BUF depth chart — 2026
all 32 charts · published order beside measured opportunity
2025 regular-season opportunity (18 weeks)
first non-fallback render after 2026-09-24
why this ordering is not this season
There is no 2026 measured usage. The nflverse stats_player release has no 2026 weekly asset yet (HTTP 404 for https://github.com/nflverse/nflverse-data/releases/download/stats_player/stats_player_week_2026.parquet); the first regular-season file is expected ~2026-09-14. This ordering is 2025 data against the 2026 published depth chart, which is a real comparison and is NOT a claim about this season.
what this order rests on8 statements
- opportunity = carries + targets, from nflverse stats_player_week. It is NOT a snap count: that file carries 150 columns and none of them is one. A player who ran routes and saw no target and a player who never left the sideline are indistinguishable in this number.
- The ordering is NOT 2026 data. There is no 2026 measured usage. The nflverse stats_player release has no 2026 weekly asset yet (HTTP 404 for https://github.com/nflverse/nflverse-data/releases/download/stats_player/stats_player_week_2026.parquet); the first regular-season file is expected ~2026-09-14. This ordering is 2025 data against the 2026 published depth chart, which is a real comparison and is NOT a claim about this season. The first non-fallback render is after 2026-09-24, which is seventeen days after the draft.
- The published depth chart is NOMINAL. This snapshot is preseason and has never been read against a played game; no row here says who was actually on the field.
- Position appears twice and the columns are not interchangeable. `chartPosition` is where the team lists him and `scoredPosition` is what he is scored as; 2 of the 909 skill rows disagree (Jackson Meeks, chart TE / crosswalk WR; Velus Jones Jr., chart RB / crosswalk WR).
- A null opportunity means UNOBSERVED, never zero. 365 of 909 players carry one. A player absent from the DynastyProcess crosswalk is not absent from the NFL: 115 of 909 skill rows (12.7%) are absent from it at deep ranks, and no key choice touches that — the miss is a property of the crosswalk, not of the key. This counts rows with NO crosswalk entry, which is not the same population as rows with no gsis id: one player IS in the crosswalk and carries no id, so that second count is one higher. The sentence above is the first of the two.
- `posRank` is PER-POSITION, not per-slot. A `posRank <= 2` filter on WR excludes the WR3.
- 137 of the 544 players carrying a 2025 opportunity earned most of it for a team other than the one they are listed under here — QB 20, RB 32, WR 60, TE 25. 32 of the 32 teams carry at least one, so there is no clean page and no "nothing to see here" state to reach for. THIS IS NOT A DATA GAP; IT IS THE READING. A number printed under a team that did not earn it, with nothing on the row saying so, is the defect. `priorTeam` on every player is the correction, and it is never defaulted to the team the row is listed under.
- 19 players on this chart appeared for more than one team in 2025, so the single number beside the name is a sum of two rooms rather than a count from one. 9 of them have a primary team EQUAL to the team they are listed under, so a marker that fires only when the team changed says nothing at all about them. The largest: Jakobi Meyers is listed under JAX showing 115, of which 66 was earned in that room — the printed number is 74% larger than what he did here. The split is therefore carried for all 19 of them on each team's `multiTeam`, not only for the ones a change-marker catches, and an arm at zero opportunity is carried too (4 of them have one): he was on that sheet for those weeks and saw nothing, which is an observation and not a gap. The rule that picks the primary team has three clauses — most opportunity, then most weeks, then the team code ascending — and on this artifact only the first is ever reached: no player here has two arms level on opportunity, so nothing on this file depends on the other two.
what moved, 2026-08-18 to 2026-08-258 changes
what moved, 2026-08-18 to 2026-08-25
7 days of the published 2026 chart, both endpoints present. Checked again against 2026-08-26.
The filter is a rank cut — QB, RB and TE to 2, WR to 3 — and it is the whole of it: it takes 90.9 changes a week down to 24.0, and counting one event for one event takes that to 16.7 a week (skill positions (pos_abb QB/RB/WR/TE), in-season Tuesday-to-Tuesday, 2025 asset, 16 spans from 2025-09-09 to 2025-12-30, measured 2026-08-28). Depth-1 confirmation removes none of it — it is a label, and if it filtered it would move only 4.7% of the rows. Some reverts survive both: a change that holds for a day and flips on the second is marked confirmed and reverted anyway, and a depth that caught it would suppress real reversals to do it.
0 — a name that was not in a top slot is in one
No name arrived in a top slot on the BUF chart over this span. That is a reading, not a missing feed: 0 changes of any kind on the BUF chart.
0 — the same names, in a different order on the BUF chart
No group kept its names and changed their order on the BUF chart over this span.
BUF
7of 20
measured rows sit at a different rank than the team published. The published chart is the only order the free sites can show, because they are it.
26 published6 with nothing measured to rank them by
backfield — unestablished
The shares below are measured. The classification is not, and this screen does not supply one.
