Fantasy Football Sleepers, Busts & Predictions: 2026 Baltimore Ravens
· Yahoo Sports
The 2025 season was one hell of a “What if?” for Baltimore. They lost in Week 1 by a single point after (a) leading by 15 with 4 minutes left, (b) fumbling away the ball up 8 with 3:10 left, (c) only running 32 seconds off the clock up 2 with under 2 minutes left, and (d) the Bills having to rely on a 41-year-old who had been on the team three days to kick the game-winning field goal as time expired. They lost in Week 3 when they fumbled the ball away down 4 in the fourth quarter. They lost in Week 14 when two late reviews, including the potential game-winning touchdown, both went against them in controversial fashion. They lost in Week 16 despite leading with 9 minutes left and fumbling the ball away with less than 2 minutes left and a chance to win. They lost in Week 18 despite leading with 1 minute left and missing a 44-yard field goal as time expired (nice storytelling parallel to Week 1 there, universe). The 2025 Ravens were within a breath of another division title despite some of the worst luck ever, despite Lamar Jackson missing four games and not looking like “Lamar Jackson” in several others, despite the defense going from one of the league’s strengths to positively Bengals-ian for a while. It was a disaster season, and yet even in a disaster season they finished 8-9 and some reversed luck away from a crown. Can they find their luck again in 2026? Or has the Baltimore window closed?
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2026 Sleepers, Busts & Bold Predictions: Baltimore Ravens
Sleeper: Ja’Kobi Lane/Elijah Sarratt, WR
Copout time! I do not think both Baltimore rookie receivers will pop, but I very much think one will. If pressed, I would lean Lane, but in the end, my advice is to just pick your own personal favorite and roll with it. Zay Flowers has been a success as a first-round pick, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. He’s topped 1,000 yards each of his last two years and finished as the WR7 in PPR leagues last year. Sure, he doesn’t have anything resembling Ja’Marr Chase or Puka Nacua upside, but he will play as a team’s WR1. It can’t just be only him, though, and with Mark Andrews clearly on the backside of productive, with Rashod Bateman’s good 2024 looking like a blip, with Isaiah Likely and Charlie Kolar leaving this offseason, the cupboard of secondary pass catchers in Baltimore is fairly bare. That explains why the team took not one but two shots at the position in the draft, grabbing Lane in the third and Sarratt in the fourth. Lane is 6-foor-4, Sarratt 6-2. Both are good complements to what the 5-9 Flowers lacks. Derrick Henry has somehow never been that good a short-yardage back, and Andrews’ aging has opened the door for the Ravens to find an end zone target. One of these two will fit that bill.
Bust: Zay Flowers, WR
I just spent a few sentences praising Flowers, and I meant it, but at the same time, he’s got a seriously capped ceiling. His biggest attribute is availability — he’s missed exactly one game in his three years, and that was a meaningless Week 18 in 2023 when he only sat because why risk it? But while that’s a great trait in an NFL receiver, it’s a misleading one for fantasy, artificially making his fantasy results look better than they really were. To wit, here are Flowers’ season-by-season results in total PPR points, and in points per game:
TotalPPG2023WR31WR322024WR25WR362025WR7WR13Put another way, since entering the league, Flowers is WR12 in total PPR points, but he’s WR26 in PPR points per game. There’s no shame in that! That’s a nice player to have on any team! But Flowers is going as WR14 in the earliest ADP, and a guy who has never scored more than 6 touchdowns in a season should never be WR14 in ADP.
Bold Prediction: The Ravens Are the AFC 1 Seed
In 2022, injuries crushed the Rams. They fell from Super Bowl champion to 5-12, there was some mystery if they could rebound, and a lot of people thought their window had closed. They made the playoffs in 2023. In 2024, injuries crushed the 49ers. They fell from Super Bowl runners-up to 6-11, there was some mystery if they could rebound, and a lot of people thought their window had closed. They made the playoffs in 2025. Obviously, a lot of teams have disaster seasons and their window really does close. But a single messed-up year is not a death sentence for a team seen as elite before the disaster. Entering last year, the Ravens were first or second in most people’s power rankings, and most of the players they thought they could rely on a year ago are back and healthy now (assuming Nnamdi Madubuike is back and ready to go, but I’m proceeding as though he is), other than center Tyler Linderbaum. Am I concerned about Linderbaum’s departure to Las Vegas? Absolutely. But the other thing working in Baltimore’s favor is the issues facing the other top AFC contenders. The Patriots and Bills have to face each other. The Texans and Jaguars, too. The Raiders, Chiefs and Chargers. Meanwhile, the Ravens have the moribund Browns, a Steelers team I already predicted to finish 6-11 or worse and the still-without-a-good-line-or-defense Bengals. So they have a cleaner and easier line to a 5-1 or 6-0 division finish than any other AFC contender, and that’s a shortcut to a 1 seed.