NFL Free Agency: The 9 Most Underrated Players on the Open Market in 2026

Historically speaking, the best organizations in any sport (any corporation, really) are the ones that sweat the details on the bottom third of their rosters as they do on the top five people. This is certainly true of NFL teams, and even more so in any free agency space.

There are teams with high eight digits in cap space to spend, and it's easy to assume that a couple of big signings will turn things around. In truth, the necessity for hitting on lesser-regarded talent is even more important.

The Seattle Seahawks know this all too well. In 2025, they took a gamble on quarterback Sam Darnold in free agency, and that paid off quite obviously. But it was the other talent acquired by general manager John Schneider and head coach Mike Macdonald — edge rusher DeMarcus Lawrence and wide receiver Cooper Kupp in particular — that placed Seattle in position to win Super Bowl LX.

• Ranking the 50 Best Free Agents on the Market

It was just as true for the New England Patriots, who lost that Super Bowl, but were never expected to be there in the first place after two straight 4-13 seasons and all kinds of roster turnover. General manager Eliot Wolf and head coach Mike Vrabel went heavy on underrated guys, especially on defense, and hit big with edge rusher K'Lavon Chaisson, linebacker Robert Spillane, and cornerback Carlton Davis as the main men. Defensive lineman Milton Williams was the big-ticket acquisition, but without Chaisson, Spillane, and Davis, it wouldn't have mattered nearly as much.

So, as we're on the verge of the 2026 NFL free agency cycle, who are the underrated players on the market who could make similar impacts? We have nine such players based on their 2025 metrics and game tape.

RB Travis Etienne Jr.

Super Bowl LX Most Valuable Player Kenneth Walker III will likely be the top running back in this class, but Etienne might not be far behind. The 25th overall pick in 2021 out of Clemson thrived in Liam Coen's offense, with 1,174 rushing yards and seven rushing touchdowns on 270 carries last season. Etienne had 16 forced missed tackles and 10 runs of 15 or more yards. He also caught 41 passes on 52 targets for 341 yards and seven touchdowns.

Etienne brings an appealing balance of speed to and through the hole, contact balance, and sudden acceleration. He isn't limited to one running scheme, either — 15 of his 25 explosive plays last season came in gap schemes, with outside and inside zone rounding out the group in that order. At 5-foot-10 and 205 pounds, Etienne has proved he can be a bell-cow back (at least 250 carries in three of his four NFL seasons), and when you factor in his value as a receiver, a lot of offensive coordinators should be happy with what he can bring to their systems.

RB Rico Dowdle

An undrafted free agent out of South Carolina, Dowdle made his way onto the Dallas Cowboys' roster in 2020 and was a bit player at best in his first three seasons. But in 2024, he broke out of a marginal running back group in Big D in a big way. He carried the ball 235 times for 1,079 yards and three touchdowns, with 45 forced missed tackles and nine runs of 15 or more yards.

Still, the Cowboys deemed him expendable, and Dowdle signed a one-year, $2.75 million contract with the Carolina Panthers that included $3.5 million in performance bonuses, most of which he hit. Dowdle gained 1,085 yards and scored six touchdowns on 241 carries in 2025, with 35 forced missed tackles and 10 runs of 15 or more yards. Dowdle, who was supposed to be Chuba Hubbard's backup, helped to define Carolina's offense as much as anybody.

Maybe now Dowdle won't be as easily disregarded and underrated. At 6-0 and 215 pounds, he has the size and power to feature tackle-breaking strength just as easily as he'll run past linebackers. And once he gets a head of steam, watch out for that surprising straight-line speed.

WR/Returner Rashid Shaheed

The Seahawks made a trade with the New Orleans Saints for Shaheed on Nov. 4, 2025, and without that deal, it could be argued that the Seahawks might not have even made Super Bowl LX, much less won it. Shaheed did bring Seattle some value as a receiver with 18 catches on 33 targets for 266 yards, but he was more transformational as a return man and a vertical clearout component in Klint Kubiak's passing game.

Shaheed averaged 32.5 yards per kick return and 15.1 yards per punt return with three special teams touchdowns, and his speed forced opposing defenses to carry two defenders deep with him, giving short and intermediate opportunities to others. This was especially true in Seattle's 31-27 NFC Championship Game win over the Los Angeles Rams.

Therefore, Shaheed should be regarded as a force multiplier in multiple ways. The mere threat of his existence changes the ways in which opponents scheme, which is a fairly important talent to have.

EDGE Odafe Oweh

The Baltimore Ravens selected Oweh out of Penn State with the 31st overall pick in the 2021 draft, and after a couple of seasons in which his pressure ability was evident but the sack totals lagged behind a bit, the light went on in 2024. That's when Oweh had a career-high 11 sacks along with his 55 total pressures on 486 pass-rushing snaps.

So, it looked as if Oweh was on the verge of greatness in a Ravens uniform, but the Ravens had other ideas. On Nov. 7, Baltimore traded Oweh and a seventh-round pick to the Los Angeles Chargers for safety Alohi Gilman and a fifth-round pick.

From there, in Jesse Minter's defense, Oweh just went off with 11 sacks and 39 pressures in just 247 pass-rushing reps, becoming one of the NFL's most productive disruptors in the second half of the season. Minter is the Ravens' new head coach, so maybe a double reunion is in the works? No matter the team, Oweh will bring a great balance of speed and technique off the edge, especially in five-man fronts.

