

We've had nine weeks to see which players are going the extra mile for your team, who the most frustrating players to roster are, the biggest busts, MVPs, and more. To wrap our heads around the state of fantasy football at the midway point, we surveyed the Fantasy Life staff to determine the mid-season fantasy football awards, outlined below.

Let's dive into each question separately, finishing up with the mid-season MVP award.

2026 Fantasy Football Mid-Season Awards

Most "Mid"-Season Player

It's almost impressively mid when your current positional rank nearly matches your preseason ADP, and that's what seems to have helped Quinshon Judkins bring home the hardware, as he was drafted as the RB22 this summer and sat as the RB21 (PPR) through the first 9 weeks of the season. He won't sink your lineup, but he's certainly not doing anything to really help it. He's as low-end RB2 as a low-end RB2 gets.

As for the remainder, Garrett Wilson has a 29% target share on the season, a metric we expected to be elite when we drafted him. His WR16 standing fits the preseason expectations of a mid-range WR2, but I was a bit more optimistic that we'd see a ceiling season with even close to league-average QB play from Geno Smith. While we've gotten the stable (enough) QB play, Wilson just hasn't demonstrated the ceiling with added target competition from Omar Cooper and Adonai Mitchell.

Rhamondre Stevenson feels like the most mid running back of the last several years in fantasy football. You're going to start him as your RB2 more weeks than not, but enjoy your 12.6 points per game and get ready to swallow 3-4 points any given week. He obviously has a heightened ceiling with TreVeyon Henderson currently sidelined; you're just never going to be excited to start him.

Trevor Lawrence drawing a vote here is an interesting one. My initial instinct when looking at the results was "Lawrence, really??", but then I realized that he sits as the QB13 on the season. Has he been bad? No, the Jaguars have just been too good, and Lawrence hasn't seen the pass volume we've needed him to in order to pop into the mid-to-high-end QB1 conversation.

Biggest Roller Coaster Player

The most frustrating players to roster, and I have to say, I never expected Bijan Robinson to find himself on the list. He has as many finishes outside of the top-15 RBs this season (4) as he does inside the top 6 (4), with two games outside of the top 30 running backs, but two games as a top-three RB. Talk about a rollercoaster. If you drafted Bijan, you're longing for more consistency, but you've seen the ceiling, and more ceiling games are coming, especially with Brian Robinson on IR.

Jalen Coker and Parker Washington started the season scorching hot and have since cooled off considerably. Both have massive upside, but both have similar (but different) issues—their offenses. One is starting to spiral (the Panthers) as it deals with offensive line issues and poor QB play; the other is simply too good and spreads the ball around too much (Jaguars) for Washington to see the massive volume that would catapult him into the WR1 territory that we saw to open the season.

Isaiah Likely also started the season hot, cooled a bit when J.J. McCarthy took over as the starting QB, but most recently posted a TE4 finish in Week 9 (pending MNF). He's been less of a true roller coaster, posting a trio of TE1 overall finishes in his 8 games while adding another pair of top-10 TE finishes, but we've also seen the floor (two finishes outside of the top 35 TEs).

Carnell Tate has been a lot more down than up if we're considering him a roller coaster. He has two WR1 finishes (both WR11), but has finished outside of the top 28 at the position in every other game. Such is life with Cam Ward as your QB, huh?

Most Random Elite Single-Game Performance

Really no surprises here. I don't think anyone in the world thought Tony Pollard had a 36.5-point outing in his bag as a member of the Titans, but we sure did when he was a Round 1-2 turn pick in his first year as the Cowboys starter. A bit late to the party, pal.

Dalton Schultz and Kenyon Sadiq were flash-in-the-pan TEs for a week and have since dissolved into dust. With the WR rooms filling up (Houston) or regaining health (New York), they should continue to be rather muted in their respective passing games, barring injuries.

As for David Montgomery, would we be shocked if he fails to score 28.9 more points the rest of the fantasy season as a whole? Maybe, but not really!

Biggest Disappointment (Non-Injury-Related)

These suck, man. The whole fantasy football world was excited to see a versatile, elite target earner in Jaylen Waddle pair with Sean Payton in Denver. But Payton loves to get as many guys a target as he can, rendering Waddle to a not-so-elite 20% target share for the season, only 2% higher than WR2 Courtland Sutton, and only two finishes inside the top 20 WRs in any given week. Pain.

Ashton Jeanty has three top-10 RB finishes and ranks as a high-end RB2 on the season (RB13), but that's a far cry from the top-5/6 expectations we had going into the season. The Raiders have leaned fully into the pass game given Jeanty and Mike Washington's inefficiencies. Let's consider ourselves lucky that Jeanty is such a unicorn in the passing game. Otherwise, he may have been running away with this award. Cam Skattebo is the other RB on this list, as the Giants' backfield has been virtually unusable this season and it's hard to envision him bouncing back given the injuries he's dealing with and New York's commitment to a true committee.

