Eight places our 2026 football model disagrees with your draft room

Every pick in a draft is a trade against the room's consensus. Most of the time the room is roughly right — ADP is thousands of real drafters voting with real picks, which is why our model treats it as a first-class input rather than pretending it doesn't exist. But "roughly right" leaves gaps, and the gaps are where drafts are won.

We pulled the largest disagreements between Model One and live PPR ADP inside the top 120. Two patterns fell out, and they're more interesting than any individual name.

Pattern one: the room makes you wait on exactly the QBs the model wants

Nearly every player the model rates meaningfully ahead of his draft cost is a quarterback:

• Jalen Hurts (PHI) — model rank 58, drafted around pick 80. Projects roughly +43 points over a replacement QB, the kind of margin that quietly wins a weekly matchup.
• Caleb Williams (CHI) — model 66, room 89. Second-year leap priced by evidence, not vibes: the model sees the year-one baseline and the age curve, and it likes the direction.
• Jared Goff (DET) — model 74, room 100. The least exciting name on this list and one of the most reliable point streams in football.
• Patrick Mahomes (KC) — model 79, room 102. The room is bored of him; three-year weighted production is not.
• Bo Nix (DEN) — model 91, room 113. Volume plus rushing equity, two rounds after the QB run ends.
• Baker Mayfield (TB) — model 103, room 130. A top-eight QB season last year, available as a late-round afterthought.

To be clear about what this is not: it is not "draft a QB early." Replacement math is exactly why you wait. The finding is narrower and more useful — when this tier starts sliding past its model rank in the middle rounds, taking the discount costs you nothing at the scarce positions and banks real weekly points.

Pattern two: the model won't pay for a story it can't verify

The players the room drafts far ahead of the model share one trait: little or no NFL production behind the price.

• Bhayshul Tuten (JAX) and Jadarian Price (SEA) — second-year backs being drafted in the top 100 on role speculation the stat record can't yet support.
• Luther Burden III (CHI), Parker Washington (JAX), Carnell Tate (TEN), Keon Coleman (BUF) — receivers priced for a breakout that exists so far mostly in camp reports.
• Mike Evans (TB) — a different, sadder kind of disagreement: the model's age adjustment for a 33-year-old receiver is doing exactly what it was built to do, and the room's loyalty to eleven straight thousand-yard seasons is doing what it was built to do. Someone will be right.
• Chris Godwin Jr. (TB) — coming back from injury with an age flag on top; the model wants proof at this price.

An evidence-based model will always be late to genuine breakouts — that's the cost of refusing to pay for stories, and we'd rather tell you the trade-off than pretend the model sees things it can't. If you believe a camp report, take the player; the board's job is to make sure you know exactly how much unproven story you're paying for.

Check your own board

Every disagreement above is visible on the 2026 draft board — the ADP column sits next to the model's rank for all ~680 players, in all three scoring formats, and every player links to a full profile with his stat history and his team's actual depth chart. The gaps move as drafts happen and the board re-syncs, so check the live version before yours.