Home › NFL › 2026 Team Outlooks › Jacksonville Jaguars

Jacksonville Jaguars Fantasy Outlook 2026

---

By Sean Draper · Published September 18, 2026 · Last updated November 3, 2026 · Updated Tuesdays and Fridays through the season

Jacksonville’s receiver room is being drafted in exactly the reverse of the order it is being used. Brian Thomas Jr. costs an Underdog pick at 65 and played 35% of the snaps in Week 1. Jakobi Meyers costs 120 and led the team with 20 routes and an 80% route share. Parker Washington, at 56, took six targets, the most on the team. And Travis Hunter, the most famous name on the roster and a top-161 pick in drafts, played four offensive snaps and 29 defensive ones — he is a cornerback now who moonlights at receiver. If you drafted this offence off name recognition you own the wrong three players. Underneath all of it sits a 13–4 season built on the second-highest turnover rate in football, a franchise that will play 28 of its next 33 games somewhere other than Jacksonville, and a consensus that has this team winning the division. We do not. Scoring on this page is 0.5 PPR, the site’s standard format.

Jaguars fantasy cheat sheet

Player	Pos	Where he’s going	Our verdict	Injury risk
Parker Washington	WR	WR31–WR34, ADP 56.1	Draft — he is the WR1 here and the price says WR3	Low
Jakobi Meyers	WR	ADP 120.4, around WR44	Draft — highest route share on the team at half the cost	Low
Trevor Lawrence	QB	QB10, ADP 86.8	Fine QB1 — but do not pay up on the Week 1 line	Low
Bhayshul Tuten	RB	RB23–RB25, ADP 49.5	Hold, do not chase — 49% of snaps in a blowout	Moderate
Brenton Strange	TE	TE20, ADP 151.1	Streamer only — the rookie behind him plays more snaps	Low
Brian Thomas Jr.	WR	WR31–WR38, ADP 65.1	Fade at cost — the one who leaves the field for Hunter	Low (the Week 1 shoulder issue resolved)
Travis Hunter	WR/CB	ADP 160.6	Do not draft — four offensive snaps in Week 1	Low
Chris Rodriguez Jr.	RB	Undrafted — waiver claim	Claim — 40% of the snaps is a real committee share	Low
Josh Cameron	WR	Undrafted	Deep stash — two catches and a score on seven routes	Low
Nate Boerkircher	TE	Undrafted	Ignore for now — 67% of snaps, but a blocking role	Low
Jacksonville D/ST	D/ST	DST11 to DST17 depending on outlet	Stream, do not draft — the turnovers regress	—

The one-line version: buy Washington and Meyers, let the room pay a fifth-round pick for Brian Thomas Jr., leave Travis Hunter on the waiver wire in every redraft format, and treat Tuten as an RB3 until somebody tells Chris Rodriguez Jr. to sit down.

Target share: the draft order is upside down

This is the most important table on the page, because the gap between what these three men cost and what they actually do is the largest mispricing we have found on any team this year.

	Parker Washington	Jakobi Meyers	Brian Thomas Jr.
Underdog ADP	56.1	120.4	65.1
Week 1 routes	19 (72%)	20 (80%)	3rd on the team
Week 1 snap share	—	65%	35%
Week 1 targets	6 (team high)	2	3
Week 1 line	5 rec, 83 yds, 1 TD	2 rec, 40 yds, 1 TD	3 rec, 40 yds
Yards per route run	2.69 (2025 post-bye)	Not published	1.2 lower than Washington over the same span
Route share	78% (2025 post-bye)	Highest on the team in Week 1	—
2025 line	15.6 PPR pts/game post-bye	11.0 pts/game	48 rec, 707 yds, 2 TD
2025 target share	—	—	19.3%, down from 25.5% as a rookie
Our verdict	Draft	Draft	Fade at cost

Our verdict: Washington is the WR1 on this team, Meyers is the value, and Brian Thomas Jr. is the fade of the batch. The Thomas case is not a talent argument — he caught 87 balls for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns as a rookie and that player is still in there. It is a deployment argument, and Yahoo put the mechanism plainly: Thomas is the receiver who comes off the field for Travis Hunter’s snaps, while Washington and Meyers are the two who stay on in 12 personnel. That is a structural cap on his route count, and it showed up as a 35% snap share in a game Jacksonville won by 24. His target share already fell from 25.5% to 19.3% between his rookie year and last season. Draft Sharks projects him WR41 against a WR31 price. We are with Draft Sharks.

