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Fantasy Football Best Ball Cheat Sheet – Tiered Rankings, Sleepers & Strategy (2025)

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2025 Best Ball Cheat Sheet Graphic - Daniels

Get ready for 2025 Best Ball drafts with our ultimate fantasy football cheat sheet featuring tiered rankings, sleepers, strategy tips & expert insights. Use our best ball cheat sheet for Underdog, DraftKings & FFPC leagues.

In This Article hide
1. Best... Best Ball Stacks
2. Best And Worst Team Schedules To Target And Avoid
3. Best And Worst Week 15-17 Schedules (Fantasy Football Playoffs)
4. Fantasy Football Best Ball Sleepers
5. Fantasy Football Best Ball Busts To Avoid
6. More Fantasy Football Analysis

Getting the best stacks in best ball is one of the easiest ways to make your team as competitive as possible. Every year, specific quarterback and receiver combinations produce multiple massive boom games that propel best ball teams to glory.

Additionally, examining each team's schedule and identifying the teams they face can also give you an edge later in the season. Playoff games are massively important because, you know, that's where you can win your leagues. You want your players to have soft matchups in the last few weeks.

There's another good angle here -- nailing your rookie picks is vitally important. It's incredibly difficult to find talent in the later rounds among veterans, because most fantasy managers are familiar with who they are. But finding the right rookies is of massive importance. So let's dive in!

Editor's Note: Identify fantasy football draft busts, overvalued ADPs, and key players to avoid so you can draft with confidence this season.

 

Best... Best Ball Stacks

QB Joe Burrow and WR Ja'Marr Chase, Cincinnati Bengals

This one's pretty obvious, but not totally relevant if you don't have the 1st overall pick. Chase is going first overall universally in best ball, so it's pretty much only in that case that you have the option of going with this stack. However, if you do, it's not a bad idea at all.

The Bengals had a terrible defense and a fantastic offense last year. That doesn't seem likely to change immediately. Though Cincinnati invested heavily in defense in the 2025 NFL Draft, it takes time to turn things around. Cincy's defense constantly put them in positions to lose, rather than win.

If they lose someone like star pass-rusher Trey Hendrickson, things could get worse before they get better. An inability to pressure opposing quarterbacks could lead Cincy to get absolutely shredded in the passing game. Kind of like they did last season.

Chase is one of the NFL's best wide receivers, and Burrow is one of its best quarterbacks. Put two and two together. Even if WR Tee Higgins, a great wideout in his own right, stays healthy all season, Chase has the highest upside of any player in the NFL outside of six-point passing TD leagues.

QB J.J. McCarthy and WR Justin Jefferson/TE T.J. Hockenson, Minnesota Vikings 

While there's no debate about Jefferson's elite talent, people aren't quite as sold on McCarthy yet. This tends to happen with players who weren't drafted insanely highly at their position (four QBs were selected before him in the 2024 NFL Draft) and when that player hasn't taken a single NFL snap yet.

But my film analysis has led me to believe that McCarthy will be an excellent QB in the NFL. There's a ton of upside for a good signal-caller in the elite Minnesota Vikings offense, which is dynamite for fantasy football production.

McCarthy led Michigan to a National Championship win in the 2023 season in college football. He's a great thrower of the football and has a ton of underrated rushing upside. Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold can be QB1s in this offense; you have to think a talented rookie with rushing upside can pull it off.

Obviously, he didn't rush a lot in college, but the potential for a big edge from running the ball is there, and that's huge for fantasy. Even just 30 rushing yards per game makes a huge difference in a QB's bottom line. And McCarthy is already one of the faster quarterbacks in the league.

But even if he doesn't decide to take off and run much, he could get a few touchdowns on the ground. And even if he doesn't do that, look at the receiving corps he has and the coaching system he's in. He has an elite supporting cast for a quarterback.

If you're not able to snag Jefferson, you might as well try to pick up Hockenson. He's one of the league's best tight ends and has had even more time to recover from his ACL injury in the playoffs of the 2023-2024 season. He's 27 years old, so he should be in peak physical condition. His recovery from the injury was both quick and impressive.

