Looking ahead to the upcoming season, a lot of players could be chosen for this exercise. In an attempt to dig a bit deeper than listing obvious players like Quinshon Judkins and Harold Fannin Jr., we decided to pick overlooked guys who could break out from either a statistical or playing time category in 2026.<\/p>\n
Without further ado, let\u2019s dive right into it.<\/p>\n
Understandably, KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston have been the talk of the town lately, but Isaiah Bond is just as likely to have a big season as they are in 2026.<\/p>\n
He showed the ability to beat defenses in multiple areas of the field in 2025, and he\u2019s undoubtedly in line to see a lot of playing time this season. Bond is incredibly explosive and somebody that Todd Monken could want to get the ball to quite a bit in 2026.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s do-or-die time for Harden heading into year three in Cleveland. He\u2019s shown flashes of above-average play at times, but he\u2019s been incredibly inconsistent up to this point.<\/p>\n
It was really telling that the coaching staff felt comfortable enough not to draft a slot corner in the 2026 NFL draft despite multiple opportunities to do so, which leads me to believe that this coaching staff still believes in Harden.<\/p>\n
If he can limit the mental lapses from last year, 2026 could be the season where Harden finally shows that he can be the Browns\u2019 nickel of the future.<\/p>\n
Whoa, the Browns\u2019 5th-round pick who most people expect to be a special teams-only player? Yes, that\u2019s him.<\/p>\n
Cleveland\u2019s defensive staff loves him, and so did quite a few others throughout the pre-draft process. He\u2019s incredibly athletic and processes the game very well, which is why Alabama was able to use him in so many different ways in 2025. He was an above-average blitzer and coverage player, and he was better against the run than other sub-230-pound linebackers.<\/p>\n
Due to sheer necessity and lack of talent behind Carson Schwesinger and Quincy Williams, Jefferson could battle his way into a legitimate role in Mike Rutenberg\u2019s defense as a rookie. Seeing Jefferson operate as Cleveland\u2019s top nickel linebacker or WILL in 2026 wouldn\u2019t be surprising whatsoever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looking ahead to the upcoming season, a lot of players could be chosen for this exercise. In an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,91914,51955,1696,2337,7,6],"class_list":["post-923718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-browns","tag-browns","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-browns","tag-cleveland-browns-analysis","tag-cleveland-browns-depth-chart","tag-cleveland-browns-roster","tag-clevelandbrowns","tag-football","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116780783575362160","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}