Where we differ from our own board. Two places, and the first is a direct disagreement with our own injury desk.

• In Week 2 our live injury report said of Brian Thomas Jr.: “keep him in your WR1 slot and offer for him while the manager who watched him walk off is rattled.” Season-long, we were on the other side of that trade. That was a buy recommendation on a player we are telling you to fade, and the gap was real rather than a matter of framing. The injury-desk call was narrow and correct on its own terms — the shoulder was not serious and he played at Denver. Our disagreement is about the role, not the medicals, and we would rather state it than let two pages point opposite ways.
• Jakobi Meyers did not appear anywhere on our Week 2 WR board, which ran 48 deep, even though our injury report that week told readers to start him as a WR3. He led this team in routes in Week 1, and a receiver with the highest route share on his team should not have been unranked.

On Travis Hunter, plainly: he is a starting cornerback and a backup wide receiver. In Week 1 he ran three routes, caught one pass for eight yards, took one carry, and played 29 snaps on defence with a solo tackle. His rookie year was 324 offensive snaps to 162 defensive; that ratio has now inverted. CBS Sports’ verdict is that he can be left on the waiver wire in all redraft formats and we see no reason to soften it. If you are in a dynasty league the calculus is different and the name still has value. In redraft, an ADP of 160 for four offensive snaps is the single worst price on this roster.

The backfield: Travis Etienne is a Saint, and the split is not settled

If you have not updated your depth chart since last season, start here: Travis Etienne Jr. signed with New Orleans on a four-year, $52 million deal and is not on this team. The job went to Bhayshul Tuten, a 5-foot-9, 206-pound second-year back with a 4.32 forty and 98th-percentile speed score, whose Underdog ADP climbed through August: 55.7 at the start of the month, 50.6 three weeks in, and 49.5 in the August 28 Sharp Football Analysis snapshot this page uses throughout.

Week 1 was encouraging and smaller than it looked. Tuten took 15 carries for 66 yards at 4.4 a carry plus a 22-yard catch, on 28 snaps — 49%. Chris Rodriguez Jr., signed from Washington, took 23 snaps, 40%, and six carries. Ameer Abdullah also carried. Head coach Liam Coen said Tuten “ran his tail off,” and Jacksonville’s backs combined for 25 carries at 4.85 a carry. But Sports Illustrated’s Jaguars beat flagged the obvious caveat: this was a 34–10 blowout, and blowouts produce rotations that normal Sundays do not.

Our Week 2 board had Tuten at RB25 and called him the “lead back in Week 1 on modest efficiency,” which was exactly right and exactly the problem: he is being drafted at 49.5 as a workhorse and used as the larger half of a two-man rotation.

Our verdict: hold if you have him, do not pay up, and claim Chris Rodriguez Jr. off waivers if he is free. Forty percent of the snaps behind an unestablished lead back is the definition of a valuable handcuff, and Rodriguez costs nothing. Tuten is an RB3 with RB2 weeks until the split moves.

Trevor Lawrence: do not extrapolate 23 attempts

Lawrence opened the season 18-of-23 for 245 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions and a 150.6 passer rating, throwing scoring passes to four different players. It is the best line any quarterback in this division put up in Week 1 and it is close to meaningless as a projection input. Draft Sharks makes the point we would: his 2025 average was 32.9 attempts a game, and 23 will likely be his season low. Jacksonville ran 32 of 56 plays from under centre and led 24–0 at half.