In tight end premium leagues, it would be a mistake to let him fall very far, and a stack of him and McCarthy could prove to be league-winning. While Jefferson will continue to earn hefty targets, Hockenson could challenge Addison for the de facto WR2 job.

He's currently at an ADP of around TE5, but has the potential to finish at top-3 at his position, and great players on great offenses are your best bets in the fantasy football playoffs.

QB Bo Nix and RB RJ Harvey, Denver Broncos

This one's a bit different because Harvey is a running back, not a wide receiver. Still, it's probably a great idea to pick these guys up, especially since Harvey's ADP is dipping after the team signed RB J.K. Dobbins in free agency. Fantasy football managers are heavily biased toward veterans.

Dobbins is not going to be the lead back in Denver. He signed to just a 1-year deal, and despite his fantasy relevance last season, he was a largely inefficient back. That's why he wasn't re-signed by the Chargers, and he wasn't signed by any team until June. 

Harvey is easily the better back of the two. Dobbins wasn't efficient last season, excluding his first two games of the year against the miserly Las Vegas Raiders and Carolina Panthers' run defenses. He had numerous games -- specifically, eight -- with under four yards per carry.

Harvey isn't a great pass-protector, Audric Estime is absolutely terrible, and Jaleel McLaughlin isn't so great, either. There's very little reason to have either Estime or McLaughlin on the field, leaving Denver without great pass protection from their running backs.

Dobbins fills a serious need for this. Teams have to adjust their offenses heavily and remove parts of their playbook when their RBs can't provide good pass protection. Harvey is an elite RB prospect that was helmet-scouted to death, though.

QB Drake Maye and WR Kyle Williams, New England Patriots

It's pretty easy to count the number of times that a 31 or 32-year-old wide receiver coming off an ACL tear from the previous season ends up being a league-winner. That's because the number is zero. WR Stefon Diggs, though he is being paid a big chunk of change to play for the Pats, faces an uphill battle upon his return.

He might not even play in the first few weeks of the season, and when he returns, he'll be playing significantly below 100 percent. In addition, he'll turn 32 years old in November. The community's current sentiment is that he'll be force-fed a multitude of targets, regardless of how ineffective he is.

If the Pats hadn't drafted WR Kyle Williams in the 3rd round of the 2025 NFL Draft, I'd be inclined to believe that. But Williams is far too talented to sit on the bench and do nothing while the team runs a highly ineffective offense centered on forcing the ball to an old, injured wide receiver.

Diggs could be fine, but Williams' tape in 2024 to me was astonishing. Largely because he wasn't seen as a first-round talent in the NFL Draft, yet I couldn't find many flaws in his game, and he oozes with high-end talent. He's a highly polished prospect that's being viewed as anything but that.

In addition to a marvelous release package and excellent separation skills at the line of scrimmage, he has the acceleration and long speed to blaze past defensive backs. He also has very impressive skills with the ball in his hand after the catch, and his film is littered with huge run-after-catch plays.

Williams ran a 4.41-second laser-timed 40-yard dash, so he backed up his film speed with great testing numbers. He also does a great job boxing out defenders, using his body as leverage to make over-the-shoulder catches look easy downfield. Maye has a great deep ball.

Williams has the ability to win on the majority of routes in the standard NFL route tree, and combining this with his explosive play potential and Maye's accuracy downfield, the two should be dynamite at their ADPs in best ball in 2025.

QB Trevor Lawrence and WR/CB Travis Hunter, Jacksonville Jaguars

With Lawrence checking in as the QB19 and Hunter as just the WR29 in best ball ADP according to FantasyPros, it's easy to see that people aren't high on the Jaguars in general, other than WR Brian Thomas Jr., in 2025. Yet Hunter has massive talent as a receiver prospect that's going especially unheralded in best ball.

While he's likely to take snaps at cornerback in 2025, it seems farcical to think that former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator and now Jaguars head coach Liam Coen will want to take the player he traded up for off the offensive lineup to install him at cornerback primarily.

If you miss out on Thomas in your best ball drafts, which seems pretty likely, you would be well-served taking a shot on Hunter. Many in the community have little to no faith in Lawrence at this point in his career. It's important to try to understand what he's been through.

