Kevin Tompkins' Fantasy Football League-Winners: 5 Must-Draft Players (2025)

August 12, 2025

Kevin's 5 breakout players and potential league-winning picks for 2025. His top breakout candidates include Brock Bowers, George Pickens, Tee Higgins, and more.

League winners. We all want them, and finding them in drafts is like unlocking treasure, but it's yours and all yours. The key is to use the league-winning player in combination with other players to build your superteam that steamrolls your competition. Easier said than done, but the goal today is to give you my league winners for 2025.

They come in all shapes and sizes: youthful, ascendant talents, a cast-off quarterback with a new lease on his fantasy life, and a player who is still awaiting a likely suspension, among them! I know that's a lot, but what these players can offer your team is unmatched upside and a unique skill set for fantasy managers to take advantage of by getting out ahead of fellow drafters to secure their services.

Let's take a look at my 2025 league winners for fantasy football this upcoming season.

Brock Bowers, TE, Las Vegas Raiders

I have never been more sold on a player than Brock Bowers for the 2025 NFL season. What he’s done in his career, from being an 18-year-old leading target on a National Championship-winning Georgia Bulldogs team to producing the best rookie tight end season with Gardner Minshew, Aidan O'Connell, and Desmond Ridder. Imagine what Bowers could do with a REAL quarterback?

Well, for 2025, we do not have to imagine, as the Raiders brought in former Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith. Smith is an accurate “point-guard”-type quarterback with two of the last three seasons over the 69% completion percentage mark. There’s no doubt that Smith is a massive upgrade as a distributor of the ball.

Geno Smith:

#1 in QB accuracy the last four years

Raiders offense last year:

#26 in QB accuracy

#29-of-36 in accurate TE target rate to Brock Bowers

#63-of-103 in accurate WR target rate to Jakobi Meyers

Geno Smith to the Raiders via @RMSummerlin https://t.co/vUAuivKAFK

— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) March 8, 2025

While the Raiders are unlikely to be a contending team in 2025, Bowers will still be one of the best tight ends in football and fantasy. Teams knew Bowers was going to get the ball, and it didn’t matter. Bowers led all tight ends in targets, receptions, receiving yards, and fantasy points, and also racked up the fourth-most yards after the catch (YAC) last season among all pass-catchers.

Bowers is an early-to-mid second-round pick in best-ball and in redraft right now, and that even feels too late. I’m happy to draft him no matter where I’m at in the mid-to-late first as he’s a clear difference maker at a position that doesn’t have very many of those.

Justin Fields, QB, New York Jets

The New York Jets signed quarterback Justin Fields in the early part of NFL free agency as one of the first moves by the team in the post-Aaron Rodgers era. While Fields still has a lot to do to live up to his billing as a 2021 first-round pick, he’s been a goldmine for fantasy football when he has played.

While the Jets and new head coach Aaron Glenn still have excellent skill-position players in wide receiver Garrett Wilson and running back Breece Hall, Fields is the key piece that’s going to determine the fate of the Jets in 2025. At the very least, the Jets did not draft a quarterback in the 2025 NFL Draft, so he’s got quite a bit of security in his job heading into this season.

Fantasy Points per Start / Fantasy Points per Dropback@FantasyPtsData

2022: 20.5 (QB5) / 0.70 (QB2)
2023: 19.4 (QB6) / 0.53 (QB6)
2024: 19.1 (QB9) / 0.62 (QB4)
ADP: QB13 pic.twitter.com/KBVzMlU7Dw

— Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) July 21, 2025

For fantasy purposes, it’s the rushing element that we love in fantasy. Just last season, in the six games he started with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Fields was the QB7 in fantasy points per game with 19.1. He was right there with the elites at the position, and it wasn’t because the Steelers were stacked with receiving talent.

The Jets are probably better equipped on the offensive side of the ball, so that’s going to be even more attractive for fantasy managers.

Not only did Fields survive the draft, but the team took Armand Membou to bookend with Olu Fashanu for what looks to be an elite offensive tackle pairing for the future. It’s no secret why Fields is rising in ADP: he came out of the draft without a quarterback being drafted, and he got a bookend tackle. Fields should be a borderline top-12 fantasy quarterback that will be drafted much lower in most formats this season. Don’t ignore the obvious upside! (Yes, the toe is fine.)

Tee Higgins, WR, Cincinnati Bengals

The best part about drafting Tee Higgins is that it gets you access to the prolific Bengals’ passing game without needing to spend your first-round pick and 1.01 on Ja'Marr Chase. The dynamic duo of Chase and Higgins will maintain the status quo as arguably the best wide receiver tandem in the NFL and certainly one of the best for fantasy football.