The underlying player is a genuine QB1: over 4,000 yards and 29 touchdown passes last season, 38 total touchdowns, and Draft Sharks has him as the QB1 in points per game after the bye in 2025. He goes at QB10 with an ADP of 86.8. Our Week 2 board had him at QB12 and labelled him a consensus faller, because the market moved Jacksonville’s implied total down sharply against Denver in a game with a modest 43.5 total.

Our verdict: a fine QB1 at his price, and a sell-high if somebody in your league is pricing him off the opener. QB10 for a passer with this floor is fair value in single-QB and good value in superflex. Just do not pay QB4 money because of one 150.6 rating against Cleveland.

Brenton Strange, and the rookie taking his snaps

Strange is the starter and caught a 14-yard touchdown on three targets in Week 1, with two end-zone targets — the sort of usage that wins you a week. He caught 40 for 488 in eleven games last season. He goes at TE20 with an ADP of 151.

The reason we will not go further than streamer is sitting directly behind him. Second-round rookie Nate Boerkircher played 38 snaps — 67%, more than any of Jacksonville’s top three wide receivers. Coen said he played the most of any rookie tight end in the league that week. For now it is a blocking role: ten routes and a 10% target rate. But a rookie second-rounder who is already on the field two-thirds of the time is not a rookie second-rounder who stays a blocker, and Draft Sharks flags exactly this mounting target competition.

Our verdict: stream Strange in good matchups, do not roster him as your TE1. Our Week 2 board had him TE15 against Denver with a tough-matchup note, which was about right.

Injury watch

As of Tuesday, November 3, 2026, three players carry real game-time questions: Bhayshul Tuten (ankle), Jakobi Meyers (hamstring) and Chris Rodriguez Jr. (hand) are each listed Questionable. Reserve wideout CJ Williams is Out. Washington, Thomas, Lawrence and Strange carry no designation. Check the live table below before locking your lineup, and keep starting your Jaguars on role rather than health: Washington and Meyers as WR3s, Tuten as an RB3 behind a game-time call, Thomas only if you have to.

Statuses updated Nov 4, 12:26 pm EST. Status data: Sleeper.

Report current as of Tuesday, November 3, 2026. The table above refreshes automatically from our status feed.

Team forecast: why we have Jacksonville at 8–9

Fantasy production depends on game script, and game script depends on whether this team is winning. We scanned sixteen independent projections. The consensus is closer to ten wins than nine. This is the furthest we have sat from the field on any page this season, and it is a call we expect to be graded hard on, because Jacksonville opened by winning 34–10.

Source	Type	Wins	Finish / Call
NFLDraftBuzz season projection	Model (post-Week 1)	12–5	AFC No. 1 seed — 92% playoffs
WalterFootball	Analyst	12–5	1st — “best team in the AFC”
Gary Davenport, Bleacher Report	Analyst	11–6	1st — “still the class of the division”
Dan Johnson, DraftKings Network	Analyst	11–6	Over 9.5
PFN Football Playoff Meter	Model (in-season, Sept 18)	10.20	51.7% division, 77.6% playoffs, 100k sims
PFF projected win totals	Model	9.44	Lean Under a 9.5 line; 16th-toughest schedule
Opta supercomputer	Model	9.39	Projects Jacksonville as AFC South champion, 63.0% playoffs
ESPN FPI	Model	9–8	17th; 54% playoffs, 34.9% division
Daniel Kelley, FTN	Analyst	9–8	2nd — misses the wild card on a tiebreaker
DraftKings (via CBS Sports)	Market	8.5	Over −140; playoffs +105; AFC South +245
FOX Sports	Market	8.5	Over −140; Super Bowl +3000
Fanatics Sportsbook	Market	8.5	No clear lean recommended
Mike Clay, ESPN	Model	8.5	Over 50% win probability in only seven games
Aaron Schatz DVOA projections, FTN	Model	8.5	43.1% playoffs — projected to miss
John Breech, CBS Sports	Analyst	8–9	2nd, behind Houston at 11–6
Nick Hennion, BetMGM	Market + lean	—	Under 9.5 (59.2% implied)
This site	Our call	8–9	2nd, AFC South — no playoffs

Why we are a win and a half under. The 2025 Jaguars went 13–4 and the reason is not a secret: 15.6% of their defensive drives ended in a turnover, the second-highest rate in football against a league average of 10.5%. That is Fantasy Life’s number, and Fantasy Life — which still ranks this defence DST11 — expects it to regress. Turnover rate is the least sticky thing a defence does. Thirty-one takeaways came with only 32 sacks, which is the tell: this unit did not generate pressure, it generated luck.

