CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens Primed For WR1 Seasons In Fantasy Football

It happens, occasionally, when a pair of wide receivers on the same team finish as top-12 WRs in the same season. Care to say that Big D has a pair of pass catchers who are about to join that esteemed group? Ian Hartitz breaks it down as part of his Dallas Cowboys Team Preview.

Can both CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens ball out (again)?

WR1: CeeDee Lamb (WR5 in Fantasy Life ranks)
WR2: George Pickens (WR10)
WR3: Ryan Flournoy (WR86)
WR4: KaVontae Turpin
WR5: Jonathan Mingo
WR6: Marquez Valdes-Scantling

CeeDee Lamb's career peak (to this point) occurred in 2023, when he caught a league-high 135 passes for 1,749 yards and 12 touchdowns—good for an overall WR1 finish in fantasy land.

However, things haven't been quite as fruitful over the past two seasons. A 2024 shoulder injury, combined with Dak's season-ending hamstring injury, didn't help matters, nor did an early-season high-ankle sprain in 2025. Still, we've been looking more of a low-end WR1 than a world-beater for the better part of the last 48 months: Lamb has finished as the WR8 in PPR points per game during each of the past two seasons when controlling for games when he exited early.

And hey, there's nothing wrong with being a top-8 receiver on the planet, but Lamb's price tag as the WR5 (pick 9.3) in early ADP makes this a nit to potentially pick due to the presence of Mr. George Pickens, who f*cked around and worked as the WR6 in PPR points per game last season.

A look at how both receivers performed in their 12 full games together…

CeeDee Lamb: 74 receptions-1,073 yards-3 touchdowns (116 targets), 16.6 PPR points per game
George Pickens: 68-993-4 (99 targets), 15.9 PPR points per game

Those fantasy points averages would have led Lamb to work as the WR9, and Pickens as … the WR10 last season. Note that things could honestly have been even more in Lamb's favor if he hadn't been knocked out of Week 14's loss to Detroit by halftime with a concussion (Lamb had 6 receptions for 121 yards before departing).

Moral of the story: Lamb deserves the benefit of the doubt as THE WR1 in Dallas, y'all, but we have one season of evidence that the Prescott-Pickens connection is still very capable of turning in top-10 production as well.

After all, Pickens' absurd contested-catch and YAC ability make him plenty capable of making the most out of whatever opportunities are thrown his way. The latter skill feels underappreciated: The man is TOUGH to get to the ground and consistently fights for extra yards instead of going out of bounds.

125 seconds of George Pickens being a demon after the catch pic.twitter.com/9iFScstSjr
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) May 20, 2026

Ultimately, the Fantasy Life rankers are cool with Lamb's standing as WR5, and I'm buying Pickens as a legit top-10 option ahead of more clear No. 1 wideouts in worse passing games like Chris Olave, DeVonta Smith and Tetairoa McMillan. It's not too frequent that we see one offense enable multiple top-12 fantasy receivers in the same season—it's happened 15 times during the last 10 seasons—but as we mentioned before, Dallas just accomplished last season, and Pickens has many, many millions of reasons to keep his head on straight enough to get it done again in 2026.

Also note: Flournoy now projects as the offense's clear-cut No. 3 receiver after Jalen Tolbert left for Miami in free agency. Credit to the 2024 sixth-round pick for flashing on several occasions last season, supplying 6-114-0 and 9-115-1 booms in two instances when Lamb was forced out of action. His numbers in yards per route run (1.75, 31st among 78 WRs) and targets per route run (20.6%, 38th) were solid, while both ESPN (WR25) and PFF (WR22) said he was certifiably good. Flournoy is more of a late-round best ball dart or future waiver wire pickup than someone to get too excited about in drafts, but there are certainly worse offenses to target No. 3 receivers from … Turpin is always good for a few explosive big plays per season, but the Cowboys have been fairly consistent about only using him as a WR4/gadget/return ace as opposed to a legit every-down starter: He's surpassed the 60% offensive snap threshold just twice in 65 career games.