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FantasyPros - Fantasy Football Podcast

Jake Ciely's 5 Early-Round Fantasy Football Draft Picks to Target (Ep. 2086)

FantasyPros - Fantasy Football Podcast

iHeartPodcasts

Sports, Fantasy Sports

4.710.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Your championship starts with the first five rounds, and Jake Ciely is revealing the players he'd prioritize to kick off your 2026 fantasy football draft. Chris Welsh and Jake break down the best draft strategy for the early rounds, including why Jackson Smith-Njigba belongs in the elite WR conversation, Chase Brown's RB1 upside, Kyren Williams' safe floor, Colston Loveland's massive breakout potential, and why Drake Maye is one of the biggest quarterback values in fantasy football. Whether you're drafting from the early, middle, or late part of Round 1, this episode will help you avoid costly mistakes and build a championship-caliber roster.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.5

Guaranteed Human.

0:05.4

We're going to need you to lock in because we've got five rounds to target the best possible players.

0:11.1

And the one man that can get us there is Jake Seeley.

0:14.2

I'm Chris Welsh.

0:15.0

Welcome into Fantasy Pros.

0:16.3

And we are going through the early five-round picks that you have got a target to make your draft smooth

0:22.5

and beautiful and not have to have any major questions. Jake has got you covered. I will be

0:28.1

navigating us through all the wins here, Jake. And yeah, they say you don't necessarily win

0:34.5

your leagues in the first round. Plenty of people can do great things with whatever sport it is, by the way, in fantasy. You can screw up your first round pick and things can still be great. You can't screw up the first five rounds of your draft and things to be okay. And that's what we're tackling today. Yeah. Yeah, you definitely don't want to mess up all five rounds. You can get away with one, maybe two.

0:55.3

I mean, I did have a year.

0:56.2

Everybody will remember and hate me for C.J. Anderson being worthy of a first round pick. And started that year with C.J. Anderson and Justin Fawcett when he got hurt. So I did lose, and that was a Flex League, Industry League, that I still won. but that's maybe one in a 50 chance that that actually happens that you still win.

1:13.6

Mostly if you use Lurston. industry league that I still won, but that's maybe one in a 50 chance that that actually

1:12.2

happens that you still win.

1:13.6

Mostly if you lose the first two round picks, you're probably like, hey, I fight for fifth

1:19.2

place at the end of the year.

1:21.3

Yeah, the consolation prize, hopefully not the toilet bowl.

1:24.5

But yeah, that's what we're doing.

1:25.8

We don't want you to screw up your first five-round picks. To be fair, the first round, I think it's tougher to screw up maybe than in previous years. I mean, you all have a friend that's going to find a way to do it. But as we go through the top five rounds here, we've got a target in each round. This is the process that Jake has put together where you don't have to worry. You're not going to screw it up. And this is going to be baseline stuff here. So we've got five picks, five rounds. That's what we're doing. And we are going to jump in right now. If you guys want to check out the ECR that we're going to be referencing. Go to fantasy pros.com slash NFL slash rankings.

2:01.5

You can check out all the ECR, the individual positional one, and ADP.

2:05.5

Those are going to be some pieces of reference.

2:07.6

We will also be referencing the athletics, Jake Seeley, on his ranks here as we go through

...

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