James Cook III — 69.4% of the room, earned in BUF · Ty Johnson — 16.5% of the room, earned in BUF
Both of these backs earned their 2025 opportunity in BUF.
why no band was derived
No handcuff band is established. Deriving one from the 2025 distribution was attempted and refused: across the 32 teams the RB1 share of the room's 2025 opportunity runs 38.9% to 95.7% with a largest interior gap of 7.6 pp, and 32 points drawn uniformly on that range produce a gap that large 29.3% of the time (100,000 trials). The distribution is not bimodal, so there is no trough to put a threshold in, and a round number would be a guess wearing a measurement's clothes. The shares below are measured; the verdict is not. NOTE the population: they are the 2026 room's 2025 opportunity, so a back who changed teams carries his old volume into his new room and this describes no backfield that existed in 2025.
- Josh AllenQBdrafted 2018published QB1by opportunity QB1same slot7.0/wk112 opportunities over 16 weeks
- Kyle AllenQBdrafted 2018published QB2by opportunity QB2same slot1.5/wk3 opportunities over 2 weeksall of this 2025 opportunity was earned in DET
- Shane BuecheleQBdrafted 2021published QB3by opportunity QB3same slot1.0/wk1 opportunities over 1 weeksall of this 2025 opportunity was earned in KC
- James Cook IIIRBdrafted 2022published RB1by opportunity RB1same slot20.5/wk349 opportunities over 17 weeks
- Ty JohnsonRBdrafted 2019published RB3by opportunity RB21 slot higher4.9/wk83 opportunities over 17 weeks
- Ray DavisRBdrafted 2024published RB2by opportunity RB31 slot lower4.2/wk71 opportunities over 17 weeks
published order only — no 2025 stat row to rank them by2
- Frank Gore Jr.drafted 2024published RB4published order only — no measured opportunity to rank him bynot matched to a 2025 stat row
- Ian Wheelerdrafted 2024published RB5published order only — no measured opportunity to rank him bynot matched to a 2025 stat row
- DJ MooreWRdrafted 2018published WR1by opportunity WR1same slot5.9/wk100 opportunities over 17 weeksall of this 2025 opportunity was earned in CHI
- Khalil ShakirWRdrafted 2022published WR2by opportunity WR2same slot6.0/wk96 opportunities over 16 weeks
- Keon ColemanWRdrafted 2024published WR3by opportunity WR3same slot4.9/wk59 opportunities over 12 weeks
- Joshua PalmerWRdrafted 2021published WR4by opportunity WR4same slot3.1/wk37 opportunities over 12 weeks
- Tyrell ShaversWRdrafted 2023published WR7by opportunity WR52 slots higher2.1/wk23 opportunities over 11 weeks
- Dante PettisWRdrafted 2018published WR9by opportunity WR63 slots higher1.4/wk11 opportunities over 8 weeksall of this 2025 opportunity was earned in NO
- Trent SherfieldWRdrafted 2018published WR8by opportunity WR71 slot higher1.3/wk5 opportunities over 4 weeksthe number above is 2 rooms added together: DEN 4 opportunities over 3 weeks · ARI 1 opportunity over 1 weekneither 2025 room is BUF
- Mecole Hardman Jr.WRdrafted 2019published WR6by opportunity WR82 slots lower0.5/wk1 opportunities over 2 weeks
- Quentin SkinnerWRdrafted 2025published WR13by opportunity WR94 slots higher1.0/wk1 opportunities over 1 weeksall of this 2025 opportunity was earned in NYJ
published order only — no 2025 stat row to rank them by4
- Skyler Bellrookie, drafted 2026published WR5published order only — no measured opportunity to rank him bynot matched to a 2025 stat row
- Stephen Gosnelldraft year not found — this player is in no crosswalk rowpublished WR10published order only — no measured opportunity to rank him bynot matched to a 2025 stat row
- Max Tomczakdraft year not found — this player is in no crosswalk rowpublished WR11published order only — no measured opportunity to rank him bynot matched to a 2025 stat row
- Ja'Mori Maclinrookie, drafted 2026published WR12published order only — no measured opportunity to rank him bynot matched to a 2025 stat row
- Dalton KincaidTEdrafted 2023published TE1by opportunity TE1same slot4.1/wk49 opportunities over 12 weeks
- Dawson KnoxTEdrafted 2019published TE2by opportunity TE2same slot3.1/wk49 opportunities over 16 weeks
- Jackson HawesTEdrafted 2025published TE3by opportunity TE3same slot1.5/wk19 opportunities over 13 weeks
- Shane ZylstraTEdrafted 2021published TE4by opportunity TE4same slot5.0/wk5 opportunities over 1 weeksall of this 2025 opportunity was earned in DET
- Keleki LatuTEdrafted 2025published TE5by opportunity TE5same slot1.3/wk4 opportunities over 3 weeks