Around these parts, it's never too early to start prepping for the fantasy football season, especially when you have the opportunity to get a leg up on your leaguemates. To help with exactly that, Kendall Valenzuela, Dwain McFarland and Ian Hartitz all offered up their favorite QB sleeper for early 2026 fantasy football drafts.

RELATED: 2026 Fantasy Football Rankings

Fantasy Football QB Sleepers For 2026

Jordan Love | GB

Kendall: Jordan Love is going to be the quarterback I wait for in drafts in 2026. It doesn't look like we're going to get a Jayden Daniels or Drake Maye type of late-round quarterback that we're pounding the table for, but Love might be the closest guy for me. In 15 regular-season starts in 2025, Love completed 66.3% of his passes for 3,381 yards, 23 touchdown passes and six interceptions. He finished as the QB16 in overall fantasy points last year, averaging 16.5 fantasy points per game.

The idea of Love being my sleeper quarterback hinges upon the team getting a little more away from the ground game and focusing on Love's arm and the receivers around him. He only attempted 439 passes in 2025, the seventh-fewest in the NFL. Romeo Doubs (who led all of the Packers’ wide receivers in total snaps in 2025) is out of the picture, and a lot will be asked of Tucker Kraft, Christian Watson and Matthew Golden this season. The Packers are still going to run the ball and rotate their receivers, but Love could be the quarterback that drastically outperforms his ADP in 2026 if they give him more of a runway.

Kyler Murray | MIN

Dwain: Kyler Murray got benched for Jacoby Brissett in 2025. That happened. We can't erase it. But Murray is a dual-threat—the cheat code for fantasy QBs. He doesn't get the short-yardage TDs like Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts, but his run game involvement has historically paid dividends. From 2019 to 2024, he never finished worse than QB11 in fantasy points per game—including three seasons averaging fewer than 227 passing yards.

Now he lands with the Vikings, in Kevin O'Connell's offense alongside Justin Jefferson. The only QB to fail in Minnesota since O'Connell arrived is Murray's competition: J.J. McCarthy.

• 2022: 283 yards/game, 1.8 TDs (Kirk Cousins)
• 2023: 275 yards/game, 1.8 TDs (Cousins, Joshua Dobbs, Nick Mullens)
• 2024: 258 yards/game, 2.1 TDs (Sam Darnold)
• 2025: 189 yards/game, 1.1 TDs (McCarthy, Carson Wentz)

Murray has limitations as a passer, but so did Mullens and Wentz, who averaged 261 and 243 yards, respectively. And on a $1.3M prove-it deal, the 28-year-old former No. 1 overall pick should be highly motivated. Darnold turned one year in Minnesota into a three-year, $100M contract with Seattle.

Over the last three seasons, Murray has averaged 4.7 fantasy points on rushing alone. Modest passing improvement locks him into the top 12. A Darnold-type year makes him a top-six QB. He's going off the board as QB17. Sign. Me. Up.

Malik Willis | MIA

Ian: Pick a passing efficiency stat and there's a good chance that Willis leads the league in it over the past two seasons. EPA per dropback, completion percentage over expected, yards per attempt, passer rating, explosive pass play rate—first! Hell yeah!

Of course, the sample size is small, and Willis is going from a well-schemed Packers offense with a solid crop of playmakers to … one of the worst on-paper situations in the NFL (aside from De'Von Achane). Seriously: This wide receiver room is ROUGH … but does that really matter in fantasy football land?

The simple argument for Willis emerging as THE late-round QB of 2026: The man is FAST and lethal as a rusher. And get this, since 2014, there have been 34 QBs with 100+ rush attempts in a season, and 31 of them (91%) finished as a top-12 fantasy QB in fantasy points per game! 31! Of 34! And I'm talking per-game numbers here! Not even doing the dickhead fantasy analyst thing of using 17-game total numbers!

Ultimately, we're looking at a 26-year-old dual-threat talent who has at least flashed the ability to operate the toughest position in sports at a very high level. We've seen guys like Justin Fields, Tim Tebow and even Taysom Hill operate as anyone's idea of a bad real-life QB … while still racking up all sorts of fantasy goodness. Don't be surprised if Willis manages to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge his way to a top-12 finish in 2026.

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