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Jahmyr Gibbs and Bijan Robinson are splitting the top pick, but the Rams’ Puka Nacua is the name climbing draft boards across campus leagues this month.

The 2026 NFL season opens Wednesday, September 9, when the Seattle Seahawks host New England in the Kickoff Game. For most fans that is a countdown. For anyone running a fantasy league, the clock ran out weeks ago. Draft season on campus starts in August, and the group-chat arguments are already loud.

The loudest one is at the very top. Jahmyr Gibbs and Bijan Robinson have pulled clear of the field, and the two backs are close enough that the No. 1 overall pick is a genuine coin flip. Gibbs carries an average draft position of 1.1, Robinson sits at 2.0, and both have finished as top-four running backs in back-to-back seasons. The tiebreaker most drafters keep landing on is roster math: David Montgomery was traded from the Lions to the Texans, clearing out the goal-line carries that used to cap Gibbs’ touchdown total.

Speaking to RotoWire, which pools five analysts into a single consensus set of 2026 fantasy football rankings, one fantasy analyst put the case for the Lions back plainly: “Gibbs has finished top-four at the position two years running, and with Montgomery gone from Detroit the goal-line work is finally his. A proven three-down back inheriting a pile of vacated red-zone carries is the profile you take first and don’t overthink.”

RotoWire made that consensus set free this year for the first time, after keeping its rankings behind a paywall in the past. After the top two backs, the board tilts to receivers. Ja’Marr Chase comes off at No. 3 as the consensus WR1, and the middle of the first round becomes a run on pass catchers rather than a scramble for the last workhorse backs.

The local read is Puka Nacua. The Rams receiver lands fourth overall in the consensus, ahead of Amon-Ra St. Brown and Justin Jefferson, and he is the first LA name most drafters reach for. He will be busy early, too: the Rams open against San Francisco in the NFL’s first regular-season game in Melbourne, Australia, the day after the Seahawks kick off. “Nacua going fourth, ahead of St. Brown and Jefferson, tells you how much the target share is worth in an offense built around one receiver,” one observer said. “In PPR that volume is about the safest floor at the position outside of Chase.”

From there the tiers get thinner. Jaxon Smith-Njigba slots in fifth for Seattle, Christian McCaffrey holds at seventh despite the mileage questions, and James Cook and Jonathan Taylor round out a top 10 where you can still find a starting back into the eighth and 10th picks. The practical takeaway for a 10- or 12-team league: lock a running back in the first two rounds, then chase receiver depth before it dries up.

For UCLA fans the real season starts even earlier. The Bruins open Sept. 5 against California in Bob Chesney’s first game as head coach, four days before the NFL’s lights come on. You can follow that side of the fall in our football coverage, linked here, while the fantasy drafts sort themselves out.

By the time Nacua and the Rams take the field in Melbourne, most campus leagues will already be locked in. The draft is the easy part. Surviving a Westwood group chat after a Week 1 loss is the hard one.