6 Fantasy Football Wide Receiver Bust Candidates - Risky Players to Avoid Drafting (2025)

Kevin's 6 fantasy football wide receiver bust candidates for 2025. Read his WRs that carry major risk and could disappoint this season: Tyreek Hill, D.K. Metcalf, Jayden Reed, Matthew Golden, Romeo Doubs, Dontayvion Wicks.

We’ve got a lot to talk about over the next few months in the NFL’s lull period before training camp, so we can look at a few wide receiver options that are just not appealing to draft. There could be several factors that lead us to not draft them, like target competition, quarterback issues, off-the-field issues, or others. One or more of these factors are telling us to flat-out avoid these receivers for fantasy football in 2025.

A lot of things can happen between now and Week 1, but we’re putting everything on the table here in recommending some of these wide receivers in 2025 who are players to avoid. For fantasy, it’s a matter of the situation, their ADP, or a combination of both, factoring into these calls.

Let’s look deeply at several pass-catching options we’re avoiding in 2025 fantasy football drafts with all ADP from RotoBaller.

• 2025 fantasy football rankings
• Running back (RB) fantasy football rankings
• Wide receiver (WR) fantasy football rankings
• Tight end (TE) fantasy football rankings
• Quarterback (QB) fantasy football rankings
• Defense (D/ST) fantasy football rankings
• NFL rookie fantasy football rankings
• Best ball fantasy football rankings
• Superflex fantasy football rankings
• Dynasty fantasy football rankings

Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins | WR14

Going back as far as 2016, Tyreek Hill hit the ground running and has been one of the top options among the elite fantasy wide receivers.

Year 10 of the Tyreek Hill experience sees his stock drop a bit with serious doubts about his fantasy viability. Outside of his 2019 campaign where he missed four games, Hill has been a top-10 fantasy wide receiver in every season until last season, where a wrist injury and offensive ineptitude sunk the Dolphins.

When you take a deeper look at some of Hill’s stats and peripheral metrics over the past few seasons, you can see a pretty sharp drop-off in Hill’s targets per game, yards per target, a sizable decline in YAC, as well as some of his target-earning metrics like targets per route run (TPRR) and his first season under 2.00 yards per route run. Collectively, those are all hard to ignore for a wide receiver over the age of 30.

Hill finished last season with under 85 receptions, less than 1,000 receiving yards, and less than seven touchdowns for the first time since 2019. Add in some more off-the-field distractions with a domestic incident involving Hill and other erratic behavior, and Hill’s week-to-week status is volatile at best.

I’ve got to say it doesn’t feel particularly great to draft Hill amongst some heavy hitters in fantasy drafts right now. I have to decide my likely WR2 or WR3 between Tee Higgins, Mike Evans, Garrett Wilson, Davante Adams, Rashee Rice, and Hill?

I’m taking all of those receivers over Hill, plus some others who go after him in drafts. Even though tight end Jonnu Smith has been traded to the Steelers, Hill is still a significant risk at his ADP.

Simply put, drafting Hill is a dangerous game, and I don’t want to be left holding the bag if something happens on or off the field that jeopardizes Hill’s 2025 season.

DK Metcalf, Pittsburgh Steelers | WR20

The Pittsburgh Steelers have shuffled deck chairs around the Titanic (aka the Steelers' passing game) this offseason, and right now, DK Metcalf does stand to be a beneficiary of that sort of haphazard personnel movement.

Metcalf has been a solid fantasy receiver through his six seasons, but despite that success, it always felt like he should have been more than he is. He’s never capitalized on his potential since being drafted, but with a six-season average of 118 targets, 73 receptions, 1,054 yards, and eight touchdowns, we can’t call Metcalf a failure during his career.

Metcalf walks into the Pittsburgh saloon doors and is greeted by Arthur Smith and the Steelers offense, where the passing game, compared to the rest of the league, is nonexistent. The Steelers passed the ball at the fifth-lowest rate (54 percent) last season, and when they DID pass, the quarterbacks passed to the wide receivers at the fourth-lowest distribution -- just 46 percent. By the way, that quarterback is Mason Rudolph. Yikes.

Pittsburgh recently traded George Pickens to the Dallas Cowboys, and as it stands right now, the other outside receiver is 33-year-old journeyman Robert Woods -- not great! And now, the Steelers have acquired Jonnu Smith from the Dolphins, which is curious because it has Pat Freiermuth and Darnell Washington on the roster.