Lawrence has never had good offensive coaching in his career. From Darrell Bevell to Press Taylor as his offensive coordinators, and the tumultuous tenure of Urban Meyer as head coach, T-Law had never been under good guidance. Taylor, in particular, was absolutely awful.

While many seem to overlook Coen and credit only the Bucs players for their fantastic season on offense, a closer look at the film and advanced statistics suggests that Coen's schemes deserve considerable credit. He helped Bucs QB Baker Mayfield easily have the best season in his career.

Mayfield threw 13 more TDs in 2024 than his previous career high, and logged nearly 500 more passing yards. Both WRs Mike Evans and Chris Godwin were fantasy dynamite. And I expect the same from Hunter, even if he does play a decent amount as a cornerback.

There is not nearly enough hype for Coen, even after he ensured Mayfield was perfectly serviceable in games without both Evans and Godwin. And the fake Jalen McMillan breakout was purely a product of Coen manipulating defenses into letting him run wide, wide open.

Hunter should have a fantastic season in his rookie year with the Jaguars, and he's remarkably cheap for a player of his talent level. I don't expect that to ever be the case again. You should capitalize on that while you still can.

QB Brock Purdy and TE George Kittle, San Francisco 49ers

It might just be that the runway is clear for Kittle to take off and have another huge season in 2025 after his excellent 2024. With WR Deebo Samuel Sr. now having been traded to the Washington Commanders, Kittle is the premier YAC pass-catcher on the team.

Additionally, Kittle has played excellently when Samuel has been unavailable. Samuel thrived on targets over the middle of the field, where he could find space to maneuver between defenders and break tackles to pick up extra yards. There will be a vacuous hole in that part of the field for someone to fill.

We'll get into the 49ers schedule later -- it's fantastic for Purdy, who struggled a bit last season due to basically his whole team getting injured. Even with Samuel gone, he's a good bet to beat his ADP of QB13. Kittle stands as the TE3, which is a justified ranking, but he could easily finish as the TE1 if he gets enough targets.

WR Brandon Aiyuk, who, when healthy, presented a significant obstacle to Kittle's production, tore his ACL and MCL and damaged his meniscus in 2024, and likely won't be ready to play at the beginning of the year. He also won't be anywhere near 100 percent when he returns.

Kittle thrives on many of the same looks that Samuel got in his career in SF. His primary healthy competition will be WRs Jauan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall, neither of whom is an explosive YAC threat, and Kittle is still graded as an elite tight end in 2024.

He's showing no signs of slowing down yet, so picking him up early and nabbing Purdy to go along with him is a great idea. More on them in the next section.

QB Jalen Hurts, and WR A.J. Brown, Philadelphia Eagles

The extremely run-heavy Eagles offense of last season might turn many fantasy managers away from this stack. But even though the team retained running back Saquon Barkley, the engine of the team's entire offense last season, they could be forced to pass the ball more in 2025.

An incredibly easy schedule in 2024, in which their opponents finished with a final winning percentage of just 45.3 percent, has given way to a much more difficult slate in 2025. Philadelphia's opponents for this upcoming season won 56.1 percent of their contests in 2024. That's a potential 11 percent jump in difficulty there.

They'll be forced to play the Green Bay Packers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cincinnati Bengals, re-tooled Jacksonville Jaguars, the Dallas Cowboys, and Washington Commanders twice, as well as the Los Angeles Rams and the Baltimore Ravens. All of these teams could have high-powered offenses in 2025.

At minimum, they'll have nine games against explosive offenses from last season. To make matters more difficult, their dominant defense from last season has lost a significant amount of its star power. Defensive end Josh Sweat and defensive lineman Milton Williams both signed with other teams.

It's doubtful that the Eagles' offense will be able to run the ball as heavily as they did last season. The biggest direct beneficiary of this will be Brown, one of the league's best receivers. He maintained his impressive efficiency last season, putting up solid numbers despite injuries and not receiving enough playing time.

Brown absolutely demolished man coverage last season and was fantastic against zone. He'll remain Hurts' primary target, and his slight dip in ADP could be enough for you to snag him in the second round, where he has the potential to finish as a top-5 wideout, and thus be very worth picking.

With the tush push still not banned, Hurts will continue to rack up free rushing touchdowns, and an uptick in passing production could help him edge out everyone but Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson and finish as the QB3 overall. In an ideal world, his ceiling would be even higher.

