Which NFC West players can you draft without needing August to settle the biggest question about their jobs? Start with Trey McBride. His routes and target share already make him Arizona’s passing-game constant. Puka Nacua and Jaxon Smith-Njigba have earned similar trust as receivers. Brock Purdy lets you buy San Francisco’s full passing game instead of guessing which receiver owns a given Sunday.
The call is simple by paragraph two: draft McBride as the first tight end, keep Nacua and Smith-Njigba in the top wide receiver tier, and wait on the division’s secondary options until their snaps settle. Purdy belongs with the reserve quarterbacks. Each team offers a useful fantasy piece, but the reasons are different. Arizona supplies pass volume. Los Angeles manufactures touches. Seattle concentrates a smaller passing pie. San Francisco spreads the ball through a stable play caller and a changing group of targets.
Arizona: McBride Owns the Middle
FFN’s 2025 team data records Arizona throwing on 69.9% of its plays, the highest rate in the division. McBride didn’t merely benefit from a busy passing offense. The Cardinals fed him between the numbers, underneath zone coverage and against linebackers who couldn’t match him through a break.
Down the stretch, McBride averaged 9.7 targets and commanded 31.1% of Arizona’s throws. He also played 95.7% of the offensive snaps.
Week 18 gave us the football picture to remember: eight targets while he stayed on the field for 95% of the snaps. The weekly role wasn’t waiting on a touchdown or one busted coverage.
FFN ranks McBride TE1 as of August 20. Draft him there and hold us to it. The new Mike LaFleur offense can change where the routes begin, but McBride would have to lose routes or a meaningful piece of the target tree before the ranking should move. Ordinary efficiency is enough when a tight end rarely leaves the field and owns nearly one-third of the throws.
Marvin Harrison is the harder Arizona decision. During one late-season three-game stretch, he averaged 9.3 targets and played 83.0% of the snaps. Across his next three appearances, those numbers fell to 3.7 targets and 48.3%. The available injury file doesn’t explain the decline, so there’s no honest reason to attach a health story to it. His access to the offense simply narrowed.
Harrison still sits first on Arizona’s current receiver depth chart. That gives him a path back, especially with Jacoby Brissett listed first at quarterback and a new offensive staff building the route menu. It doesn’t make the old workload automatic. Keep Harrison behind established full-time receivers until he clears an 80% snap share and gets back near eight targets. The third-down and two-minute snaps will tell us more than one preseason deep ball.
McBride can anchor this passing game while Harrison rebuilds his weekly case. Arizona doesn’t need to choose only one. Fantasy managers shouldn’t grant both the same certainty yet.
Los Angeles: Puka Keeps Becoming the Answer
The Rams don’t ask Nacua to win in only one way. Sean McVay can put him outside, bring him across the formation or hand him the ball when the defense overplays the passing look. That flexibility matters more than a tidy depth-chart label because it gives the offense several ways to steer touches toward him.
Nacua averaged 12.3 targets over the final three weeks of 2025 and accounted for 30.3% of the Rams’ throws. His snap share climbed to 73.7% after sitting at 57.7% over the previous three games. More field time led to more chances without forcing him into a narrow route diet.
The season finale showed exactly what we’re buying. Nacua drew 11 targets, took two carries and played 52 snaps. Those rushes aren’t the foundation of his projection. They show how quickly the Rams can put the ball in his hands when a normal dropback isn’t the easiest option.
Our measurable call is at least 10 targets per game for Nacua in 2026. Keep him in the first wide receiver tier. Davante Adams will earn throws, and Kyren Williams remains a major part of the offense, but Nacua has already produced concentrated volume beside established players. Another good option can change the distribution around him without removing the routes and designed touches that make his week stable.
Williams deserves more credit than a simple backfield warning would suggest. He closed the season at 16.0 carries, 4.7 targets and a 68.3% snap share over three games. Blake Corum is listed second behind him, so Williams won’t own every series by default. He doesn’t need to. That mix of rushing and receiving work gives him several ways to reach a useful fantasy line.
Draft Williams as a lead back with real competition, rather than pricing in a monopoly. For Nacua, the warning point is a meaningful loss of routes or first-read work. The presence of another talented receiver isn’t enough by itself.
Seattle: A Smaller Pie With One Huge Slice
Seattle passed on 52.9% of its plays last season and leaned even harder toward the run on early downs. Smith-Njigba still created top-tier volume because the throws kept returning to him. A receiver can thrive in a run-first offense when the target tree narrows around one matchup.