Strip the turnovers out and the picture changes completely. BetMGM’s analysis has Jacksonville 25th in EPA over the first ten weeks of 2025 once takeaways are removed, and notes the schedule fed them backup and struggling quarterbacks — they went 2–5 against top-ten quarterbacks. A team that is 25th in EPA and 2–5 against good quarterbacks does not repeat 13–4 because it is the same team; it repeats it only if the turnovers do. We do not think they will.

The third piece is the one nobody models: this franchise has stopped having home games. The $1.4 billion EverBank Stadium renovation has cut capacity to 42,507, taking 27,637 seats offline — Week 1 drew 41,156. Jacksonville plays two consecutive London games as the designated home team, against Philadelphia at Tottenham in Week 5 and Houston at Wembley in Week 6, deliberately sandwiched between a road game and the bye so that construction gets a month-long window. Team president Mark Lamping has said as much. And it does not stop there: per TSN, the Jaguars will play 28 of their next 33 regular-season games away from Jacksonville, with the entire 2027 season staged elsewhere. Centre Robert Hainsey calls it “trauma bonding.” Coen’s line is “Anywhere. Anytime. Anybody,” and he is right that the record is the record — but eight or nine home dates a year is worth something in the standings, and this team is not getting them.

Where we sit against the field. We are not alone, and the company is respectable: Aaron Schatz’s DVOA projections have Jacksonville at 8.5 wins and 43.1% to make the playoffs — projected to miss, which is the model closest to us. Daniel Kelley at FTN has them 9–8 and missing the wild card on a tiebreaker. John Breech at CBS has them 8–9. Nick Hennion at BetMGM is on the Under at 9.5. Against that, Opta and PFF both effectively hand them the division, PFN’s in-season model gives them 77.6% playoff odds after one week, and NFLDraftBuzz now has them as the AFC’s No. 1 seed at 12–5. If we are wrong it will be because the takeaways are a repeatable feature of Anthony Campanile’s defence rather than variance, and that is a perfectly respectable thing to believe.

One piece of housekeeping on the 2025 record. SI Betting has last season at 14–3; Wikipedia, FOX Sports, BetMGM, VegasInsider, Fanatics and DraftKings Network all have 13–4. We use 13–4 and think SI is in error.

Game-by-game, and what it means for your lineup

Wk	Opponent	Site	Pick	Record
1	Cleveland Browns	Home · Sept 13	L	0–1
2	Denver Broncos	Away	L	0–2
3	New England Patriots	Home	W	1–2
4	Cincinnati Bengals	Away	L	1–3
5	Philadelphia Eagles	London · Tottenham	L	1–4
6	Houston Texans	London · Wembley	W	2–4
7	Bye	—	—	2–4
8	Indianapolis Colts	Home	W	3–4
9	Baltimore Ravens	Away · TNF	W	4–4
10	Tennessee Titans	Away	L	4–5
11	New York Giants	Away	L	4–6
12	Tennessee Titans	Home	L	4–7
13	Chicago Bears	Away	W	5–7
14	Pittsburgh Steelers	Home · MNF	W	6–7
15	Houston Texans	Away	L	6–8
16	Dallas Cowboys	Away · SNF	L	6–9
17	Washington Commanders	Home	W	7–9
18	Indianapolis Colts	Away	W	8–9

The fantasy read on that shape: a soft opening five weeks by opponent quality that we still have at 1–4, then the two best months of the year, then a hard close. The Jaguars you want to own are the ones whose value does not depend on winning.

