Must-Avoid Busts for Fantasy Football Best Ball Drafts: 3 Overvalued Veterans to Fade in 2025

Kevin Tompkins' fantasy football must-avoid bust candidates for best ball in 2025. His top best ball draft avoids and overvalued players to fade in 2025.

Part of putting together a winning best ball roster is avoiding the landmines in fantasy football in every round. While you may be able to get away with one or two bad picks, having more than that severely increases the chances of your roster not having the firepower needed to win in the regular season and the best ball playoffs.

There are many players with red flags in their fantasy profiles, and some are more glaring than others. We’re here to shed some light on these players and why they’re busts you must avoid for 2025. Just a fair warning -- some of these players may have been fantasy stalwarts for the last several seasons.

You’ve been warned, but let’s take a look at some must-avoid busts for fantasy football best ball drafts for this season.

• 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
• FLEX fantasy football rankings
• Defense (D/ST) fantasy football rankings
• Kicker (K) fantasy football rankings
• Dynasty fantasy football rankings

Christian McCaffrey, RB, San Francisco 49ers

When Christian McCaffrey wraps up his NFL career, he’ll be fondly remembered as one of the best NFL running backs of his era and one of the most productive fantasy backs ever. Remembering McCaffrey for what he was is completely different than what he currently is, and we need to take that into account when forecasting what his 2025 could look like.

In a “what have you done for me lately” sense, McCaffrey doesn’t exactly pop off the page with tendinitis in both of his Achilles tendons and a PCL sprain in his knee. It’s not what you want to hear. Reports have come out about him looking healthy, but there’s always good news during the offseason. Tell me one time where a team, coach, or agent said a player looked bad in workouts.

McCaffrey will be 29 once Week 1 rolls around. Since 2020, he has had at least one leg or thigh injury that has caused him to miss at least one game in every season but one (2022). With a lot of tread on his tires from 1,871 career touches in his eight seasons, those touches could be taking their toll on the talented runner.

It wasn’t long ago in 2023 when McCaffrey put up over 2,000 total yards en route to an RB1 finish, but running backs rarely age gracefully and gradually. 2023 was a long time ago in running back years. While he has put up some of the best seasons in fantasy history, that illustrates a ceiling he once had, not necessarily what he DOES have at this current point in time. And you have to draft him in the first round to find out if he still has that ceiling in his age-29 season!

He's moved into the first round from the second round since the NFL Draft, now that we’ve gotten some good reports on his overall health. He feels very much like a trap pick right now, so I’ll happily let somebody else select him for the name value.

What once was is not what it will always be, so while McCaffrey has had an awesome run as a fantasy running back, I would want a much better price to take the chance on him. Now that he’s gotten into the first round, that’s likely not happening save for an injury. That means I’ll be fully out on McCaffrey for best ball this season.

Saquon Barkley, RB, Philadelphia Eagles

So, Saquon Barkley was a huge fantasy success last season, averaging 22.2 fantasy points per game. There’s no denying the fact that most fantasy teams that drafted him had a ton of success and ended up winning their fantasy leagues. Why is Barkley a bust then for 2025?

Well, we’re not playing 2024 fantasy football in 2025. What has been will not always be. The stars aligned for Barkley as a pick at the end of the first round and sometimes into the second round. Putting up a 2,005-yard season with 15 total touchdowns behind the most run-heavy offensive attack in the NFL, Barkley thrived in one of the best situations for any running back in the NFL.

What’s changed? Well, now you have to draft him with a premium pick between the 1.01 and 1.03. That changes things versus the chance of being able to make a pick and then snagging Barkley at the 1.12 or 2.01 last season. That said, I’m not afraid of being completely out on Barkley due to the risk of variance when it comes to how offenses operate from one season to the next.

The Eagles had just 448 pass attempts total as a team, the third-lowest amount by any team since 2021 when the NFL went to a 17-game schedule. That’s an absurdly low total, folks. Variance likely adds some passing attempts to the Eagles’ ledger for 2025, and even adding 30-to-40 passing attempts -- which doesn’t seem like much -- still takes some fantasy scoring off the top for Barkley. Not to mention, touchdown variance by his quarterback, Jalen Hurts, and more touchdowns in the passing game would still affect Barkley big time.

As for Barkley, he’s going to crush on the ground, but through the air, he was just pedestrian with not just his utilization, but his opportunity as well. With the Giants, Barkley was often used as a safety-valve running back, catching passes. Besides the 2020 season, in which Barkley was injured after two games, the RB earned his lowest total targets (39) in a healthy season and by far his lowest targets per game (2.4) last season.

In his rookie season (2018), 48.5% of Saquon Barkley’s fantasy points came through the air

Last season, just 20.5% of his fantasy points came through the air

A target is worth ~2.74x a carry in full PPR (cc: @ScottBarrettDFB), looking risky to spend a top pick on Saquon in 2025

— Adam Koffler (@AdamKoffler) June 22, 2025

If Barkley is going to be almost solely dependent on rushing (ala Nick Chubb or Jonathan Taylor), that’s going to severely cut into his upside if he sees any sort of tick down in his rushing attempts, touchdowns, or both.

The reason why Barkley crushed fantasy football is not because he did what he did, but the fact that he put up such an amazing season as a non-premium first-round pick and sometimes a second-round pick.

Now, you have to pay the premium for Barkley, and while he could still put up a huge season, it won’t crush people in the way he did last season.

Jayden Reed, WR, Green Bay Packers

Jayden Reed had a solid beginning to last season with two touchdowns in Week 1 to finish as the overall WR1, and then a Week 4 contest against the Vikings where Reed put up a 7-139 line with a touchdown. Big things seemed to be in store for Reed and the Packers, right?

Well … [tugs collar]

Jordan Love was banged up for much of the early part of 2024, and after the Packers’ Week 10 bye, the offensive philosophy shifted to a run-oriented offense. So much so that the passing game was entirely touchdown dependent.

While Josh Jacobs was rushing for 12 touchdowns in the final eight games of the season, the Packers wide receivers and tight ends were fighting for time on the field and the crumbs left behind. Reed was among that group, and he couldn't even get on the field in 12 personnel as a primary slot player.

Wideouts that couldn't get on the field in 12 personnel (2-wide) in 2024:

c/o @FantasyPtsData

Jayden Reed - 4 routes/0 targets
Josh Downs - 8 routes/5 targets
Adam Thielen - 5 routes/2 targets
Ricky Pearsall - 7 routes/1 target
Wan'Dale Robinson - 13 routes/8 targets
Darnell…

— Trav🍁🚫 (@TSeel14) June 3, 2025

In most systems, Reed SHOULD be a burgeoning star. In this case, it’s the system that holds Reed back from that. He’s been efficient with two straight seasons of 2.00+ yards per route run, and he even has rushing upside as he’s averaged 140 yards on the ground in both seasons. Last season saw Reed put up over 1,000 yards from scrimmage. But 75 targets in 17 games won’t do it. Averaging 4.4 targets per game DEFINITELY won’t do it.

There wasn’t a Packers wide receiver you could start in the second half of the season, and that’s how it’s looking for this season in 2025. Reed at WR47 represents the public sentiment that the Packers’ passing game just won’t be fruitful for fantasy managers. Add first-round pick Matthew Golden to the mix, and that just adds even more questions to who can be viable for fantasy. Can anybody be?

Green Bay was a bottom-3 team in pass rate over expected last season and had the third-fewest team pass attempts 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 so many mouths to feed in the Packers offense this season and how devoted to the run Green Bay was last season, it’s a tough click to select Reed in best ball.

More Fantasy Football Analysis