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Mitch's overvalued fantasy football players to avoid for 2025. These players are being drafted too early in the first round of fantasy football drafts: Christian McCaffrey, Brock Bowers, and Ja'Marr Chase.
Fantasy football drafts are underway, and the mistakes you make now will haunt you for the rest of the year. At this time in 2024, people drafted Christian McCaffrey No. 1 overall in most drafts.
After getting four mediocre games out of CMC, 97% of those who rostered him in ESPN fantasy leagues missed the championship game. Injuries are difficult to predict, but in CMC’s case, with the injury-prone former RB1 coming off a high-volume season, it wasn’t that big of a surprise.
I have noticed people making similar mistakes in the first round of 2025 fantasy drafts. Here are three players to avoid selecting at their current Average Draft Position (ADP).
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Overvalued Fantasy Football WR in the First Round
Ja'Marr Chase, WR, Cincinnati Bengals
FFPC Championship ADP- 2.4
Chase could still have a good season at a mid-first-round value, but the top two picks are too early to spend on a receiver who peaked last season.
Chase led the league in every receiving category, but we are drafting for this season, not last year. The last time a receiver led the league in receiving yards two years in a row was Calvin Johnson in 2011 and 2012. No active player has ever repeated as the receiving yards leader in consecutive seasons.
Chase achieved his triple crown in a year in which the Bengals set a franchise record for points scored in a season. His quarterback, Joe Burrow, led the league in passing attempts, yards, and touchdowns, and set a career high in completion percentage.
If you take Chase at No. 1 or 2, you are banking on him meeting his previous year’s totals. You’re drafting him at his peak. That’s what fantasy managers did with CeeDee Lamb and Tyreek Hill in 2024 before both had disappointing seasons.
In 2023, Lamb exceeded his previous receiving yardage total by 400 yards and his touchdown total by three. Last year, he still had a pretty good season, notching 1,194 yards, his third highest, and six touchdowns. But given his ADP, that wasn’t enough to help teams win championships.
Chase’s 2024 output, like Lamb’s, was an outlier for him. He was targeted 30 more times than he was in 2023. He gained about 500 more yards than in 2023 and 253 more than he did in his rookie season. Going for a running back and taking Jahmyr Gibbs would be a better selection.
If you want to draft a wide receiver at the top of the first round, Justin Jefferson, who has shown a remarkable level of elite, QB-proof consistency, is the choice. Jefferson has averaged over 90 yards per game in each of the past four seasons. Even a bad Jefferson season is better than Chase's average season.
A second-year receiver on a rising offense, like Malik Nabers or Brian Thomas Jr., would also be a better pick than Chase at No. 3 or No. 4.
Overvalued Fantasy Football TE in the First Round
Brock Bowers, TE, Las Vegas Raiders
FFPC Championship ADP- 6.9
In 2023, Travis Kelce was drafted in the middle of the first round. It was Kelce’s highest ADP in years and was coming on the heels of the year in which he set career highs in targets, receptions, and touchdowns. He responded by missing 1,000 yards for the first time in eight years.
Bowers and Kelce are at different stages of their careers, but drafting a tight end in the first round is just as bad an idea. There are many players with the potential to finish as WR1 or RB1 still available at No. 6 and 7.
Jahmyr Gibbs has an ADP of 6.4 in FFPC best ball drafts. Justin Jefferson has an ADP of 6.8. Bowers’ teammate, rookie RB Ashton Jeanty at ADP 8.0, is the best RB prospect we've seen in years and falls into a situation that should yield high volume.
Tight end is the most volatile position from one year to another. Sam LaPorta finished as the TE1 in 2023; in 2024, he was the TE6. Cole Kmet fell from TE8 to TE18. Evan Engram dropped from TE6 to TE36. Part of that was due to injuries, but Engram only averaged 4.7 fantasy points per game.
Even a historically successful tight end like Kyle Pitts, the first since Mike Ditka to gain 1,000 receiving yards, saw a 60% drop in yardage in his second year in the league.
Bowers might be a better prospect than Pitts, but there are still very good tight ends available later. Trey McBride, who has shown consistent growth, is going in the early to mid-second round. George Kittle, who has scored five or more touchdowns in six of the last seven seasons, is going around the 3/4 turn.
If you want to trust the draft capital, you can get first-round drafted tight ends Tyler Warren and Colston Loveland in Round 8 or later. Warren and Loveland both might have ended up in worse situations, but the Raiders offense didn’t look like a good one last season, and it might be a worse fit this season as it will likely be run-heavy with Jeanty.
Overvalued Fantasy Football RB in the First Round
Christian McCaffrey, RB, San Francisco 49ers
FFPC Championship ADP- 14.6
While his ADP in best ball is 14.0, that ranks him as the No. 12 player off the board. Why? Because math stuff.
McCaffrey is too much of a gamble even at the end of the first round or the beginning of the second. The 28-year-old missed most of last season with Achilles tendinitis and a PCL strain.
Last season, McCaffrey’s injuries turned out to be worse than they were initially reported. Many people drafted CMC as late as August, not knowing he had a calf strain. Kyle Shanahan said he wasn’t worried about his running back’s readiness for Week 1 and then surprised everyone by placing him on the IR just before their Week 2 matchup. Now, Shanahan says McCaffrey is doing great.
Tendinitis can be a symptom of overuse. If the 49ers give CMC nearly 20 touches a game like they did in his first two years in San Fran, he could get injured again. If not, he will lose volume, and his efficiency is bound to fall off one of these days.
Already, his per-attempt average dropped to 4.0 last season, his lowest since 2020. His success rate was just 44.0%, his lowest yet. Researcher Doug Drinen’s study "How Important is Age?" found that RBs peak at age 27-28.
Chase Kennedy, a scholar of Bryn Mawr College, found that running backs see a significant drop-off after hitting 1,750 career touches. McCaffrey hit that mark in 2023.
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