• Weeks 5–6 — the London block, and it is fine. Two 9:30 a.m. Eastern kickoffs in a row means your Jaguars are done scoring before most of your league has had breakfast, which is a scheduling quirk rather than a penalty. Mike Clay’s model gives Jacksonville 37% against Philadelphia and 46% against Houston, both as “home” underdogs, which tells you what the designation is worth.
• Week 7 bye — excellent placement. Immediately after the London block and well clear of every fantasy bracket. A Jaguar costs you less in bench planning than almost any other team’s player.
• Weeks 8–9 — the buy window pays off. Indianapolis at home then Baltimore on Thursday night, and we have Jacksonville winning both. This is the stretch where Washington and Meyers look like the players we are telling you they are.
• Weeks 10–12 — the three-game hole. At Tennessee, at the Giants, home to Tennessee, and we have them 0–3. That lands precisely when most managers are fighting for a playoff berth, and it is the stretch that turns a 10-win projection into ours.
• The counterintuitive one: every preview treats the two London games as the disruption to plan around. They are not — they are bracketed by a road game and the bye by deliberate design, and they are the best-organised fortnight on the calendar. The thing to actually retire is the habit of upgrading a player because his team is at home. For this franchise that heuristic is dead for two years: only six of eight “home” games are in Jacksonville this season, and all nine home games in 2027 will be staged somewhere else entirely. Stop reading the H in the schedule grid as an advantage for anyone in teal.

Frequently asked

Should I draft Brian Thomas Jr. in 2026?

Not at an Underdog ADP of 65. The talent is real — 87 catches for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns as a rookie — but the deployment is not. He played 35% of the snaps in Week 1 and ranked third on the team in routes, because he is the receiver who comes off the field for Travis Hunter’s snaps while Parker Washington and Jakobi Meyers stay on in two-tight-end sets. His target share already fell from 25.5% to 19.3% between his rookie year and last season, and Draft Sharks projects him WR41 against a WR31 price. He currently carries no injury designation; check the live Injury watch table on this page before kickoff.

Is Travis Hunter worth a fantasy roster spot in 2026?

No, not in redraft. Hunter played four offensive snaps and 29 defensive snaps in Week 1, ran three routes, and caught one pass for eight yards. He is listed as a starting cornerback and a backup wide receiver. As a rookie he played 324 offensive snaps to 162 defensive; that ratio has inverted this season. CBS Sports says he can be left on the waiver wire in all redraft formats and we agree. His ADP of around 160 is the worst price on this roster. Dynasty is a different question, and the answer there is still yes.

Who is the Jaguars’ No. 1 wide receiver in 2026?

Parker Washington, on usage. He led the team with six targets in Week 1 on 19 routes and 72% route participation, and finished 5-83-1. Over the post-bye stretch of 2025 he ran 78% of the routes at 2.69 yards per route run — 1.2 yards per route higher than both Jakobi Meyers and Brian Thomas Jr. over the same span — and averaged 15.6 PPR points a game. Meyers actually ran the most routes in Week 1 at 80% and is the better value at an ADP of 120. Thomas remains the most expensive of the three and the third-most used.

Who is the Jaguars’ starting running back in 2026?

Bhayshul Tuten, with Chris Rodriguez Jr. taking a real share. Travis Etienne Jr. signed with New Orleans on a four-year, $52 million deal and is no longer on this team. In Week 1 Tuten took 15 carries for 66 yards at 4.4 a carry on 28 snaps, 49% of the offensive total; Rodriguez took six carries on 23 snaps, 40%. That was a 34–10 blowout, so the rotation may not be representative. Our call is to hold Tuten as an RB3 rather than chase him at an ADP of 49.5, and to claim Rodriguez off waivers as one of the more valuable free handcuffs available.

Will the Jaguars win the AFC South in 2026?