Late in 2025, Smith-Njigba averaged 11.0 targets and played 89.3% of the snaps. His target share reached 39.6%, up from 26.0% in the previous three games.
That’s an enormous burden inside an offense with fewer pass attempts to distribute.
Week 18 made the concentration visible even on modest raw volume. Smith-Njigba drew eight targets, and roughly 81% of Seattle’s downfield target distance went his way. The Seahawks didn’t need to throw 40 times for him to control the passing game.
Keep Smith-Njigba in the top wide receiver tier. FFN currently ranks him WR1 in PPR, and the case rests on concentration rather than a prediction that Seattle will abandon the run. Rashid Shaheed, Cooper Kupp and the tight ends can pull his share back toward a more ordinary lead-receiver level. A fall below 25% would make the team’s passing volume much harder to beat.
Zach Charbonnet carries a different threshold. He is first on Seattle’s current running back depth chart and averaged 14.7 carries with 3.3 targets over the final three weeks. He played only 55.3% of the snaps, leaving room for Jadarian Price and the rest of the backfield to take full series. Seattle also ran on 52.8% of its red-zone plays, so the lead runner has scoring access even without a huge route count.
Treat Charbonnet as an RB3 until he owns the passing downs and clears 60% of the snaps. That’s an affirmative path, not a dismissal. Once Seattle trusts him when a run can turn into a pass, the weekly-start case becomes much easier to make.
San Francisco: Draft the Quarterback, Let Targets Sort Out
San Francisco’s receiver depth chart has changed enough to make a single-target bet uncomfortable. Mike Evans and Deebo Samuel are listed first, with Christian Kirk next, while George Kittle remains first at tight end. The depth chart supplies several plausible targets and no reason to pretend August has already selected one weekly leader.
Purdy gives fantasy managers the whole mechanism. Over his final three appearances, he averaged 31.3 pass attempts and 3.3 carries. He played nearly every offensive snap.
FFN’s 2025 team data records a 59.7% pass rate for San Francisco.
Kyle Shanahan still controls an offense built to create openings through motion, play action and yards after the catch.
Keep Purdy among the reserve quarterbacks, close to his current QB12 standing. He can run this offense well without posting a top-five fantasy week because touchdowns and spike games may scatter across several pass catchers. The path upward is more designed rushing and one dependable first read. The path down is a lower-attempt offense that asks Purdy to win through efficiency alone.
I’d rather take the quarterback for access to the full passing game. There’s no need to force certainty onto one San Francisco receiver today. Let the first few weeks reveal who stays on the field on third-and-long and who gets the ball when protection breaks down.
The NFC West Draft-Room Fork
When the timer starts, separate jobs that already survived changing game scripts from jobs that still need a specific snap. McBride, Nacua and Smith-Njigba have shown that their teams return to them when the offense needs a throw. Purdy controls every pass attempt, even when the weekly leader changes. Those are the division’s stable entry points.
The conditional group has obvious triggers. Harrison needs an every-down receiver workload. Charbonnet needs passing downs and more than 60% of the snaps. Williams needs enough routes to offset Corum’s series. San Francisco’s pass catchers need a recurring first read. A steadier roster can wait on one of those questions. A roster already carrying volatile roles should take the established target volume.
The Risk: Concentration Disappears
The calls break if the concentrated roles scatter. McBride falling below a full route load would reopen TE1. Nacua or Smith-Njigba dropping under one-quarter of team targets would make competition and team pass volume much more dangerous. Purdy loses his reserve-quarterback appeal if San Francisco cuts attempts without replacing them with designed rushing. Those changes should move the players down, rather than become excuses for holding an outdated ranking.
Arizona’s next useful clue comes on third down. Seattle’s comes in the two-minute offense. San Francisco’s comes when Purdy has to solve pressure with one throw. The Rams have already shown theirs: when a play needs a featured player, Nacua can receive the pass, take the handoff or move to the matchup McVay wants.
- player role trendsFrom Weeks 16-18, McBride held a 31.1% target share, Nacua averaged 12.3 targets and Smith-Njigba held a 39.6% share.
- team tendenciesArizona passed on 69.9% of its 2025 plays while Seattle passed on 52.9%.
- FFN rankingsFFN's August 20 PPR rankings list McBride at TE1, Smith-Njigba at WR1, Nacua at WR2 and Purdy at QB12.