With Hurts still well within his prime, easily, and Brown clearly not having fallen off at all, we could see a great season from these two, allowing them to edge out their ADPs and potentially serve as a league-winning stack that you don't have to spend a single first-round pick on.

 

Best And Worst Team Schedules To Target And Avoid

From a season-long perspective, and looking forward as far as we can to the crucial Week 15 through 17 stretch of the fantasy football playoffs, we can also get a sense of which teams have the easiest schedules we should be targeting, and those we should try to avoid.

The NFL schedule has already been released, and we have a decent idea of which teams to avoid. Of course, every season, defenses rise and fall in effectiveness across the NFL, so much of this data isn't particularly useful. However, at the extreme ends of the spectrum, we should pay close attention.

Tough Schedules: New York Giants and Chicago Bears 

The New York Giants and Chicago Bears stand out especially. Of course, there are plenty of other teams with tough strengths of schedule -- however, many of these are teams with good, stable offenses, and those produce the vast majority of the most reliable high-floor, high-ceiling fantasy players every season.

The Giants and Bears had horrible offenses last season. While both have major changes incoming -- new quarterbacks for the Giants and a new head coach for the Bears -- why would you trust them over the good offenses that occupy the "tough schedule" groups of teams?

To me, there are very few players on either team I'd consider drafting. I love Giants WR Malik Nabers, but he has a massive uphill battle facing him, and his team's offense could still suck in 2024. There isn't a single Chicago Bear I'm overly excited about drafting.

Tough Schedule: Cleveland Browns

The same can be said for the Cleveland Browns. Not that anyone wants to draft any of their players anyway. Running back Quinshon Judkins might be the lone exception, but expecting a running back to have huge volume in a season the team is likely to be losing most of their games in seems like league-losing folly.

Cleveland could spend the season getting blasted by opposing teams. Their morale is very low; they have a circus-like quarterback competition and situation right now. Their roster is largely lacking in talent on both sides of the ball, and they seem set to pick in the top three of the 2026 NFL Draft.

Very Easy Schedule: San Francisco 49ers

Speaking of teams that have easy schedules, the 49ers have by far the easiest in the league. Of course, many defenses they face could make at least slight improvements, but it would be much more unlikely for their strength of schedule to swing hard to the other side.

Safe to assume that the Purdy/Kittle stack I advocated for earlier will be in great shape next year. With a slate of soft opponents and in a division full of suspect defenses, the two could enjoy some of the best seasons of their careers.

Also Very Easy Schedule: New England Patriots

My Maye/Williams stack suggestion will also benefit greatly from New England's pillow-soft SOS in 2025. Being in a division with the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets helps. Both have highly suspect offenses heading into next season.

While the New Orleans Saints, Tennessee Titans, and Carolina Panthers have relatively easy schedules, it's challenging to envision their offenses, which were all unimpressive last season, providing a significant amount of value in fantasy football. But if you want to bet on rookies from the Titans or Panthers, perhaps that could help a bit.

Easy Schedule, Transformed Offense, Jacksonville Jaguars

In terms of better news, though, the Jacksonville Jaguars have made significant upgrades at certain positions in recent years. Let's just pretend running back Bhayshul Tuten, who I project to be the lead back of the Jaguars by midseason, is on the graphic above instead of Tank Bigsby and Travis Etienne Jr.

Tuten, by the way, should be a fantastic value in Best Ball. We'll talk about him later. However, the Jags having an easy schedule this season should help Lawrence even further in his pursuit of the best season of his career, and stacking him with either Thomas or Hunter should pay off big time.

Coen, who led the explosive 2024 Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense, did a fantastic job scheming his receivers open and designing blocking plays to be highly effective. What's impressive is that even when the Bucs' top-2 receivers, Evans and Godwin, were injured, the offense overall still performed well.

That should be enough to convince people that Coen is legit. And he'll have an easier-than-average schedule to work through, featuring the usual trash that is the AFC South. The Houston Texans have a legitimate defense, but the Indianapolis Colts and Tennessee Titans have sucked for years.

They're a team you should invest heavily in. In general, following the success of great offensive minds by drafting one or more of the players they coach each season is a good idea. Great coaching often proves to be fantasy dynamite -- many league-winning fantasy players owe part of their greatness to their offensive schemers.