The Bengals’ offense is one of the most fruitful offenses for fantasy production, and with the trio of Chase, Higgins, and tight end Mike Gesicki remaining in Cincinnati, there’s not much preventing the Bengals’ train from rolling in 2025. Cincinnati has been a top-3 team in pass rate over expected (PROE) in each of the last three seasons, so there’s no danger of the team rolling back the passing game in the immediate future.

a Tee Higgins tweet perhaps pic.twitter.com/KoD8IYvpna

— Hayden Winks (@HaydenWinks) June 12, 2025

As for Higgins' prospects for 2025, he’s been amazingly consistent throughout his career, with four of five NFL seasons with at least 1.80+ YPRR, 20% TPRR, and all five seasons with at least six targets per game. Higgins is entering his age-26 season squarely in his prime and ready to produce in a prolific passing offense that’s perfect for fantasy football. That sounds like a league winner to me!

George Pickens, WR, Dallas Cowboys

The entire George Pickens thesis has been flipped on its head over the past several weeks. From the end of the 2024 season up until the beginning of May, we were hard at work writing the obituary for DK Metcalf and Pickens in this Steelers’ offense with an unnamed quarterback at the helm before the inevitable signing of Rodgers and everybody’s favorite offensive mastermind, Arthur Smith.

Now, with the Pickens being traded to the Dallas Cowboys, he has a new lease on his fantasy life for 2025.

Comparing "Expected" vs. Actual TDs for fantasy-relevant players in 2024 via @FantasyPtsData

> Trey McBride, George Pickens, the Vikings backfield, and Chase Brown got unlucky last year and are positive regression candidates

> I'm most worried about James Cook and McLaurin pic.twitter.com/1rNrAWQOLO

— Ryan Heath (@RyanJ_Heath) June 26, 2025

If Pickens wants targets, he’s going to get plenty of them. Not just that, but with CeeDee Lamb playing in the slot in three-receiver sets and then playing flanker, the offense is going to be productive with Lamb and Pickens condensing targets in this Cowboys’ passing game. Pickens’ game is all about getting open down the field, and he’ll be able to do that with less attention paid to him.

After tight end Jake Ferguson, the rest of the depth chart feels very distant from the top options in terms of how many targets they will receive.

In Dallas, we could see the targets shake out similar to the Philadelphia Eagles trio of receivers A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and tight end Dallas Goedert. Even better, there will be a ton more passing volume than you could ever hope for in Philadelphia.

For an efficient passing game, Dak Prescott is as good an option as any as long as he’s healthy. With the Eagles’ trio, the top two receivers combine for a large percentage of the targets, while the tight end is the clear third target and a huge gap down to the rest of the pass-catching depth.

Pickens’ ADP is likely to climb steadily throughout the summer, but I’m very happy drafting Pickens wherever I can get him in drafts if he’s going in the WR3 range. The best-case scenario for Pickens this season is that he and Lamb condense targets so much that they shut out Ferguson from the majority of the target-earning, and Prescott stays healthy.

Thanks to a run game that leaves a lot to be desired, the Cowboys’ offense will be highly dependent on the passing game this season. That benefits Pickens for 2025, and I want to be as invested as possible in an elite talent now going to an excellent situation for passing volume and increased fantasy value.

Travis Hunter, WR, Jacksonville Jaguars

Travis Hunter is a true wild card here for the Jaguars and fantasy managers, but remember that Jacksonville traded a ton of assets to move up in the draft to select him. They’ve already planned on using him as a wide receiver, and the coaching staff has talked up his stamina, giving credence to the fact that he’ll be playing both offense and defense.

He's already done so in training camp and will unleash him at both spots when Week 1 comes around.

While we don’t know his snap and route share as of yet, the lucrative contingency for Hunter is if something happens to Brian Thomas Jr. If something DOES happen, it could push the Jaguars to give Hunter way more real estate on the offensive side of the ball. That would be fantastic for fantasy purposes.

With new head coach Liam Coen now the play-caller and head coach for the Jaguars, the targets in this offense could be condensed with Thomas and Hunter as the top two targets. I’m more than willing to make the bet on Hunter here, as if he hits, he’s going to hit in a majorly efficient and productive way. We all love Trevor Lawrence as a quarterback sleeper this season, and thanks to the addition of Hunter to this offense in tandem with Thomas, it's easy to understand why.

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