5 Quarterback ADP Busts for Fantasy Football: Overvalued QBs to Fade

Kevin's five fantasy football overvalued quarterbacks and potential busts for 2025. His top signal callers to fade, including Jordan Love, Patrick Mahomes, and more.

While we talk about how important running backs are, how vital it is to have multiple elite wide receivers, and how increasingly necessary it is to pinpoint top-end tight end production in fantasy, the quarterback has become a bit of an afterthought. It’s hard to say that when we’ve gotten so much bankable production at the position, but it’s one that’s taken for granted in the last few seasons.

The name of the game for quarterbacks is their rushing floor, because having multiple streams of production instead of just passing only enhances the fantasy bottom line for a signal-caller. Just like any position, there are overvalued assets at quarterback as well that you should take inventory of when you’re in your fantasy football draft.

Let’s take a look at five overvalued quarterbacks in fantasy football drafts for 2025, with all Average Draft Position (ADP) coming from right here at RotoBaller.

• 2025 fantasy football rankings
• Running back (RB) rankings
• Wide receiver (WR) rankings
• Quarterback (QB) rankings
• Tight end (TE) rankings
• Defense (D/ST) rankings
• Kicker (K) rankings
• FLEX rankings
• Dynasty rankings

Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills | QB1

Look, Allen has been phenomenal for fantasy football since 2020. This decade has seen Allen finish no lower than QB2 in each of the last five seasons. While putting him in the “overvalued” bucket seems like a full-on hater stance, there are some reasons bubbling up to the surface about Allen and his team situation, in addition to his elite quarterback brethren around him, that have me wondering if he really should be the QB1.

I do have Lamar Jackson and Jayden Daniels above Allen in my quarterback rankings, and it’s because of their rushing prowess. Allen runs as well, with at least 500 yards rushing in his last four seasons, plus at least 12 rushing touchdowns in back-to-back seasons.

That said, entering his age-29 season, Allen could start to dial back some of the rushing work. Should I mention the lackluster group of weapons he gets to throw to? Khalil Shakir is solid, but Josh Palmer? Dalton Kincaid? Keon Coleman? That's another reason: the weapons can't exactly lift him consistently.

That’s already been happening with Allen, just at a gradual pace. It happens to quarterbacks as they start to get closer to their 30s, and then the rushing floor dries up to where it’s no longer a clear advantage. We’ve seen it from players like Cam Newton, Russell Wilson, and a host of others whose legs were a huge benefit, and then, they weren’t.

Allen’s rushing yards have dipped from 763 and 762 yards in 2021 and 2022 to just over 500 yards in his last two seasons. The dip hasn’t been talked about too much because the touchdown equity has shot up in the last two seasons, but it’s a slight concern. That’s likely due to head coach Sean McDermott and the team not wanting Allen to shoulder so much on the ground. There’s a reason why they went out and drafted James Cook and Ray Davis in the last three seasons.

As Jakob Sanderson has pointed out, elite rushing seasons from quarterbacks typically come early in careers. If you’re going to sort through multiple elite quarterbacks with similar profiles, it’s a better bet to take the quarterback in the offense where they are “flexing their muscles,” to see what they are capable of, e.g., Daniels. Jackson may just be an anomaly at this point, as he’s 28, but has the passing efficiency to back up his continued dominance on the ground with 915 rushing yards and four scores last season.

There are many other bets I’d rather make than the top quarterback in ADP, who typically is drafted at the end of the third round. A lot of excellent wide receivers, tight ends, and the last of the elite running backs (pretty much Breece Hall) land here in average draft position, so there are way better uses of draft capital than Allen, whose rushing floor could continue to lower as he gets older and the Bills put more pieces around him to help shoulder the load.

Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs | QB7

The name, likeness, and cache that Mahomes has boosted him to untenable levels compared to the fantasy football value he’s given to managers over the last couple of seasons. After his 5,250-yard, 41-touchdown season in 2022, Mahomes has just 27 and 26 touchdowns in the last two seasons, and his passing yards have fallen off tremendously to 2024’s career low in a full season of 3,928 yards passing. He’s finished as QB8 and QB11 in the last two seasons with the two lowest yards per attempt numbers in his career.

It's no secret that the Chiefs have tried a lot of different things in replacing Tyreek Hill, and perhaps they’ve settled on Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy to pair with Travis Kelce in his age-35 season. Kelce is a catch-and-fall player at this point, as he looks every bit a podcaster and a 35-year-old player at this point in his career. Even with a high pass-rate and the second-highest Pass Rate Over Expected (PROE) (5.1%) in the league last season, the production wasn’t there for Mahomes and this passing game.

30.8% of Patrick Mahomes pass attempts targeted players at or behind the line of scrimmage last year

#1 highest rate for any QB in a season since at least 2005

*min 400 attempts pic.twitter.com/Wf9eWmNRkA

— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) June 23, 2025

The defense has carried the water for the Chiefs in the last two seasons, putting less emphasis on Mahomes to play hero ball and pass his way out of harm. Maybe that lessened reliance on Mahomes should lessen your reliance on drafting Mahomes in your fantasy football draft?

He’s being drafted just after the elite quarterbacks, but Mahomes still requires solid draft capital to get on your fantasy team. For that reason, he’s in that murky zone where I’d either take my draft capital to draft an elite quarterback with rushing upside or wait for a cheaper option that can meet or exceed Mahomes’ recent production. Both seem more worthwhile than drafting Mahomes in 2025.

Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers | QB9

Love is being drafted high-end QB2, and frankly, I don’t even think he’s THAT. There are quite a few factors around him compounding things. The lack of a target-earning wide receiver was a glaring need at the end of last season, as when the team got down in games, they didn’t have a go-to receiver. While their group of receivers is good, they all blend and can’t be relied upon over the other.