 

Best And Worst Week 15-17 Schedules (Fantasy Football Playoffs)

The final three opponents for all teams are even more important. Week-winning performances are easier to come by from players who face terrible competition, obviously. And, unsurprisingly, the San Francisco 49ers have a super, super easy schedule in Weeks 15-17.

They'll face the Tennessee Titans, Indianapolis Colts, and Chicago Bears, all losing teams in 2024, all with huge question marks at quarterback and  disappointing defenses last season. The 49ers could find themselves needing to build big leads early to secure victories against these hapless foes and secure better playoff seeds.

The Bucs are another team that faces three straight easy opponents, so I like Mayfield a lot in those weeks. The WR room is a bit of a mess right now, though, and it remains to be seen if TB's new offensive coordinator can replicate the magic Liam Coen created last season.

According to FFToolbox, running back James Conner has the easiest schedule for any RB in the league during the FF playoffs. He always seems to explode during Weeks 15-17, so he could be a value pick yet again this season. He'll still be his team's workhorse. The Raiders have the easiest WR schedule in those weeks. That could be a big boost for WR Jakobi Meyers.

Maybe rookie speedster Dont'e Thornton Jr. will have a breakout.

On the flip side, the Jaguars, Rams, Seahawks, and Dolphins have very tough schedules for WRs in fantasy in the final three weeks of the season. For running backs, it's the Browns, Steelers, and Chiefs making up the bottom three. You should probably avoid investing early picks in RBs from those teams.

And for quarterbacks, Jayden Daniels has a very nice, top-5 easiest schedule for Weeks 15-17, while Jordan Love, Sam Darnold, and Jared Goff have the three toughest. In tight end land, the most notable player with a very easy schedule is Denver Broncos TE Evan Engram. Perhaps he has a very nice playoff run. We'll see!

 

Fantasy Football Best Ball Sleepers

Players who have the potential to put up explosive games, and who often do so, seemingly love to fly well under the radar each season. This year really is no exception.

Given that a lot of the players I mentioned below are, unsurprisingly, listed in the Best Best Ball Stacks section, the write-ups of them can be slightly abridged. There's no point in rehashing exactly what makes them stand out to me as good performers for the 2025 season, but I'll try to provide at least some new information.

Bhayshul Tuten, RB, Jacksonville Jaguars

So we didn't talk about Tuten much. Well, unless you've read my articles, I've been gassing him up since February. I evaluate my film independently, so I don't pay attention to preseason rankings, except to see where the general consensus stands.

Tuten ran a 4.32-second 40-yard dash at the 2025 NFL Combine. Let's just break that down a bit. He's essentially the fastest running back in the league right now. All it will take are a few well-blocked run plays, and he could easily take multiple carries for long touchdowns in 2025.

So, taking a look at the above threat posted by fantasy football analyst Hayden Winks, it's remarkable to note the sheer number of carries in which Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Bucky Irving had a remarkable run-blocking performance to benefit from.

The blockers all being in the right place to make their... well, blocks, downfield, should be sending off alarm bells in your head that Tuten is massively underrated right now. Irving couldn't even crack a 4.5-second 40-yard dash. Don't get me wrong, I love him, but imagine what an elite burner could do with those blocks.

Irving was a wizard at making tacklers miss. Tuten actually displayed fantastic elusiveness in college as well, so to say he simply doesn't hold a candle to Irving wouldn't be entirely accurate. Even if Tuten isn't the juke god Irving is, he could still be hugely effective.

Tuten possesses the elusiveness, speed, acceleration, and tackle-breaking ability to juke, run around, and bull through linebackers. All it takes is one big hole in the defensive line, and he could take a carry the length of the field for a touchdown.

It's not just that -- he has the raw explosiveness to be a nightmare on outside carries. He's able to outrun defenders laterally, which will allow him to leverage Coen's schemes to choose his gaps wisely and get to the edge, where he can either sprint up the sidelines or cut back inside. He's effective at both.

What's also interesting to me is how he's underrated as a tackle-breaker. He's not 220 pounds, so he isn't seen as some kind of bowling ball. And his massive speed seems to be distracting many fantasy managers from the fact that he's just a nightmare to bring down.