EDGE K'Lavon Chaisson

Sometimes, it takes a while to find one's ideal home. In the case of Chaisson, selected by the Jacksonville Jaguars out of LSU with the 20th pick in the 2020 draft, it was going to take a while for Chaisson's athletic gifts to match with the technique required to beat NFL blockers. It never happened in Duval, though Chaisson did show a lot more in his 2024 season with the Las Vegas Raiders with six sacks and 31 total pressures, which very few people noticed, because you'd have to watch the 2024 Raiders for that to stick out.

New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel noticed, though, and Chaisson became one of several high-impact free agents on the defensive side of the ball with a one-year, $3 million deal with $2.4 million guaranteed.

Chaisson finally and vastly outperformed his station with a 2025 season in which he had 12 sacks and 74 total pressures. In the postseason, just as several other New England defenders upped their games, Chaisson did the same with three sacks and 20 pressures from the wild-card round through Super Bowl LX. Some teams may be out on Chaisson as a one-year wonder, but he's become more than that over a longer space of time.

LB Kaden Elliss

While the draft is relatively packed with two-level edge/linebacker defenders valued explicitly by NFL teams, from Ohio State's Arvell Reese and Sonny Styles to Cincinnati's Jake Golday, it's worth mentioning that one of the most underrated players in the 2026 free agent class has those attributes as well.

The New Orleans Saints selected Elliss in the seventh round of the 2019 draft out of Idaho, and though it took a couple of seasons for Elliss to get his NFL opportunity, he finally did so in 2022 with an eight-sack, 20-pressure season in which he proved to be a tone-setter at the line of scrimmage, as a box linebacker, and in-between as a two-level blitzer.

The Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans' NFC South rival, had enough of Elliss beating up on their quarterbacks and said, "If you can't beat 'em, sign 'em," with a three-year, $21 million contract that included $10.16 million in guaranteed money. Elliss did his best over those three seasons in defenses that weren't always defined, but he was always good for more than 1,000 snaps per season, and equal force elements in those multiple positions.

In 2025, he had four sacks, 30 total pressures, 79 solo tackles, 41 stops, 10 tackles for loss, one forced fumble, and in coverage, he allowed 47 catches on 61 targets for 372 yards, 267 yards after the catch, four touchdowns, one interception, four pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 106.7.

In an NFL where there's more nickel and dime coverage than ever, linebackers have to be effectively versatile, and Elliss brings every bit of that to his game.

CB Jamel Dean

The Buccaneers selected Dean in the third round of the 2019 draft out of Auburn, and he's been with them ever since. To paraphrase the band Chicago, if Dean leaves them now, he takes away the very best part of their defense. Because in 2025, Dean had a career year in a career where he's been very good to great most of the time.

That's when he allowed 25 catches on 55 targets for 311 yards, 105 yards after the catch, one touchdown, three interceptions, five pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 46.9 — his career low by far, and the lowest in the NFL among cornerbacks who played at least 50% of their defenses' snaps.

Dean will turn 30 on Oct. 15, but as you can guess, there's no evidence of age showing up on the tape. And he'd be valuable to any defense, because he's not noticeably better in press or off coverage. Dean can do it all, and some smart team will pay him some serious money to keep doing it.

CB Jaylen Watson

Well, here's where it gets interesting. With the Wednesday news that the Kansas City Chiefs had agreed to trade cornerback Trent McDuffie to the Los Angeles Rams, one wonders if this has the Chiefs working harder to bring Jaylen Watson back after Watson's "contract year" in 2025.

The 2022 seventh-round pick out of Washington State brought it all together in his fourth NFL season with 35 catches allowed on 59 targets for 447 yards, 173 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, two interceptions, five pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 69.0 — eighth-lowest in the NFL among cornerbacks who lined up on at least 50% of their teams' snaps.

At 6-2 and 197 pounds, Watson is a bigger cornerback with the short-area speed and agility of a smaller cornerback, a combination that tends to play well over time. And when you watch him squaring up against the likes of George Pickens, Malik Nabers, Quentin Johnston, and Rome Odunze with wins in every matchup, it's not impossible to see Watson as a true CB1 in the future.

Something the Chiefs need — right now.

Safety Kam Curl

And with McDuffie off to L.A. to vastly improve the Rams' cornerback prospects, what does that mean for Curl and the rest of that secondary? A seventh-round pick of the then-Washington Football Team in 2020, Curl had four decent seasons in the nation's capital, and another with the Rams in 2024 after signing a two-year, $9 million deal, but 2025 saw Curl's best performances to date.

In a defense that played by far the most dime in the NFL (349 snaps with six defensive backs; the Baltimore Ravens ranked second with 259), and didn't always do it well, Curl was one of the veterans charged with keeping the younger defenders in phase and on task. As for Curl's own reps, he became a valuable multipositional cog, but he really stood out in the deep third, where he could use his range and ball skills to make quarterbacks very unhappy.

Overall in 2025, Curl had two sacks, seven total pressures, 107 solo tackles, 36 stops, two tackles for loss, a forced fumble, and in coverage, he allowed 51 catches on 66 targets for 495 yards, 233 yards after the catch, one touchdown, three interceptions, four pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 83.8.

Curl is a highly underrated player whose game is better than you may think, and it will be fascinating to see just how many NFL teams are onto that reality.