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John's Dynasty Fantasy Football 2025 breakdown about buying or selling three wide receivers: DK Metcalf, Cooper Kupp, and Davante Adams. His Dynasty Buy or Sell analysis for Wide Receivers.
Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf, Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Cooper Kupp, and Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Davante Adams all landed in new teams ahead of the 2025 season. Formerly of the Seahawks, Rams, and New York Jets, all three of these wideouts' fantasy football values have undergone marked shifts after landing at their new homes.
It's not all good news, but it's not all necessarily bad news, either. What would've happened if they stayed on their old teams isn't worth speculating on, but the new offenses they're slotting in to, those offenses' tendencies and how they'll change with their new weapons, and which quarterbacks will be throwing passes to them are all important.
All three are in the latter half of their careers, or at least at the midway point, so in dynasty fantasy football, that will be important to keep track of. But the prevailing wisdom is that all of them still have good years ahead. Let's break down whether or not that's true and whether you should buy or sell Metcalf, Kupp, and Adams ahead of the 2025 NFL season.
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DK Metcalf: Sell
No matter what angle I look at the Metcalf trade from, I can't imagine how it will be good for his fantasy value. The Steelers seem to have no idea what they're doing regarding their quarterback situation right now, and that's just the start of his troubles. There are still a few serviceable QBs available, but Pittsburgh hasn't shown much interest in signing them.
It might be hard for them to get a good one in the 2025 NFL draft since the most important position in football usually gets drafted early. There's been no urgency, so it's hard to know what the plan is. Maybe they prefer to try to sign Aaron Rodgers, but that wouldn't be a great idea, either, since he's just not very good anymore and still tries to play the game like he's much younger than he is. Not great.
Chris Boswell's IG Story right now 💀
Skylar Thompson is the only QB currently on the Steelers roster 😬 pic.twitter.com/Du28A40RVO
— DraftKings (@DraftKings) March 10, 2025
No quarterback on the free-agent market would make this move an upgrade for Metcalf. Without trading up extremely aggressively, if that's even possible, their last hope is probably Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart. But we don't even know if they're interested in him.
Either way, Metcalf is now on one of the most run-happy teams in the league. The Steelers ran the ball on nearly 50 percent of their plays in 2024, despite not having a mobile quarterback for much of the season. Former Steelers QB Justin Fields did rush for 62 times, but the only teams that ran the ball more last season were the Philadelphia Eagles, Baltimore Ravens, Green Bay Packers, and Buffalo Bills, and three of those teams (Eagles, Packers, Bills) had hyper-mobile quarterbacks.
"When you can run the ball when they know you're going to run it, that speaks volumes about your guys." -Arthur Smith pic.twitter.com/xoLRSmH3Dp
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) October 2, 2022
Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith is obsessed with running the ball as much as possible, evidenced equally by his teams' run rates and his self-professed love for pounding the rock. He's probably scheming up as many plays as possible to use Metcalf as a run-blocker right now. Metcalf will share the field with WR George Pickens in a low-volume passing offense. I can imagine a ridiculously low target rate coming up for Metcalf.
I won't like Metcalf being on the Steelers. 5th-most run happy team in the NFL last year, in spite of not having a mobile QB or productive RB, which Philly, Baltimore, and Buffalo all had. Steelers are No. 1 in the NFL at running more than they should. pic.twitter.com/snEjPDnpp1
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) March 13, 2025
To Smith's credit, if the team again has a mediocre or bad quarterback, he'll have reason to keep running the ball as much as he can. But this is a horrible landing spot for the former Seahawk receiver, especially after he was on an offense last season that passed it at a ridiculously high rate, helping to pad both his and Jaxon Smith-Njigba's target and reception totals. Quarterback Geno Smith was a lot better than he got credit for, keeping his offense afloat behind a terrible offensive line.
Sell Metcalf as soon as possible.
Cooper Kupp: Sell
Kupp, like Metcalf, gets a huge downgrade on his new team, and it's a triple whammy. Kupp spent his entire career before he was traded with the Rams, in recent years, he caught passes from quarterback Matthew Stafford, who's still playing very well and was happy to hyper-target him before his athleticism fell off a cliff. And under the tutelage of elite offensive mind Sean McVay, the Rams have been arguably the best possible team for a wideout to put up monster fantasy stats on.
Seahawks have agreed to terms with WR Cooper Kupp. (via @RapSheet , @TomPelissero, @MikeGarafolo) pic.twitter.com/loxTFecC4a
— NFL (@NFL) March 14, 2025
Kupp will now go to Seattle, where the head coach, Mike Macdonald, and new offensive coordinator, Klint Kubiak, have confirmed they'll run the ball much more heavily in 2025. Also, one very revealing yet underreported aspect of Kupp heading into 2025 is his salary. He signed a three-yard, $45 million contract, which seems fine on the surface, yet when wide receivers like Dyami Brown are earning $10 million per year, it puts it into a bit more perspective.
Kupp is hardly being paid above-replacement money, and his contract, though the details haven't yet been fully revealed, likely has a reasonable out after just one year. His market as a free agent wasn't very hot, or else he'd have made significantly more money.
Klint Kubiak, Derek Carr, and the New Orleans Saints were playing the Shanahan hits in a huge game against the Cowboys:
*Effective zone run game
*Attacking the middle of the field
*Motion to manipulate the defense
*A deep shot TD off play action pic.twitter.com/zCkG14CDU2— Shawn Syed (@SyedSchemes) September 15, 2024
I do have a lot of faith in OC Klint Kubiak. I don't have faith in Seattle's horrible offensive line and quarterback Sam Darnold, who is horrible under pressure. Seattle's general manager, John Schneider, doesn't want to invest in the OL either. This is bad news.
In addition, Kupp has experienced three straight seasons of declining efficiency and level of play. He'll be 32 years old when 2024 starts. I doubt he has much left in the tank.
Davante Adams: Buy
Adams gets the nuts landing spot. Stafford and McVay combine to author some of the NFL's most fundamentally sound, creative, and productive offenses every season when you control for the team's talent. They kept the team's playoff hopes alive despite disruptions along the offensive line and in the receiver group due to injuries. Adams will be a huge upgrade for them over Kupp, who, by all means, looks washed.
Davante Adams is tied for the 11th-best Open Score and yards per route run for a wide receiver over the past 3 seasons, via ESPN Analytics. His Open Score has been top 15 in the NFL each year:
Link for the complete dataset + context for stats: https://t.co/XcNijaEkdE pic.twitter.com/lbMy5MExi5
— Wyatt Miller (@wymill07) March 13, 2025
Reports of Adams's death were greatly exaggerated, as they say. He could still get open, produced efficiently, and handled plenty of targets in his time with the New York Jets when he knew he was on a competent offense and put his foot on the gas. His overall poor numbers with the Las Vegas Raiders can be largely ignored, as his effort wasn't there, and it's not unreasonable to refrain from blaming him.
Adams will turn 33 late in 2025, but his recent play suggests he still has at least one or two good years ahead. It might be hard to get him at a reasonable price, but if you can, he could help your dynasty team go on a run, and perhaps a rebuilding team will sell him off at a reasonable value.
He's a good buy in PPR leagues. The vast majority of the receiving work should go to Adams and wide receiver Puka Nacua. Perhaps Nacua's presence will convince some fantasy managers that Adams won't get a ton of targets, but they could see around 10 targets per game over the season, which would be plenty.
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