We project no — 8–9, second in the division and out of the playoffs, against a consensus averaging 9.57 wins. This is our biggest disagreement with the field this season. Our case: last year’s 13–4 rested on 15.6% of defensive drives ending in a turnover, the second-highest rate in football against a 10.5% average, on only 32 sacks; strip the takeaways out and BetMGM has Jacksonville 25th in EPA over the first ten weeks, going 2–5 against top-ten quarterbacks. Aaron Schatz’s DVOA model is closest to us at 8.5 wins and 43.1% playoff odds. Opta, PFF and NFLDraftBuzz all disagree, the last of them projecting a 12–5 AFC No. 1 seed.

When is the Jaguars bye week in 2026?

Week 7, immediately after back-to-back London games — Philadelphia at Tottenham in Week 5 and Houston at Wembley in Week 6, both with Jacksonville as the designated home team. That sequencing is deliberate: it opens a roughly month-long construction window at EverBank Stadium, whose $1.4 billion renovation has cut capacity to 42,507. For fantasy purposes a Week 7 bye is close to ideal, clearing every playoff bracket by a wide margin.

Prediction tracker

Updated every Tuesday and Friday. Last update: November 3, 2026 — still six games graded (Jacksonville had its Week 7 bye), and we have two of them right. We had Cleveland winning in Jacksonville and were wrong by 24 points; Jacksonville won 34–10. We had Jacksonville losing at Denver, and it did, 20–13. We had Jacksonville beating New England at home, and it did, 35–6. We had Jacksonville losing at Cincinnati in Week 4, and it won instead. We also had Jacksonville losing in London to Philadelphia in Week 5, and it won instead, 19–17. We had Jacksonville beating Houston at Wembley in Week 6, and it lost instead, 31–34. That leaves the Jaguars 4–2, two wins ahead of our 8–9 pace rather than on it — still the widest pace gap on any page we track. The defence remains the awkward part for our thesis, though Week 6 gave it its first real dent: 17.3 points allowed a game is up from 14.0 through five weeks, the first sign the turnover-fuelled unit we argued would regress is starting to. We do not revise the original forecast; we grade it.

Metric	Predicted	Actual	Delta
Team record	8–9	4–2	Two wins ahead of pace through six games
AFC South finish	2nd	—	—
Playoffs	No	—	—
Turnover rate regresses toward league average	Yes	Starting to — points allowed per game rose to 17.3 through six weeks, up from 14.0 after five	—
Washington finishes above Thomas	Yes	—	—
Meyers finishes above Thomas	Yes	—	—
Hunter finishes outside the top 60 WRs	Yes	—	—
Points allowed rank	— (no preseason rank published)	17.3 allowed per game through six weeks, no longer a top-two scoring defense	Not graded — no preseason rank published, but the regression we called is now visible in the per-game number
Games called correctly	—	2 of 6	—

---

Keep going

• Half-PPR fantasy rankings — where every Jaguar sits on our current board
• Start/Sit calls — our latest lineup decisions
• 2026 team fantasy outlooks — every team we have written up so far
• Houston Texans fantasy outlook — the division winner on our board at 10–7, and the team we split the two head-to-heads with
• Indianapolis Colts fantasy outlook — 7–10 and third, swept by Jacksonville in Weeks 8 and 18
• Philadelphia Eagles fantasy outlook — the Week 5 visitor to Tottenham, whom we have winning at 10–7
• Live injury report — every Jaguars designation, updated through the week
• Our track record — every call we make against consensus, graded after the games

Sources: Jaguars.com, ESPN, CBS Sports, NFL.com, FOX Sports, Sports Illustrated and Jaguar Report and SI Betting, First Coast News, Heavy, TSN, RotoWire, Pro Football Network, PFF, FTN Fantasy, Fantasy Life, Draft Sharks, FantasyData, Fantasy Six Pack, Sharp Football Analysis, FantasyPros, Fantasy Football Calculator, DraftKings Network, WalterFootball, Bleacher Report, Yahoo Sports, NFLDraftBuzz, Opta via The Analyst, Covers, VegasInsider, BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel Research, Fanatics Sportsbook, New Orleans Saints official, Wikipedia. Odds, ADP and injury data current as of September 18, 2026. Analysis, not betting advice.