Top-10 fantasy finishes in 2024

Jordan Love: 2
Marcus Mariota: 2 (despite starting 0 games)

Do what you will with this factoid.

— Kyle Borgognoni (@kyle_borg) March 28, 2025

The 2025 NFL Draft brought them Matthew Golden in the first round and Savion Williams in the fourth round, but neither fit a target-earning profile that the team sorely needed. Adding a target-dominant wide receiver was a massive benefit that could have been added to the Packers’ offense to help Love make a big jump as a fantasy quarterback.

It’s not to say either rookie receiver couldn’t be a massive addition, but neither Golden nor Williams showed target-earning potential in their college careers. Not having a receiver with this skillset could compound the Packers’ passing-game issues even further this season.

A big issue with Love and the Green Bay passing game is that they just don’t do it enough in games. After the team’s Week 10 bye, Love had 30 or more pass attempts just once in eight games.

It was no surprise that the Packers were one of the most run-heavy teams in the league, as they were a bottom-three team in PROE behind the Colts and Eagles and had the second-highest raw rush rate (48 percent) behind the Eagles. While a Love groin injury may have shifted the offensive direction to protect him, it ended up working big time for the Packers.

Why would the Packers go away from that in 2025? Josh Jacobs ran like a man possessed last season with 12 touchdowns in his final eight games and a run of five straight games as RB6 or better. But you’ve got to have balance, and you need the passing game when you have to have it, and they refused to rely on any part of their passing game for volume purposes.

As for Love in a fantasy football context, he had zero weeks as a top-10 fantasy quarterback after Week 10 and was QB18 in that span, averaging just 14.4 fantasy points per game. Zero games with over 275 passing yards and zero games with more than two touchdown passes. Depending on Love to put forth solid fantasy efforts was a lost cause, despite the team winning and scoring a bunch of points.

Will this offense be more of the same in 2025? The Packers’ pass-catchers are just as big of a question mark as they were last season, and Green Bay doesn’t look like they’re going to shift from a run-heavy focus with Jacobs, MarShawn Lloyd, and others. Love feels like a caretaker-type quarterback rather than a facilitator, so unless he takes that next step, he’s going to be a disappointment for fantasy.

Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys | QB14

On the surface, Prescott looks like a clear value amongst the fantasy quarterbacks being drafted outside of the top 12 at the position. He has elite weapons like CeeDee Lamb and the newly acquired George Pickens. He has a defense that will give up points and get the offense more opportunities to move the ball. The run game in Dallas is as atrocious as ever, as the Cowboys went from Ezekiel Elliott to a bunch of junk in Javonte Williams and Miles Sanders. Maybe that’s harsh, we shouldn’t compare junk to those players.

Things surely seem to be lining up, and the stars are aligning for the Cowboys. Time to go get Prescott on your fantasy roster, right? Well, not so fast, my friend. We’ve talked about rushing floor being the separator of fantasy quarterback production, and last season’s eight-game sample before Prescott’s hamstring injury sidelined him for the remainder of the season showed that Prescott just doesn’t have it. Not even close.

Lowest percentage of throws targeting an open pass-catcher in 2024:

59% - Bryce Young
60% - Mason Rudolph
60% - Russell Wilson
64% - Kirk Cousins
65% - Kyler Murray
65% - Dak Prescott
65% - Trevor Lawrence

(Source: @FantasyPtsData) https://t.co/MpRxWrGNN5

— Jacob Gibbs (@jagibbs_23) June 9, 2025

Prescott averaged just 6.8 rushing yards PER GAME in those eight games. Not per carry, per GAME. Lamar Jackson averaged 6.6 yards per carry (YPC), and Jayden Daniels was an even 6.0 YPC. There was a time when Prescott used to have a rushing floor, but that was in 2016. That was a long time ago. We were just learning about Harambe, and Pokémon Go just entered our stream of consciousness.

The fact about non-rushing quarterbacks is that they have to have such a remarkable season without rushing upside that it’s a low-percentage bet to make. Taking a non-rushing quarterback is a strict floor play. Joe Burrow had to throw for almost 5,000 yards and 43 touchdowns, WITH 200 rushing yards to finish as QB3 last season.

That is what you have to do as somebody who has little rushing ability. The bet is thin, so Prescott, as a non-runner, is overvalued because he has little path to finishing any higher than QB6 this season.

Jared Goff, Detroit Lions | QB12

We just talked about Dak Prescott as a quarterback who needs to hit an outlier season to produce a top-end fantasy quarterback season, and Jared Goff is an extension of the same argument. Except for Goff, you must have MORE of an outlier season for Goff to even repeat what he did last season. In 2024, Goff put up 4,629 passing yards and 37 touchdowns in Detroit’s prolific offense and parlayed that to a QB6 finish.

Like Prescott, Goff’s rushing floor is non-existent. Goff’s last season with over 100 rushing yards was in 2018, and he has exactly zero rushing touchdowns in three of the last four seasons. It makes no sense to rehash everything we just talked about with Prescott, as the same holds for Goff in 2025.

There’s reason to believe that the passing efficiency could worsen with offensive architect Ben Johnson now the Chicago Bears' head coach. The Lions are going to be an above-average offense with the most conservative projection, and the team may pass a little more than the 551 passing attempts that put them in the middle of the pack amongst NFL teams.

Goff is certainly overdrafted as a standalone fantasy quarterback, but if he falls in drafts and you can pair him with a rushing quarterback flier. I don’t hate the bet, but I’m just not drafting Goff, and I won't be content with him as my lone starter for my fantasy team.

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