The Steelers likely retain their low passing volume (499 team attempts -- fourth lowest in the NFL) in 2025, and Metcalf gets to catch a limited number of passes from whatever quarterback they decide on. Whether it’s Rudolph throwing passes or the human soap opera, Aaron Rodgers, does it matter in Pittsburgh?

Metcalf couldn’t hit a ceiling projection with Russell Wilson, Geno Smith, and league-average team pass attempts in Seattle; why would we think that could happen in Pittsburgh? Arthur Smith’s offenses spanning back to his time in Tennessee have finished no better than 20^th in total passing attempts.

We have a six-season sample of what a top pass-catcher under Smith’s offense looks like:

Each passing day that the Steelers’ quarterback situation remains unresolved is another opportunity to profess our doubts on the Steelers’ passing game. They’ve gutted the room by trading Pickens and adding spare parts to the room, which leaves Metcalf as the top option.

But with the dangerous fantasy floor and a capped ceiling offered by Metcalf in this particular offense and with a multi-season sample of how Smith runs his offenses, I’m hands off Metcalf this season.

Any Green Bay Packers Wide Receiver

• Jayden Reed | WR37
• Matthew Golden | WR52
• Romeo Doubs | WR58
• Dontayvion Wicks | WR75

Look, as a Packers fan, this pains me. But we must do the right thing here. If we’re drafting a redraft team that’s ready to dominate your league, where would any Packers wide receiver fit in here? Who would we even target? Let’s sort through the list of available targets for 2025.

First up, we have 2023 breakout candidate Jayden Reed, an outright anchor weighing down fantasy teams in the second half of last season. When Romeo Doubs wasn’t skipping practices and team meetings or getting suspended, he wasn’t helping fantasy squads aside from a couple of games that you likely didn’t start him in. Christian Watson was banged up and, to be as nice as possible, a boom-or-bust option. Dontayvion Wicks led the team in targets but was up and down with his consistency.

You don't actually want Matthew Golden in the "Christian Watson role."

The Christian Watson role is a timeshare with Dontayvion Wicks, and it sucks.

Nobody got worse fantasy results out of incredible Average Separation Scores than all of the Packers last year. Routes matter https://t.co/wYaLUDAPsx pic.twitter.com/xgx3VpLNo8

— Ryan Heath (@RyanJ_Heath) April 25, 2025

Those four will return to 2025’s squad while the Packers add in Matthew Golden, who the team selected in the first round of this past April’s NFL Draft. To further add to the room, the Packers also added fourth-round project Savion Williams. We had ambiguity in the Packers wide receiver room before, so the Packers did the totally normal thing and continued adding to the room.

That also begs the question: who will be the target earner here for the Packers? The best option for that is Reed, but he’s a primary slot player who comes off the field when the Packers condense the formation to two-receiver sets. As for Doubs and Watson, neither has been a volume-earning wide receiver in their NFL careers.

Even if Watson returns to the team earlier than anticipated, he’ll only help to stretch the field for quarterback Jordan Love, not earn target volume. Wicks led the Packers with 76 targets last season, but he remains the team’s likely WR3 to start the season. If Golden asserts himself, Wicks could see a drastically reduced route share.

With Golden, he’s never earned targets at any stop during his college career. That’s a massive red flag for a first-round receiver. If you’re drafting a wide receiver in the first round, you’re hoping he can be a game-changer who demands attention. Besides excellent speed, Golden doesn’t jump off the page.

That was during Golden’s third season at Houston, where he averaged just over four receptions and just shy of 45 yards per game. I’m not sure what Golden can offer the Packers right now that separates him from any of the other options the team currently has.

We’ve talked about the Packers passing the ball, but they just haven’t wanted to do it. Green Bay was a bottom-3 team in pass rate over expected last season and had the third-fewest team pass attempts last season at 479. That’s only higher than the Philadelphia Eagles (447) and the Baltimore Ravens (477) -- two passing games that have much more condensed target distribution than Green Bay did last season and likely will this season.

With the rankings on RotoBaller having Reed at WR37, Golden at WR52, Doubs at WR58, and Wicks at WR75, the public sentiment matches the belief that the Packers will remain as they were last season: an unconcentrated target tree without any target earning in sight on a passing game that takes a backseat to the run game in most situations.

More Fantasy Football Analysis