Football card fantasy team: Jayden Daniels is collectors’ No. 1 pick

Fantasy football managers have nothing on card collectors when it comes to speculating on ascending players. Their investment stakes can be enormous. That got us to thinking in this biggest draft week of the season: Can the football card world inform the fantasy world, and vice versa?

PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) put together a fantasy team of the NFL players with the most graded cards during the offseason. Collectors go through the process of having the physical condition of a card graded when they think it will hold some degree of value, either short-term or long, so this team is a representation of who they most believe in at the moment. A caveat here is that players who had their rookie cards come out the previous season will always be over-represented in something like this since those cards tend to drive the most value and the most hype at the start of a season. 

We’ll break down PSA’s lineup with some data and analysis in an attempt to forecast how they’ll perform. The primary focus is on the near term. The ultra-modern investors are generally looking for quick flip and profit. The mentality of many people who have graded these cards is akin to the manager in your league who makes seven trade offers to every team every day. Churn and burn. 

Are we playing Flex 9 or Flex 10? Mint 9 or Gem Mint 10? Who knows. We like expansive lineups and football card collectors love quarterbacks, so this one is superflex, two RBs, three WRs, a tight end and a Flex. We won’t be including kickers and D/ST. (Note the most expensive kicker card I could find is a rookie Lou “The Toe” Groza in PSA 8 for $880; yes, I know Groza also played tackle, though that didn’t butter his bread.) 

Only one non-quarterback cracks the top 10 most graded since February, according to PSA. We’ll get to him in due course. But we have to start at the position that card collectors fixate on more than any other. There are no late-round QB strategies in the ultra-modern football hobby. This marketplace is more desperate for the next franchise QB than even the Browns or Jets. 

Quarterbacks

Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders (178.7K cards graded since February) 

Daniels is the No. 1 graded player by miles. He’s lapping the field like Secretariat at the Belmont. Daniels would be the 1-1 pick for card collectors right now 100 times out of 100. What can he do for an encore? The nature of this card game is that Daniels’ cards are likely to go down unless he wins a Super Bowl and an MVP (though Jalen Hurts rookie Prizm base card is down 23% since he appeared in the Super Bowl, according to sales data on CardLadder). While the Daniels market is super frothy at the moment, most top rookie QBs regress in year two; the average is slight but significant — about 10 points in rating and about 4% in YPA. Of course, the Commanders could regress as a whole, too. Washington is an oddly old team for a supposed upstart. However, no team has repeated in the NFC East in 20 years, which would make this a three-team race between Washington, New York and Dallas, if you believe in this kind of witchcraft. 

Bo Nix, Denver Broncos (84K) 

Nix would be the second player picked by card sharks. And he’d get the “good pick” murmur, too. Is he a Konami Code QB, the one thing that fantasy and card buyers prize equally? While he did run last year (430 yards, four scores), it was mostly scrambles (21st in designed run rate, according to TruMedia). His yards per pass attempt were bad (6.7). He was about 10% under NFL average in YPA vs. 10% over average in touchdown pass rate. TD% typically correlates to YPA, not vice versa. So Nix earned a 4% TD rate, or 23 passing TDs (not the 29 he actually threw). Even if Nix is the same player as last year, his touchdown stats could dip dramatically. 

Running backs

Jahmyr Gibbs, Detroit Lions (11K) 

Gibbs isn’t remotely a bell cow — he was out-rushed by David Montgomery in the games Montgomery started and finished and their TDs in those games were 12-to-12. Gibbs is a fantastic player and could explode given a snap and carry rate more befitting a team’s top back, which he clearly is. But in the near term, Montgomery, who is a very good player (broken tackle rate, success rate), isn’t going anywhere. Gibbs’ time to shine brightest is once Montgomery is gone or his skills have eroded, which won’t be in 2025. 

