By Justin Edwards, 4for4.com
Contract-year narratives can get a little dangerous if we let them do too much work. We don’t need to pretend every player in the final year of his deal is suddenly going to unlock a new level because there’s money on the line. Football doesn’t really work that cleanly. Opportunity, health, offensive environment, age curves and depth-chart competition still matter far more than a player’s contract status.
Advertisement
But contract years are still worth tracking. They can tell us which teams may be approaching a decision point, which players are trying to secure one more major payday and which fantasy situations could shift dramatically by this time next year. Sometimes that means a veteran trying to prove he still belongs as a starter. Sometimes it means a young receiver pushing for a market-resetting extension. Sometimes it simply means a player’s current team has to decide whether his fantasy-friendly role is worth paying for again.
With that in mind, here are 10 contract-year players whose 2026 seasons could shape both their NFL futures and their fantasy football value.
Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2026 NFL season
Quarterbacks
Kyler Murray, Minnesota Vikings
We’ll kick things off with one of the more intriguing storylines across the NFL this summer. With the Arizona Cardinals essentially kicking Kyler Murray to the curb and eating the rest of his contract, the Minnesota Vikings swooped in to thrust him into a quarterback battle for nothing more than the league minimum. Though that battle, in many people’s minds (including my own), has already been decided.
Advertisement
This is, obviously, a very important season for both Murray and semi-incumbent J.J. McCarthy, though the veteran is probably under the greater share of pressure, as a failure here in the Kevin O’Connell scheme could mean massive questions for his career trajectory. Assuming Murray takes over, he’ll have gigantic upgrades moving on from Marvin Harrison Jr. and Michael Wilson to Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison. Murray might be losing some juice in the tight end room (more on Hockenson later), but he’ll be playing behind a better offensive line and inside an infrastructure that propelled Sam Darnold to a 35-touchdown season two short years ago.
It’s hard to say exactly what will happen in the 2027 quarterback market if Murray does succeed and revitalize his career. Will the Vikings pony up to keep him around, or will they continue this cycle of one-year rentals? Will the quarterback land on another contending team, or will this begin a stretch of “bridge” years? Regardless, Murray has legit top-10 upside if he can lock down the job for 17 games, but he’ll have to outright win this job before we put all our eggs in that basket. Instead, he should be treated as a QB14-17, with room to grow over the coming months.
[Visit 4for4 for more fantasy football analysis]
Baker Mayfield, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
After spending a year exploring both the east and west coasts as a spot starter for both the Carolina Panthers and Los Angeles Rams, Baker Mayfield found himself in Tampa Bay looking to fill the void of the recently retired Tom Brady. The only thing that stood in his way was Kyle Trask, who entered the 2023 competition with nine career attempts over his first two seasons in the league. Mayfield, of course, won that competition, going on to throw for over 4,000 yards before locking in a three-year, $100 million deal that presently ranks as the 16th-highest QB contract in AAV.
Advertisement
The quarterback’s camp has an easy argument here; the former Oklahoma Sooner has thrown for well over 12,000 yards and nearly 100 touchdowns over the last three seasons, which equate to something higher than a QB16 paycheck. Inversely, the club can show Mayfield and his agents that his 6.8 YPA was his lowest since his journeyman year, while his 4.1% turnover-worthy play rate was the highest of his career, and he’s clearly dealing with the same shoulder injury that would get him run out of town in Cleveland.
The good news is, they have actually been in talks about an extension, so that’s a step further in the right direction than a lot of the names in this article. It’ll be an interesting scenario no matter which side wins the battle, as Mayfield will be making well north of $50M a year if he falls in the QB8 range, which is quite a big number to swallow. That would put him ahead of Jalen Hurts ($51M) and Justin Herbert ($52.5M) and right behind Josh Allen and Joe Burrow ($55M each). Mayfield has shown flashes of that level of play, but Herbert/Allen/Burrow have either shown far better consistency or have simply done more with less.
For fantasy, the contract piece matters less than the shoulder. If Mayfield is healthy, this is still a stable QB2 with touchdown-driven spike weeks. If the arm strength or turnover issues linger, the floor gets shakier than his name value suggests.
Advertisement
Running Backs
Jonathan Taylor, Indianapolis Colts
Back in October of 2023, Jonathan Taylor signed a three-year, $42M extension upon returning from an ankle injury/surgery amidst a drawn-out dispute between himself and the team. After being eased back into his typical bell-cow role, he finished the season on a strong note (188-yard, RB3 performance in Week 18) before ripping off 3,016 yards on the ground over these last two years, third to only Derrick Henry and Saquon Barkley.
And now, with that extension expiring at the end of the 2026 season, we’re back in potential contract talks. Taylor said he’d “love to be a Colt for life,” so we know where he stands; now it’s just a matter of whether talks will wrap up before Week 1 kicks off. As things stand, Taylor’s $14M/year averages out to the RB7, just a tad behind Kenneth Walker III ($14.3M) and quite a chunk behind Barkley ($20.6M) and Christian McCaffrey ($19M).
