New England Patriots Fantasy Football Team Preview For 2026

The 2025 Patriots had the second-best season of any football team. Year 1 of the Mike Vrabel-Drake Maye era produced an objectively great offense and defense, with the latter doing the heavy lifting on the way to their first Super Bowl since 2018.

2026 Fantasy Football Team Preview For the New England Patriots

As the saying goes: If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and the Patriots accordingly are largely running things back with the same core, but there were still a few big-time additions in the offseason:

The Patriots reshuffled their WR room in a major way: 2025 receiving leader Stefon Diggs is out, A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs are in.
New England attempted to better fortify the trenches on both sides of the ball, spending their first two picks on Utah OT Caleb Lomu (1.28) and Illinois EDGE Gabe Jacas (2.55), while also giving former Ravens DL Dre'Mont Jones (3-years, $36.5 million) and ex-Jets G Alijah Vera-Tucker (3-year, $42 million) shiny new deals.

What follows is a fantasy-focused team preview of the New England Patriots 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.

Can Drake Maye get even better in Year 3?

QB1: Drake Maye (QB3)
QB2: Tommy DeVito
QB3: Behren Morton

The league better look the f*ck out if he does. Nobody, including MVP Matthew Stafford, was more efficient through the air than the Patriots' 23-year-old franchise QB.

Drake Maye among 34 QBs with 300 dropbacks in 2025:

EPA per dropback: +0.31 (1st)
Completion percentage: 72% (1st)
Completion percentage over expected: +10.8% (1st)
Explosive pass rate: 18.4% (1st)
Yards per attempt: 8.9 (1st)
QBR: 77.1 (1st)
Passer rating: 113.5 (1st)

The former No. 3 overall pick also continued to be quite lethal on the ground, chipping in 450 rushing yards (4th among QBs) and 4 scores.

Of course, those stats fell off a bit in the playoffs. It was never going to look too pretty in consecutive matchups against the Chargers (9th in scoring defense), Texans (2nd), Broncos (3rd) and Seahawks (1st), but it was impossible to ignore the steep declines in things like completion rate (-13.7%) and yards per attempt (-2). Additionally, the only real major regular-season flaw, Maye's tendency to take a lot of sacks under pressure, was REALLY accentuated: His 20.6% pressure-to-sack rate was the league's eighth-highest mark in the regular season, and this ballooned up to a brutal 37.5% mark during the playoffs.

May will deliver another top-5 QB season

Are both Patriots running backs good clicks at cost?

RB1: TreVeyon Henderson (RB26)
RB2: Rhamondre Stevenson (RB27)
RB3: Lan Larison
RB4: Jam Miller

TreVeyon Henderson's up-and-down rookie campaign still featured him showing off some tantalizing big-play upside with 17.6 PPR points per game (RB7) during Weeks 10-18 last season. The problem was that New England saw this and in their most important games of the season, largely just told the rookie to get nice and comfy on the bench.

Rhamondre Stevenson was also the de facto lead back more often than not before the playoffs, but out-touched Henderson 162-to-158 in their 14 regular-season games together. The slightly reduced usage down the stretch could have been a case of "can't get the genie back in the bottle" after some of Henderson's big games, or maybe the Patriots were simply playing it safe with Mondre coming off his turf toe injury.

Will Henderson or Stevenson emerge as the top dog?

Is motivated A.J. Brown about to go for 1,500 yards?

WR1: A.J. Brown (WR9)
WR2: Romeo Doubs (WR51)
WR3: Mack Hollins
WR4: Kayshon Boutte
WR5: DeMario Douglas
WR6: Kyle Williams

The man sure looks happy! While it's possible last season's dip in efficiency is a sign the soon-to-be 29-year-old veteran has already played his best football (the knee reports also aren't exactly great), the dude did suffer a midseason hamstring injury and had to deal with life inside arguably the NFL's least-imaginative offense.

The longtime beast of a receiver still made more than a few awesome catches while continuing to flash that trademark high-end YAC ability.

Brown searches for return to top-10 WR season

Is Hunter Henry low-key a great late-round tight end option?

TE1: Hunter Henry (TE20)
TE2: Eli Raridon
TE3: CJ Dippre

Kudos to Henry for finally gaining at least 700 receiving yards in a season. 10th try is a charm! Let's break down his outlook for 2026 …

Bull case: Flirts with double-digit touchdowns as the go-to red-zone option from MVP runner-up Drake Maye *and* is at least a bit more involved between the 20s as an intermediate threat without Stefon Diggs around.
Bear case: Age (32 in December) catches up to the veteran, and A.J. Brown winds up soaking up all of Diggs' leftover targets—and more.

Predictions for the 2026 New England Patriots

Bold fantasy call: The Patriots trade Kayshon Boutte to the Falcons before Halloween, and he manages to catch not one but FIVE touchdowns for Kevin Stefanski's last-place squad (this would be pretty wild if it happens).

Last season predictions: Over 7.5 wins (hell yeah, brother), and Stefon Diggs clears 1,000 yards and finishes as a top-24 WR in PPR points per game (*Best Mike Breen impression* BANG, BANG).