Bucky Irving, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (9.7K) 

Is Irving a committee back? That was the thought when he was drafted in the fourth round. He went from 42% snaps in the first half to 61% the rest of the season and 69% in the postseason. He needs to be around the postseason rate for this investment to pay off. It’s unclear whether the Bucs view Irving as a player who can withstand this physically. While Irving is the type of back who is impossible to beat in a game of tag, he’s not very fast, limiting his upside.  

Wide Receivers

Malik Nabers, New York Giants (28.8K) 

Nabers surprisingly does not jump off the page in any of the modern, qualitative stats. He was a volume player last year – but I do believe that targets are earned. The Giants are a public team but Nabers card owners need Big Blue to win again so he can shine on national telecasts. He’s also going to need to be more efficient. But his future QB may not even yet be on the roster. Nabers is a developing story where a lot of things are going to have to land just right, many of which are outside of his control (the life of a WR). 

Marvin Harrison Jr., Arizona Cardinals (25.6K) 

If you pro-rate Harrison’s performance in games 11-16 to a full-season worth of stats, it’s a pedestrian 68-915-3. So much for the second-half rookie WR bump. I guess his card collectors are counting on the second-year WR bump instead. You have to believe in Kyler Murray to believe in Harrison. I do not. Harrison’s pedestrian 7.6 yards per target could be on him or Murray – or probably a little on them both. 

Brian Thomas Jr., Jacksonville Jaguars (18.2K) 

Now here is the guy who can be the next great receiver. You can say he already is. He averaged 9.6 yards per target mostly with Mac Jones. Thomas was the fastest WR in the league last year according to the radar. He was top 20 in generating yards over expected per catch. Travis Hunter playing alongside him makes things better, not worse; the Jaguars passing tree is going to be very narrow. A key for Thomas is whether Trevor Lawrence, who has been the QB7 for a full season, is remotely the player we thought he’d become.

Tight End

Brock Bowers, Las Vegas Raiders (37.9K) 

He came on later in the season in 2025 so there probably was a grading backlog with him. Still, he’s on a high-profile team in the Raiders. I would ignore the noise in the preseason of Bowers losing snaps to Michael Mayer. But the issue with a tight end is that NFL offenses and plays are not designed to feature the position. So he has to have a team and QB that’s going to reorient everything. With some supremely talented tight ends (Vernon Davis comes to mind), this never really happens. Travis Kelce didn’t get 150 targets in a season until he was 29 and topped the figure just one other time since. Bottom line: Don’t invest in tight ends. 

(By the way, will Kelce’s engagement to Taylor Swift boost his card value? Kelce gained approximately 770,000 new followers on social media following his engagement announcement, according to SEO Sherpa. His jersey sales also increased 200%. So it can’t hurt. )

FLEX

Ladd McConkey, Los Angeles Chargers (16.1K) 

McConkey is surprising to me, but fantasy owners and card collectors seem to be in agreement here. Both communities like players who they view as ascending and that starts, it seems, with the top rookies of the prior season. McConkey was no doubt worthy in this regard. He averaged 10.3 yards per target. He has a QB that many believe in as someone at the true franchise level. He has one of the best head coaches in football – I think we can all envision Jim Harbaugh winning a Super Bowl. Everyone needs him to pick up where he left off in 2024. In his last seven games, McConkey’s full-season pace was 109-1,596-7.  

IDP

Cooper DeJean, Philadelphia Eagles (11.2K) 

Maybe this is the aftermath of DeJean being the first player ever to score a TD in the Super Bowl on his birthday. That got him some special coverage and cult hero status in Philadelphia. DeJean is not considered a top 10 corner and is expected to soon move to safety, so it’s shocking he’s on the list. It just goes to show what winning a championship and doing something historic in that game can do when it comes to the desirability of cards. Note he’s well ahead of Travis Hunter, but Hunter has less cards to grade to date. Hunter is also primarily a wide receiver, yet only was at 3.2K. I’d personally trade five DeJeans for one Hunter, who could end up being the Shohei Ohtani of football. 

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(Top photo: Jess Rapfogel/Getty Images)