Drake London missed 5 games last season, cooling some of the excitement in the fantasy football community after the former first-round pick exploded in 2024 (100 catches for 1,271 yards and 9 touchdowns). He enters 2026 with a clean bill of health and has the industry locking him into top-10 status despite another season with underwhelming play under center.
Should You Draft Drake London in Fantasy Football?
London’s ADP in PFN’s Free Fantasy Mock Draft Simulator sits at 17.2. In our consensus rankings between me and my colleague Kyle Soppe, London checks in as the WR5, and he has a projected fantasy points per game output of 17.2. So are we taking him?
There are some fantasy managers this year who are justifiably concerned about the Falcons offense as a whole. I’ve done some research on this, and we know that over the past 10 years, 70% of wide receivers to average 16-plus points per game have come from top-15 scoring offenses. They’re certainly worried that the Falcons were not top 15 last year and won’t be again this year.
Tua Tagovailoa has looked dreadful in the preseason, to the point where he essentially ran unopposed for this starting job. Kevin Stefanski is not ready to declare a starter, even though Michael Penix was just activated off the training camp list and is now ready to participate in full practices. Penix isn’t even going to play in a preseason game, but he still may start Week 1, because that’s how bad Tua has been.
Tua starting is definitely a concern for London, but I really don’t think we’re going to get a full season of Tua under center. In fact, we might not even get a single game. With Penix, London has been pretty good for fantasy. In his career, it’s 19.5 points per game with Penix under center against 13.9 points per game without him. We want Penix in there.
Last year, fantasy managers who had London were justifiably upset at the down-the-stretch performance. London was kind of a league loser, but from Weeks 1 through 11 he averaged 19.6 points per game on an elite 30.4% target share. We all know the cause of the issue. It was the PCL sprain.
We’ve seen it with plenty of players now: Brock Bowers, Dalton Kincaid, and Ricky Pearsall. PCLs are not great. If you see that, sell and run. It’s basically a season ender. Even though they can try to play through it, their production is not the same.
By all accounts, London is fully recovered, and now he’s set for a full season of full health, hopefully with mostly Michael Penix as his quarterback. Last year, he averaged 2.44 yards per route run. That was 8th in the league. This is a truly elite talent.
If we put London with a quarterback like Joe Burrow, Dak Prescott, or Patrick Mahomes, we’d surely be taking him as a top-5 receiver. That’s where we have him. I am confidently selecting London in the middle of the second round in fantasy drafts this year.
FANTASY RANKINGS: PFN’s FREE Fantasy PPR, Half-PPR, and Non-PPR Rankings
Drake London’s Week 1 Fantasy Outlook
Analysis provided by PFN Analyst Kyle Soppe.
Last season started in a weird way for Atlanta’s WR1 (his target count was higher than the yardage gained on his longest reception), and the explosive plays took time (his first 25-plus-yard grab didn’t come until Week 4, when they finally opened up his route tree).
There is a risk we see more of the same this season, but this level of talent and target count stability is more than enough to plug him in as your WR1 with confidence. The Steelers ranked 8th in blitz rate last season, and that could be on display in this spot, but that shouldn’t worry you.
London is going to be the first and primary read on plenty of the Falcons’ pass plays, and while the quality of target is fair to question, his ability to squeeze maximum value out of them isn’t.
I’m not tempted to go this route in the DFS streets simply because it’s hard to feel great about constructing a roster that way, but in terms of season-long leagues, you should know better than to ask questions about No. 5 in black: he’s an auto-start.
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Where London Ranks Among 2026 Wide Receivers
- Jaxon Smith-Njigba | SEA
- Amon-Ra St. Brown | DET
- Justin Jefferson | MIN
- CeeDee Lamb | DAL
- Malik Nabers | NYG
- Drake London | ATL
- Nico Collins | HOU
- A.J. Brown | NE
- George Pickens | DAL
- Rashee Rice | KC
- Chris Olave | NO
Want to dive in more? PFN’s Complete PPR Wide Receiver Rankings are updated weekly.
