Malachi Fields Fantasy Football Outlook With The New York Giants
Justin Carlucci breaks down what Malachi Fields to the NYG means for fantasy football in 2026.
The New York Giants just added size to the perimeter at pick 74. Malachi Fields is 6-foot-4, 218 pounds with 32-inch arms, and he spent four years at Virginia before transferring to Notre Dame for a fifth.
That last detail matters. Fields will turn 24 before Week 1, which puts him in the older-prospect bucket every fantasy model knocks points off for. The size and the catch radius are real. The question is whether the athletic profile and the late-college breakout add up to anything more than a rotational NFL piece.
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Malachi Fields Fantasy Football Outlook With New York Giants
Fields aligned wide on 89% of snaps in college per Dwain McFarland's Rookie Super Model analysis, with a career aDOT of 14.2 that ticked up to 16.4 in his lone Notre Dame season.
The production profile has a real asterisk. Fields' final year at Virginia produced a 2.92 RYPTPA—his best career mark, but McFarland notes the Cavaliers' team QB passer rating that season was 79.8, way below the 93 NCAA average.
At Notre Dame in 2025, Fields' targeted passer rating jumped to 113 with better QB play, and he put up 53 yards per game and 5 TDs on a 1.93 RYPTPA and a 20% target share. That's a player whose context was actively dragging him down at Virginia and normalizing at Notre Dame.
The Giants lost Wan’Dale Robinson in free agency, and Malik Nabers will be on the rebound from a season-ending 2025 injury. Fields has a tiny bit of re-draft appeal.
Should You Plan to Draft Malachi Fields this year?
Probably not in redrafts. He’s a waiver wire target or last-round dart throw in most formats. McFarland tags Fields as a WR5 fantasy profile. In his comp tier (67-87 Super Model rating), 25% of WRs have hit a top-36 finish by Year 3 since 2018—not terrible, but not a bankable Year 1 path.
Dynasty is more interesting than the redraft verdict implies. His Super Model comps in McFarland's piece are Keon Coleman and Michael Wilson, which tells you the archetype: big-bodied outside receivers who take a year or two to find a role.
Fields could accidentally find his way into some snaps depending on how quickly Nabers works his way back, and if he outperforms a few mediocre veterans. He’s more of a long-term stash.
2026 Scouting Report For Malachi Fields
Fields is a contested-catch, move-the-chains receiver with size that shows up on every rep. The target distribution skews deeper than most prospects; only 3% of his career targets came behind the line of scrimmage (11 points below average), with 34% in the 10-19 yard medium bucket and 26% on deep balls.
The contested work is where the tape shows up. McFarland has Fields at a career 27% contested-target rate (76th percentile) with a 47% contested-catch rate. His career drop rate of 3.6% is better than average, a real plus for a vertical-leaning profile.
Lance Zierlein, cited in McFarland's writeup, sees him as an X receiver who can "move the chains and win in tight situations," with a higher prospect grade (6.35) than the data profile suggests.
The concerns line up with the 40 time. Fields put up 4.6 yards after catch per reception, 0.3 below expected, given his target depth. Zierlein flags build-up speed, early struggles against press, and route running that doesn't shake quality coverage. Fields' career YPRR of 1.94 (38th percentile) backs up the ceiling concern.
The profile is a boundary body-catcher, whose fantasy path runs through a specific kind of offense: vertical, willing to throw contested, and patient enough to wait for him to develop more of a route tree.
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