Brian Thomas? lol. Lmao, even. Just pray he gets traded.

Biggest Disappointment (Injury-Related)

I'm pretty surprised that the Ravens duo didn't run away with this given their ADPs, but I do find it ironic that both sides of the seismic A.J. Brown trade this summer are feeling the pain. It's increasingly difficult to really trust any Patriot or Eagle in your starting lineup (outside of Drake Maye and Rhamondre Stevenson) thanks to injuries, and the same can be said about the current Ravens outside of Zay Flowers.

The Bucs WRs are hard to start, too, given injuries across the offense to Baker Mayfield and Emeka Egbuka. That being said, Egbuka is rounding into form from a health standpoint, and we should see Mayfield start tossing the ball more. He's an elite target earner, so Egbuka is someone I'm willing to buy low on. Chris Godwin, on the other hand, is nothing more than a bench stash.

Xfinity "Who Could've Imagined That?" Award (Biggest Surprise)

While Jaylen Warren won this vote, Matthew Golden is the clear answer, to me. Drafted outside of the top 120 players on Sleeper, Golden currently ranks top-five in the NFL in receiving yards and as the WR8 in PPR points per game (18.2). He's operating as the WR1 in Green Bay with a 28% target share and 40% of the air yards. If we're talking about league winners, Golden may be the guy this season.

Chuba Hubbard going from a 6th-7th-round pick to a near-RB1 auto-start each week has been a pleasant surprise, while D'Andre Swift has shown a massive ceiling in an elite offense with Kyle Monangai sidelined.

I'll give you $20 if you can guess which Fantasy Life staffer voted for Tyler Shough, by the way.

Rookie Of The (Half) Year

*24 responses, compared to 25 for every other question

What a brutal rookie class for fantasy football, huh? Denzel Boston scorched out of the gate, posting back-to-back top-24 WR finishes, but only has 2 more in the subsequent 7 games. Even so, his 23% target share leads the team, and he has massive big-play upside. While Carnell Tate has been the best target earner from the class, as I said before, playing alongside Ward at QB caps your ceiling to a rather extreme extent, as we've seen.

KC Concepcion trails Boston in target share (20%) and doesn't possess the big-play upside given that his game is predicated around the line of scrimmage and focuses on after-the-catch production. That said, we have a pair of top-10 WR finishes over the last 3 weeks. Are we in the midst of his breakout?

Jonah Coleman likely would've run away with this award if this were two weeks from now, but instead, he'll have to settle for running away with the Broncos backfield. In three games since returning from IR, he's seen his snaps increase from 50% -> 68% -> 82%, his rush share from 41% -> 52% -> 65%, and his route share from 25% -> 50% -> 71%. He's also finished as a top-12 RB in PPR formats in back-to-back weeks (pending MNF). If you picked him up, you may end up with the Waiver Wire gem of the season. Strap in and enjoy the ride.

Waiver Wire Hero Of The (Half) Year

It's been a brutal season for waiver wire gems. I talked about Ollie Gordon's production in my latest rest-of-season rankings column, but I agree that Braelon Allen deserved to run away with this award. From Weeks 4 through 8, Allen posted a trio of top-10 RB finishes and a top-18 RB finish while commanding at least 65% of the rush attempts in every game. He did enough that we saw him still be heavily involved in Breece Hall's Week 9 return, playing 58% of the snaps and running 50% of the routes, albeit only commanding 33% of the rush attempts. His stint as a waiver wire hero may have been short-lived, but the door isn't closed on him going forward, depending on what the Jets do with Hall at the deadline and this RB split going forward.

Omar Cooper, similar to Coleman earlier, could have potentially run away with this award if it was given out in a few weeks, but he's had two 20+-point games since returning from injury and led the team in targets in Week 9 as the de facto WR1 in Garrett Wilson's absence. This offense likely isn't good enough to support multiple top-24 WRs each week, but the ceiling for Cooper is apparent.

Mid-Season Fantasy Football MVP

We've reached the most important award of the article, the mid-season MVP award. While it would be easy to just crown Jahmyr Gibbs without a vote given his floor/ceiling combination, he's really just living up to draft-day expectations as the consensus 1.01 this summer.

Because of that, I agree with JSN taking this home. After so much debate on whether or not his production from last year would be sustainable with Klint Kubiak gone, he's done everything to quiet those critics. He ranks as the WR2 in target share (36%, trails Puka Nacua), the WR1 in air yards share (50%), WR2 in Utilization Score (96, trails CeeDee Lamb), and the WR1 in PPR points per game (25.8). Drafted as the consensus WR3, he's somehow outperforming his draft-day price tag.

Kenneth Walker has been a revelation and has league-winning upside as a Round 1-2 turn pick, ranking as the RB2 in points per game (24.5) behind only Jahmyr Gibbs. If you drafted Walker, you were likely able to pair him with another elite running back like James Cook, given their preseason ADPs, putting you in a strong position to contend for a trophy this season. You can't ask much more than that from your Round 2 pick.

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