Fantasy Football IDP: 2026 rookie defensive tackle prospect model

Peter Woods earns the top spot: In a somewhat weaker DT class, Woods is the clear best option heading into the NFL combine.
Christen Miller is better than his sack production suggests: While still not a high-end prospect, Miller’s two sacks are not a reason to be down on him in this year’s class.
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Estimated Reading Time: 18 minutes

NFL draft season is in full swing, which naturally comes with a plethora of ways to evaluate potential talent coming out of college with the potential to translate to the next level. This article series is no different, as we’ll add a fantasy football spin to the evaluation process to identify which incoming prospects have a shot to become fantasy-relevant early on in their NFL careers.

Wrapping up this series with the defensive tackle position for IDP fantasy football, I have created a prospect model that takes into account the most important factors and metrics for a player realizing relevant IDP success in the NFL. Like with any position, no one metric will tell us whether a college prospect will be good or not in the NFL, but the purpose of this model is to combine the metrics and factors that data has proven to be most relevant, providing weight to those that are more important than others.

For the defensive tackle position, in no particular order, we’re looking at PFF pass-rush grades, pass-rush win rate, pressure rate, run-defense grades, draft capital, athleticism and level of competition faced. There is some weight to one-year numbers, though the most stable metrics with the most weight applied when it comes to underlying metrics are career numbers. Underlying metrics were also found to be much more reliable than overall production when accounting for all prospects. While production often comes with strong underlying metrics, one can exist without the other, and the underlying metrics have a better success rate than overall production alone.

This is the pre-NFL combine version of the article and will be updated with athletic testing scores and any shifts in expected draft capital next month.

Keys

The prospect pool for this model consists of 406 defensive tackle prospects dating back to 2018.
Eighteen defensive tackles drafted since 2018 have become a top-12 IDP finisher for their position at least once (4.4%).
- Of those 18 top-12 finishers, 11 (61%) finished as top-12 finishers within their first three NFL seasons.
- Also, of those 18 top-12 finishers, seven of them (39%) have been repeat top-12 finishers.
Thirty-three defensive tackles drafted since 2018 have become a top-24 IDP finisher for their position at least once (8.1%).
Forty-nine defensive tackles drafted since 2018 have become a top-36 IDP finisher for their position at least once (12.1%).
This is an important context when understanding hit rates, as many more prospects will not become fantasy-relevant than most, given such a large pool of players.
However, using this model, the higher the prospect score, the better the success rate will be for each prospect, as highlighted below.

With all this in mind, it’s time to look at this year’s defensive tackle prospects to identify our future IDP contributors. It should also be noted that these scores should not necessarily be used so much as your rankings, as they should be more of a guide toward the quality of the player. Draft capital and landing spot can and will play a big part in actual rankings, though these scores can help us determine which players to trust or not when it comes time to pull the trigger on these players in our rookie drafts.

Peter Woods, Clemson

Consensus draft capital: 16th overall

Woods leads the way for this 2026 draft class, earning a respectable 7.54 model score, similar to 2025’s Walter Nolen (7.71) and Kenneth Grant (7.60), who went in the middle of the first round during last year’s draft.
Woods is also expected to go in the middle of the first round, which might create more optimism for him in IDP leagues. While he’s still likely the top option in this class, his IDP value in rookie drafts should still likely be in the fifth round of most DT-required formats.
Woods wasn’t the most productive pass-rusher coming out of college with just six sacks, though his win rate says that he was certainly deserving of more.
Unfortunately, based on the metrics, we’re looking at likely later wins in his reps as his career pressure rate is also much lower than expected compared to his wins.
An NFL team is likely to invest heavily in Woods in this year’s draft, which will afford him opportunities to develop at the next level and be an effective IDP, though it’s more likely that he doesn’t hit the ground running right away.
Again, the fifth round of rookie drafts is where we’ll take the best taxi squad stashes for our dynasty leagues, and Woods is at least the best of the bunch for DT-required formats.