Advertisement
From the Colts’ perspective, it probably doesn’t make a ton of sense to drop nearly $20M per year on a fresh new contract if the offense looks as paltry as it did after the Daniel Jones injury last year. With Jones at the helm, the team averaged a healthy 0.15 EPA/play and 0.17 EPA/passing play, numbers that dropped to -0.12 and -0.08, respectively, with Philip Rivers and Riley Leonard. That’s essentially a fall from a top-seven passing attack to a bottom-seven one, even with Rivers performing better than expected. If Taylor truly does want to stay in Indy for the remainder of his career, Jones recreating the first half of the 2025 season would go a long way toward making that possible.
D’Andre Swift, Chicago Bears
The projected demise of D’Andre Swift was such incredibly poor foresight that we should all hold our heads in shame. Given that Ben Johnson was potentially instrumental in letting Swift walk in free agency back in 2022, it was assumed he would move away from featuring him in a workhorse capacity when he took over the reins in Chicago, with Roschon Johnson and/or Kyle Monangai getting involved early and often. Instead, Swift handled 268 regular-season opportunities, ranking 18th in snap rate (57.8%) and 16th in half-PPR points per game (13.2). This is an incredible return on the three-year, $24M contract he signed back in 2024, an $8M AAV that ranks 20th at the position.
Advertisement
Swift is entering his seventh NFL season, but his heavy early-career rotation, combined with the fact that he doesn’t turn 28 until January, means he doesn’t have the typical wear-and-tear/age-curve concerns that other backs would be running up against. On his one-year “prove it” deal back in 2023 with the Eagles, he nearly doubled his previous career high in yardage by breaking the 1,000-yard mark, and he’s got a fantastic offensive infrastructure to squeeze out one last big contract. Whether that will be with Chicago is still up in the air, but some added pressure makes him that much more of a slam-dunk RB2 for fantasy purposes.
Wide Receivers
George Pickens, Dallas Cowboys
Directly before the 2026 NFL Draft, George Pickens put pen to paper on a Cowboys franchise tag, essentially putting the onus on the player to replicate the success he enjoyed during his first year with the team. En route to out-producing CeeDee Lamb, Pickens would finish up 2025 with the league’s third-most receiving yards (1,429) and eighth-most touchdowns (8), far out-kicking his fifth-round ADP with a WR5 fantasy season.
Advertisement
If he’s able to even come close to repeating that performance, he’ll be in line for a massive payday, more than likely returning to the team he’s currently suiting up for. Pickens has had criticisms for taking plays off and general maturity issues throughout his college and NFL career(s), but much of that has died down after he flashed so much consistent success last fall. Considering it only cost the team a Day 2 and a Day 3 draft pick to pry the receiver from the Steelers, their next investment is going to be far larger than what they’ve paid up to this point.
Puka Nacua, Los Angeles Rams
Now, this one might not stand the test of the rest of the summer, but as of the time of writing, Puka Nacua is still technically on his rookie deal. Unlike recent market-shifting signings of Ja’Marr Chase and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Nacua doesn’t give the team the cushion of a fifth-year option, as he was famously selected all the way back in the fifth round of the 2023 draft, so his decision comes one year sooner.
It also comes with some odd off-field concerns we’re not used to seeing out of players going in the top-10 of fantasy drafts, let alone ones who may be setting a new market price for the position. The second-leading receiver over the last three seasons, Nacua’s contract year has also been marked by some off-field noise, including questionable stream appearances and a lawsuit filed in the spring. It seems unlikely the team will use that as a legitimate bargaining chip, though, and if they do decide to let him play out the last year of his rookie deal, it would probably be inviting unwanted issues in what could very well be the final season of the Matthew Stafford era.
Advertisement
The Rams are clearly going all-in on a Super Bowl, which also happens to be taking place at SoFi Stadium. This feels like a contract issue that could be cleared up before the team reports to training camp, which is all the more reason to keep drafting Nacua wherever you can.
Tight Ends
T.J. Hockenson, Minnesota Vikings
This section was going to be far more robust, but with the recent extensions of both Brenton Strange and Kyle Pitts Sr., the mid-to-high level of tight end free agents mostly evaporated. Is T.J. Hockenson still in that range of talent? That’s to be determined, but he’s still only heading into his age-29 season, in what looks to be potentially his final year in Minnesota. Hockenson signed a four-year, $66M contract in August of 2023, but tore multiple ligaments in his knee four months later, putting a cap on a very productive 960-yard year prior to the injury.
Advertisement
Back in March of this calendar year, Hockenson and the team restructured that contract to essentially wipe out the final year of the agreement, so there is plenty of incentive to hit the ground running in what should be an improved passing game. Either Murray can bring some of that Trey McBride magic to the table or McCarthy shows such a vast improvement that he wins back the starting nod; either scenario would be a positive. We currently have Hockenson in the back-end of the TE2 rankings, due at least in part to the signing of WR Jauan Jennings, who will offer the Murray/McCarthy pairing another big-bodied option to move the sticks. At cost, he’s a best ball or TE streaming target more so than a player we should be chasing aggressively, but he’s at least tied to a passing game with enough talent to make a rebound season plausible.
This story originally appeared on 4for4.com
Read the full article here
