Overvalued Fantasy Football Quarterbacks Avoids: 5 Potential ADP Bust Candidates (2025)

July 31, 2025

Justin's 5 fantasy football quarterback bust candidates to avoid drafting in 2025. His overvalued QBs based on ADP (average draft position), including Drake Maye, Baker Mayfield, Justin Fields, Caleb Williams, and Kyler Murray.

Quarterback might not be the most important position in fantasy football leagues, but you still don't want to waste a valuable draft pick on one that's overvalued.

Opening the season with the wrong QB can put your roster in an immediate hole, and while it's possible to dig your way back out, isn't it easier to just not dig the hole in the first place?

Here are five quarterbacks who look unlikely to live up to their ADP this year. ADP data is taken from FantasyPros.

Baker Mayfield - Tampa Bay Buccaneers

ADP: QB7

The Baker Mayfield resurgence in Tampa Bay has been a joy to watch after how much he suffered in Cleveland, but drafting him as a borderline top-50 guy just feels like you're setting your roster up for disappointment.

Part of it is that Mayfield is being drafted at his ceiling. Yes, he has a great supporting cast and solid mobility, but he's not someone who is going to go out there and give you top-5 production at the position. Mayfield's best-case scenario is probably right around QB7.

Maybe his floor is higher than guys being drafted after him, but why would I draft Mayfield when I could wait a round and draft Bo Nix?

There feels like a quarterback dead zone at the lower-end of the top 10 this year, and that's probably inflating Mayfield's price since he's a better play than guys like Kyler Murray, Caleb Williams, and Jared Goff, but if you could get Dak Prescott or Brock Purdy 40ish picks after Mayfield, you should just do that!

Kyler Murray - Arizona Cardinals

ADP: QB9

Congratulations to Kyler Murray, who played all 17 games in 2024. It was his first full season since 2020, and it saw him put up strong numbers for Arizona, with Murray throwing for 3,851 yards and 21 touchdowns to go along with 11 picks.

Murray also rushed for 572 yards, his best total since 2020, and found the end zone five times on the ground. It was a really good campaign from a guy who really, really needed to have a good season, considering how the previous couple of years had gone.

The Cardinals' quarterback finished as the overall QB10 last season, which is a strong result. Excluding guys who only started in Week 18, Murray was QB12 in points per game. No matter how you slice it, he was a QB1.

With that said, there's not too much reason to think Murray can improve on last year's numbers. Sure, Marvin Harrison Jr. has another year under his belt and should be even better at wide receiver, but the rest of the receiving room is just the same guys as last year. The simple fact is, Murray played right around his ceiling last year and is now being priced like that's his normal production.

Jake Browning (18.3) has more fantasy points from rush attempts inside the five-yard line than Kyler Murray (16.6) over the past two seasons

— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) July 28, 2025

Without even factoring in the potential for an injury, QB10 is just too rich for Murray. He posted a career-low rushing success rate in 2024 and also ran the ball fewer times per game than ever before. If that winds up being a trend and Murray runs even less this year, it'll be really, really tough for him to have another top-10 finish.

Caleb Williams - Chicago Bears

ADP: QB14

After a shaky rookie season, it appears fantasy managers are expecting a strong follow-up season from Caleb Williams. It's true that he should make some major strides in his first season under head coach Ben Johnson, but drafting him as a fantasy QB1 still feels risky.

Williams has gotten off to a shaky start to training camp, including tossing interceptions on back-to-back throws at one point:

Back-to-back interceptions for Caleb Williams at Bears practice
pic.twitter.com/C9iWTk1PON

— John Frascella (Football) (@NFLFrascella) July 25, 2025

I'm not saying training camp means anything in the grand scheme of things. I'm just saying that there are likely going to still be growing pains as Williams gets used to this new offense. The second-year quarterback has a lot he needs coached out of him after a rookie year where he saw his offensive coordinator fired halfway through the year.

In a way, it's almost like 2025 is a second rookie year for Williams. This is the season where we expect to see him grow, but not the season where he's already grown into the player he'll become.

Williams is going to be fine long-term. His rookie year isn't a sign of how the rest of his career will look. But come on, y'all — we've got to hold our horses just a bit before we draft him as a top-15 quarterback in redraft.

Justin Fields - New York Jets

ADP: QB10

Justin Fields is always a threat to make plays with his legs, but his struggles with arm consistency make it tough to trust him as a top-100 option in fantasy football this year.

Rushing yards can be a cheat code for a quarterback, but you can't rely solely on those rushing yards. You still need that quarterback to do enough with his arm to make him playable in fantasy.

Fields started six games for the Steelers last year and looked significantly improved as a passer, posting a career-high 65.8 completion percentage and a career-low 0.6 percent interception rate, but that's just a six-game sample in a career with 44 starts.

For much of those 44 starts, Fields has struggled when asked to throw the ball. He started to rein in the turnovers in 2023 a bit, foreshadowing last year's lack of interceptions, but we're still talking about a guy who has never averaged 200 passing yards per game in a season.

Even last year, Fields was under 200 yards in four of his six starts, and threw multiple touchdowns per game just once. Sure, five rushing touchdowns in six games helped provide a major fantasy boost, but the lack of passing yards and passing scores is still a major concern that has me mostly scared off of Fields in fantasy this season.

Drake Maye - New England Patriots

ADP: QB18

Count me among the large group of people who think Drake Maye is going to be a very good quarterback in the NFL. At the same time, Maye enters 2025 with a supporting cast that's not that much better than what he worked with in 2024, so I'm not sold that he's going to be a huge fantasy football asset this year.

Drake Maye has unlimited arm talent. pic.twitter.com/KAqDW5CEEn

— Boston Cream 🍩 (@itsbostoncream) July 27, 2025

The biggest issue with trusting Maye in fantasy this year is that you have to, by extension, trust Stefon Diggs. New England's big offseason addition has made plenty of great plays in the past, but he's also 31 years old and coming off a torn ACL.

Even if Diggs is back close to 100 percent and looks mostly like his old self, the team lacks a reliable No. 2 receiver. DeMario Douglas, Kayshon Boutte, and rookie Kyle Williams all have appeal, but the trio is all likely better in theory than in practice.

It just feels like there are too many question marks surrounding Maye for him to have the kind of breakout year needed to justify the QB16 price tag. He does add a decent bit of production on the ground to raise his floor, but he's simply too reliant on Diggs being able to bounce back. I hate drafting a quarterback whose value is so closely tied to one other player.

More Fantasy Football Analysis