As we get ready for the 2026 fantasy football season, there's no better way to prepare than doing mock drafts. And while live mock drafts will give us a great idea of how things might shake out, sometimes they're hit or miss and can be time consuming. Fortunately, Yahoo is offering its Instant Mock Draft tool again this season, available with your Fantasy Plus subscription.
If you're new to the instant mock tool, here are some of the benefits:
- Draft immediately: That means no lobbies and no dropouts.
- Drafts tailored to your league: No more guessing if a mock draft from a generic 12-team league with standard scoring matches your custom setup. Draft against our algorithm, which mimics your league opponents.
- Test strategy: Simulate and try out different draft strategies from your exact draft slot. Find out which approach builds the strongest roster, then nail your live draft with real-time, on-the-clock recommendations.
In this series, I'll be performing an instant mock draft out of each pick slot for 12-team leagues with default half-PPR scoring. Today, we're picking a team from the No. 5 spot. Below is the full roster, plus key takeaways.
More Instant Mock Drafts
No. 1 | No. 2 | No. 3 | No. 4 | No. 5 | No. 6 | No. 7 | No. 8 | No. 9 | No. 10 | No. 11 | No. 12Full Roster
QB: Patrick Mahomes, KCRB: Kenneth Walker III, KC
RB: D'Andre Swift, CHI
WR: Puka Nacua, LAR
WR: DeVonta Smith, PHI
TE: Isaiah Likely, NYG
FLEX: Ladd McConkey, LAC
Kicker: Cameron Dicker, LAC
Defense: Bills
Bench: Bhayshul Tuten, JAX
Bench: Jordyn Tyson, NO
Bench: De'Zhaun Stribling, SF
Bench: Tyler Allgeier, ARI
Bench: Terrance Ferguson, LAR
Bench: Mike Washington Jr., LV
Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2026 NFL season
Strategy
This is probably my favorite team so far in this mock series. We went with a balanced approach, rotating through WR and RB in the first handful of rounds before pivoting to address QB and TE. Head here to see which draft slot our Yahoo analysts like the most in 2026. Josh Norris, Justin Boone and Scott Pianowski are all advocates of the balanced drafting approach early on.There aren't many wrong answers when you have a middle-of-the-round pick in 2026. At No. 5, you can go in a bunch of different directions depending on who goes beforehand and what type of roster you want to build. In PPR formats (particularly Full-PPR), Nacua may be one of the best values in the first round. Sure, there's the off-field stuff. Sure, there's some injury concerns. But when healthy and out there, it's tough to find a more productive WR.All we did was rave about Jaxon Smith-Njigba last season but Nacua still outpaced him in fantasy points, points per game and catches over the full season. He also outscored Ja'Marr Chase by a wide margin (of course, Joe Burrow was out, but still). So there's a strong case Puka should be the WR1 off the board, and to get him there at No. 5 feels very good.
My WR and RB corps are so deep that if all goes well I'm likely having trouble making roster decisions on a week-to-week basis.
Negative Correlation Isn't Always Bad
As you can see, I went with Mahomes as my QB1 and also have newly-signed Chiefs RB Walker on my roster. This negatively correlates in fantasy because if Walker is getting points, that will usually mean Mahomes isn't getting points. But it also means I have a piece in the Kansas City passing and run games. If the Chiefs bounce back and are a top-scoring offense in 2026, having both Mahomes and Walker gives me a very big portion of that pie. I'm pretty high on Walker after getting paid and landing in KC — so is analyst Hayden Winks, who has more on Walker in his bold predictions for RBs in 2026.Don't Draft Into Injuries (Unless You're Prepared)
Boone is still advocating for Saints rookie WR Jordyn Tyson despite the preseason injury that will keep him out to start the regular season. Eventually, Tyson will return and if he can stay healthy, he will be a big part of the New Orleans passing attack.I have plenty of depth at WR with Nacua, Smith and McConkey all WR1s (or possessing WR1 upside). I also grabbed De'Zhaun Stribling, who had another strong showing on Thursday night for the Niners in preseason Week 2. Winks goes into that a bit more with his fantasy takeaways from the game. So the idea is to stash Tyson in an IR slot to start the season, add someone off waivers and hopefully get a solid addition mid-way through the season I can use in a multitude of ways — injury replacement, trade chip, etc.
Sidebar: You can also read a bit about Mike Washington Jr. in Winks' preseason takeaways, a reason I went out and selected him with my last pick. There's a real chance Washington cuts into Ashton Jeanty's workload this season.
Final Thoughts
There aren't many. This team is near perfect (as far as how teams look before Week 1). My one tough call was in the fourth round, when I went with Swift over RBs like Cam Skattebo, Quinshon Judkins, David Montgomery and Bucky Irving. The Bears RB isn't the sexiest pick this season but he's been an incredibly reliable RB2 in fantasy since leaving Detroit three seasons ago.Tight end could be viewed as a position of weakness, but we can always use some of the depth at RB and WR to address that during the season if need be. Overall, this is my most complete team drafted using the instant mock tool.
Keep it locked here on Tuesday for the No. 6 pick.
