New York Jets Fantasy Football Team Preview For 2026

The New York J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets have gone 15 long, cold seasons since their last playoff berth. Sadly, the 2025 squad was their second-worst team during this stretch in terms of wins and point differential. And hell, two of their three wins required last-minute heroics. This was anyone's idea of a BAD football team.

Fantasy Football Team Preview For The New York Jets

But hey, new year, new Jets, and maybe, just maybe, the following roster improvements will be enough to take this team from worst to … not terrible:

HC Aaron Glenn remains, but OC Tanner Engstrand has been replaced by former Colts/Panthers HC Frank Reich. While Reich did some good things with the Eagles and Colts, he was out of football in 2024 and didn't exactly get much out of Stanford (122nd in scoring out of 136 teams) as their interim head coach in 2025.
Starting QBs Justin Fields and Tyrod Taylor are out, ex-Raiders QB Geno Smith and fourth-round Clemson signal-caller Cade Klubnik are in. It wasn't THAT long ago that Geno was doing some really good things with the Seahawks, although he certainly didn't put his best foot forward while leading the NFL in interceptions (17) and sacks (55) last season.
The team's shiny No. 2 overall pick went to Texas Tech EDGE David Bailey, while their additional first-round picks went to YAC-minded dawgs Oregon TE Kenyon Sadiq (1.16) and Indiana WR Omar Cooper (1.30). The Jets suddenly have a fairly solid group of playmakers across their skill-position rooms.

What follows is a fantasy-focused team preview of the New York Jets 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 Geno Smith get back to partying like it's 2024?

QB1: Geno Smith (QB29)
QB2: Brady Cook
QB3: Cade Klubnik

Geno is BACK with the Jets, who originally drafted the now 35-year-old veteran with the 39th overall pick in the 2013 NFL Draft.

That tenure didn't exactly work out, leading to Geno moving on and spending the 2010s as a backup with the Giants, Chargers and Seahawks—before suddenly he got a chance to start after Russell Wilson was traded to the Broncos.

Then something funny happened: Smith played pretty damn well! Yes, we're now living in the year 2026 and are very aware that Geno's one-year tenure with the Raiders went awful. Also yes, that doesn't erase the reality that the man played some good football during his three years as the Seahawks' starter.

Can Geno Smith be a viable QB2 in superflex?

Is Breece Hall a good click in Round 3 of fantasy drafts?

RB1: Breece Hall (RB15 in Fantasy Life ranks)
RB2: Braelon Allen (RB62)
RB3: Isaiah Davis
RB4: Kene Nwangwu

Breece Hall was fine in 2025. After all, 243-1,065-4 rushing and 36-350-1 receiving lines inside the NFL's 29th-ranked scoring offense aren't too shabby, and he returned RB21 production in PPR points per game after generally being drafted as a mid-to-low-end RB2.

There are also reasons for optimism moving forward:

Hall somehow just turned 25 in May.
The Jets solidified Hall as THE running back, y'all, of their present and future by signing him to a three-year, $45.75 million contract extension. Only Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, De'Von Achane and Derrick Henry are making more than Hall on an annual basis.
This receiving ability is special: Hall has averaged 8.7 yards per reception and 6.6 yards per target during his career. That compares VERY favorably to what Christian McCaffrey (8.8, 7) and Bijan Robinson (8.8, 6.7) have pulled off in the same span.
We saw some of Hall's ridiculous rookie-year explosiveness re-emerge in 2025, as he managed to rip off a 10+ yard run on 8.6% of his carries—tied with Jahmyr Gibbs for the eighth-highest mark among 33 qualified running backs.

Is Hall headed for an RB1 season?

Can Garrett Wilson replicate his early 2025 success?

WR1: Garrett Wilson (WR17 in Fantasy Life ranks)
WR2: Omar Cooper (WR50)
WR3: Adonai Mitchell (WR79)
WR4: Tim Patrick
WR5: Arian Smith
WR6: Isaiah Williams

Most should realize Garrett Wilson is good at football. He does have the position's sixth-largest contract after all. You remember the Air Jordan catch.

And yet, it's worth going through each of the 25-year-old's four career seasons to get a full picture of just how good he's been … in less-than-ideal situations:

2022: 83 receptions for 1,103 yards and 4 touchdowns as a rookie catching passes from Zach Wilson, Creator of White Lotus Mike White (actually the other one) and Joe Flacco. Good for the most receiving yards by a Jet since Brandon Marshall in 2015!
2023: Life was supposed to be grand catching passes from Aaron Rodgers … and you know what happened. Instead, Wilson posted a 95-1,042-3 receiving line while hooping with Wilson, Trevor Siemian and Tim Boyle.
2024: Wilson finally gets to catch passes from A-aron, who promptly gets BFF Davante Adams to come to town. Nevertheless, Wilson catches 101 passes for 1,104 yards and 7 scores–good for a career-best 14.8 PPR points per game (WR21).
2025: Wilson does his best DJ Moore impressions and begins putting together the best season of his career alongside Justin Fields. Wilson posts a 36-395-4 receiving line through the first six weeks of the season—16.2 PPR points per game, WR10!—before suffering a season-ending knee injury. Sadly/hilariously, no Jets pass catcher managed to top that 395-yard mark all season.

Can Cooper or Mitchell be the Jets' No. 2 target?

What are reasonable Year 1 expectations for Kenyon Sadiq?

TE1: Kenyon Sadiq (TE17 in Fantasy Life ranks)
TE2: Mason Taylor
TE3: Jeremy Ruckert
TE4: Jelani Woods

I wrote about Sadiq before the draft and highlighted the following big three strengths:

Ridiculous athlete: The aforementioned 40 time and jumps are impressive enough, but adding it all together reveals a VERY impressive relative athletic score (RAS). Now, Sadiq's decision to not test in the combine's agility drills adds a major caveat here—it's safe to assume he would've done so if his times were elite. Still, we're talking about the 71st-best RAS score among 1,456 tight ends since 1987!

Will Sadiq be the rare elite rookie TE?

Predictions For The 2026 New York Jets

Win total prediction: The Jets join the Cardinals, Dolphins and Raiders as the only four teams with a win total of 5.5 or less. And why not? Gang Green has beaten that mark in only two of the last six seasons. The defense badly needs its young draft picks to step up in the absence of previous franchise cornerstones Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams, while the offense's status as theoretically good on paper is all dependent on whether or not a soon-to-be 36-year-old journeyman quarterback can dial back the clock. Give me under 5.5 wins for a team that looks like it’s a year away from being a year away.

Bold fantasy call: Garrett Wilson makes *4* ridiculous one-handed catches throughout the season, leading to me making a fun highlight of those snags that gets a ton of engagement over on X. He finishes as a borderline WR1 in PPR points per game.

Last season predictions: Under 5.5 wins (hell yeah, brother), and Justin Fields produces his second career top-5 fantasy finish thanks to that sweet, sweet rushing upside (whoops).