Caleb Banks, Florida

Consensus draft capital: 25th overall

Banks is currently being mocked just inside the first round of this year’s NFL draft, and while that will have him on DT-required radars, he is likely more of a taxi stash for the majority of dynasty IDP leagues.
Banks’ pass-rush metrics are slightly better overall than the previously mentioned Woods, though he suffers from a lower run-defense score, which could hurt his every-down potential early in his NFL career.
With Banks not scoring elite pass-rush marks in his college career, combined with the lower run defense marks, he’ll likely enter the league as a part-time option at best and not be IDP-relevant until he can develop into a more well-rounded player.
While the fifth-round of IDP rookie drafts is a fine spot to take a shot on Banks as things stand right now (pre-Combine), waiting until later than that makes more sense.

Kayden McDonald, Ohio State

Consensus draft capital: 28th overall

McDonald is a fringe first-round pick in this year’s draft, almost entirely based on his run-stopping ability, as his pass-rush metrics are some of the worst marks in recent history.
McDonald’s 61.8 career pass-rush grade would be the lowest mark for a defensive tackle drafted in the first two rounds since P.J. Hall in 2018 (54.5) – Hall never cracked even the top-36 IDPs at his position and played just three seasons in the NFL.
This isn’t to say that McDonald can’t have success at the next level, but Hall is the only real comparison at this point, because even Jordan Davis, who did not have high-end pass-rush metrics, owned one of the best athleticism scores in recent history.
If McDonald scores high in his athletic testing scores prior to the NFL draft, he’ll earn a higher score in the model, though he’ll likely have to be a high-volume-dependent scorer for him to deliver IDP production, much like Davis this past year.
IDP managers shouldn’t likely spend a rookie draft pick on McDonald and grab him as a speculative add post-rookie drafts to stash on taxi squads, if needed.

Lee Hunter, Texas Tech

Consensus draft capital: 35th overall

Hunter leads off the first second round defensive tackle prospects, scoring slightly above-average marks across the board.
Hunter isn’t exceptional in any one particular metric, which ultimately hurts his standing in the model and, in turn, his IDP potential.
Hunter blends in with a lot of past Day 2 prospects coming out of college with a similar score – the large majority of whom have yet to deliver any real IDP value.
Among 20 past prospects to score between 6.50 and 7.00 in the model and drafted within the first two days (Rounds 1-3) of the draft, only one (5%), Harrison Phillips, has managed a top-12 IDP finish for his position.
There has been one other (B.J. Hill) to crack the top-24 and two more to crack the top-36, but the point is that for IDP purposes, it isn’t promising to not stand out in the crowd here.
Hunter, like everyone else, still can improve his score with a strong combine, though based purely on his college metrics at the moment and expected second-round draft capital, he shouldn’t be very high in most IDP rookie rankings.

Christen Miller, Georgia

Consensus draft capital: 40th overall

Miller is very similar to the previously mentioned Hunter, and while he scored slightly better in terms of his underlying college metrics, he suffers from similar concerns of unremarkable metrics to be more hopeful for his IDP potential than the most former Day 2 picks.
Miller was also very unproductive as a pass-rusher in his college career, delivering just two sacks across 566 pass-rush snaps, although sack totals aren’t accounted for in the model, and he was pretty unlucky in that regard.
Miller wouldn’t have likely hit double-digit sacks in his career with better luck, but two sacks in college shouldn’t necessarily be the thing that’s held against him.
Again, the underlying metrics are the key here, and his eventual athleticism score can bolster his standing in the model as well, and even still, his score cracked the top 90th percentile among past prospects since 2018.
However, that percentile score says a lot more about the state of the position than it does about Miller being a true “90th percentile” prospect, as the true and consistent success comes from the guys who score much higher than that.
For now, Miller, much like Hunter and McDonald in this class, will be ranked low for IDP rookie drafts and likely not worth planning on spending rookie picks on most of this defensive tackle class.