2025 Fantasy Football Best Ball: Three Players To Avoid Drafting

April 9, 2025

Kevin's fantasy football players to avoid drafting in best ball for 2025. Read the fantasy football expert analysis for biggest avoids for best ball drafts.

With the dust settling in free agency and a few weeks left until the NFL Draft in Green Bay, the average draft position (ADP) in early best ball drafts is most of what we have to rely on for early looks at the 2025 fantasy football draft landscape.

With draft values popping up and presenting opportunities for drafters to take advantage, the inverse is also true. There are plenty of mispriced players who many fantasy drafters are having second thoughts drafting where they come off draft boards.

With the calendar turned to April, let's take a look at a few mispriced fantasy football players who may be going too high in early best ball drafts.

RB Christian McCaffrey, San Francisco 49ers

Christian McCaffrey will be remembered as one of the best fantasy running backs and one of the best fantasy points producers ever. Remembering everything McCaffrey was earlier in his career is completely different than what he currently is, and we need to take that into account when forecasting what his 2025 season could look like.

(Stats courtesy of NFL Next Gen Stats)

In the “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. Not what you want from your consensus 1.01 from 2024.

McCaffrey played a total of just four games, averaged 12.0 fantasy points per game, and tallied just 4.0 yards per carry as he left the game in Week 13 against the Bills with a season-ending PCL injury. Not exactly great news, as McCaffrey is on the bad side of the dreaded “running back age cliff” heading into 2025.

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 one or more games in every season but one, where McCaffrey played all 17 games in 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 or gradually.

With an early second-round ADP in best ball early contests, that’s an astronomical price to pay for somebody who could only get on the field for four games last season and was nowhere near the McCaffrey we’ve been accustomed to.

I would want a much better price to take the chance on him, but he’s got the name value. Based on past production, we likely won’t get a discount on CMC. I’m hands-off on drafting McCaffrey in 2025.

RB Josh Jacobs, Green Bay Packers

There may not have been a hotter second-half fantasy running back last season than Josh Jacobs. With at least one touchdown in his final eight games of the season, the Packers rode Jacobs as the only consistent chain-mover on offense. Numerous factors led to Jacobs being a massive workhorse, but those factors could normalize in 2025.

The Packers selected running back MarShawn Lloyd on Day 2 of the 2024 NFL Draft, and he was banged up virtually all season. Incumbent backup AJ Dillon hit season-ending injured reserve before Week 1.

Jacobs was the workhorse from the start, and with Jordan Love getting injured at the end of Week 1’s game in Brazil against the Eagles, head coach Matt LaFleur had to get creative and run the offense almost solely through the run to protect backup quarterback Malik Willis.

Love also left the game again in Week 8 in Jacksonville, and after a loss to the Lions in Week 9, the Packers stormed out of their Week 10 bye with a renewed offensive philosophy: Run the ball at all costs.

Green Bay did just that as Jacobs was the offense for the majority of the second half of 2024. The Packers ended the season with the second-highest raw run rate (48 percent) in the NFL and the third-lowest pass rate over expected (PROE).

With a healthy Love and calls from Jacobs himself for the Packers to obtain a No. 1 WR in the room, the Packers’ play-calling could get more balanced. While it’s not a question that Jacobs will be the workhorse for the Packers, touchdown regression is not on Jacobs’ side heading into 2025. There are much better values on the board than Jacobs for next season.

WR Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins

Just as we talked about running backs not aging gracefully, the same can be said for wide receivers, too. As soon as a receiver hits 30 years of age, we’re all waiting for the cliff. It’s incredibly difficult to predict, but there’s a chance we may have gotten that with Tyreek Hill in 2024.

Hill has always been a hugely talented and successful fantasy wide receiver, with him finishing as a WR1 in four consecutive seasons heading into 2024. With a wrist injury that hampered Hill for much of the season, all of his stats and per-route metrics took a pretty steep nosedive. Not having Tua Tagovailoa for six games didn’t exactly help the Dolphins to hit their ceiling outcomes in 2024.

Across the board, the Dolphins disappointed big time last season, and no player was a bigger letdown than Hill. His 1.75 yards per route run was easily the lowest of his career and his only season under 2.00 yards. Add on his 7.1 targets per game, 7.9 yards per target, plus a 22.1 percent targets per route run -- all career lows since 2018 -- and there wasn’t much good from Hill and his early first-round price tag in drafts last season.

Hill’s stock has sunk as a wide receiver past the age of 30, and the fact that you have to draft him at the end of the second round is awfully rich considering numerous factors, the most important of which is Tagovailoa’s health. He missed six games last season, and the offense sputtered with Tyler Huntley, Skylar Thompson, and Tim Boyle.

Right now, the backup quarterback is Zach Wilson, and do you trust him to coax fantasy value out of anybody in the Dolphins' passing game should Tua miss time? And what if Hill retires?

Latest tweets from #Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill…. pic.twitter.com/nNl3KUzcYd

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) March 30, 2025

With factors like Hill being on the wrong side of 30, his declining metrics, or even leaving the Dolphins entirely, it’s too much to feel good about his fantasy profile heading into 2025. Hill has the name value where he’s not going to be falling too far in drafts because of what he’s done in his career. I don’t think I can stomach drafting him as my WR1 this season.

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