There simply aren't many defensive players faster than Tuten in the league. Those who are lighter players that he could reasonably shrug off much more easily on tackle attempts than the bigger ones, whom he can outrun. Tuten is a matchup nightmare waiting to happen, and has week-winning potential every time he steps on the field.

Kyle Williams, WR, New England Patriots

Williams is the only speedster the Patriots have. If my analysis holds up, he's the only receiver worth drafting at his ADP on the team. The caveat here is that the team might want to justify the huge payday they gave to Diggs (knee) and could force him to catch the ball a lot, which would boost his PPR scoring.

However, Williams is a highly underrated and extremely talented athlete. He ran a 4.41-second 40-yard dash at the 2025 NFL Combine, and evidence of his high-level speed and acceleration shows up all over his tape. He's also a great route-runner and has an excellent release package. Those should help him succeed early and often in the league.

The thing that worries me most about Diggs is that he thrives on short-yardage targets. But the Pats will have plenty of motivation to feed targets to Williams and running back TreVeyon Henderson, both of whom are far more explosive than Diggs and more capable of picking up big chunk gains after the catch.

Diggs might be on many fantasy analysts' lists of underrated best ball targets, but I'm much more interested in Williams.

Brashard Smith, RB, Kansas City Chiefs

The Chiefs were a terrible running team last season. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes had to do most of it on his own. Despite the leg injury to RB Isiah Pacheco, he was actually pretty bad. His advanced statistics and efficiency were very poor in his first two games before the injury.

Meanwhile, RB Kareem Hunt was terrible all season long. And Elijah Mitchell is going into his fifth season as a pro. The list of Year 5 running backs who break out that season is absolutely tiny, and they usually don't have any massive seasons.

Smith is, by far, the best pass-catcher of this group. Thanks to his experience playing wide receiver, he easily outperforms the group as a route-runner, improvising when the quarterback is scrambling to get him open, and making tough catches with his hands. He has better hands than many of this year's wide receiver rookies, too.

Smith has rare upside that many running backs simply don't have. And as far as league-winners at the position go, it's typically the pass-catchers that have the highest upside. Remember that a single catch is at least as valuable as a 10-yard rush if the player doesn't gain negative yardage.

The potential Smith has is absolutely massive. There's a shot he gets a significant role after midseason. In dynasty leagues, the long-term potential is even greater. However, specifically in best ball, his elite athleticism, combined with his presence in a great, screen-heavy offense, should have you reaching at least a round or two for him.

Jarquez Hunter, RB, Los Angeles Rams

Hunter is simply a more talented player than the other top-2 running backs on the Rams roster right now, according to my analysis. He's faster, more elusive, better at breaking tackles, stronger, a better accelerator, and better with the ball in his hands.

All three of their backs have similar builds, so we can't contrast them much in that regard. But I was far more impressed with Hunter's tape in college than I was with Kyen Williams' or Blake Corum's. Williams has plenty of NFL tape for us to look at. The advanced stats for both Williams and Corum look pretty horrific.

As we talked about in the previous section, the Chiefs' group of running backs was absolutely awful at picking up chunk gains and forcing missed tackles last season. But they were second-worst in the league. At the top of trash mountain were the Rams.

Despite being in a great offense led by head coach Sean McVay, both Corum and Williams failed abjectly in providing juice. Williams handled a massive workload, but among all the league's workhorse backs, he was one of the least deserving of the role, based on his efficiency.

So McVay went out and traded up for his literal favorite Day 3 player in Hunter. There haven't been a ton of revealing reports out of camp yet, but the talent mismatch is pretty huge. Total yardage and touchdown numbers can be pretty tricky to navigate for inexperienced fantasy football managers, but let me put it into perspective.

Despite facing a very low stacked box rate, Williams had zero rushing yards over expectation. He carried the ball 316 times and recorded just two rushes over 20 yards. For his volume, that's atrocious. Meanwhile, Hunter dominated in the SEC, the toughest division in college football. I'm taking Hunter in all best ball drafts this year.

The role he could step into is absolutely enormous.

 

Fantasy Football Best Ball Busts To Avoid

Tyreek Hill, WR, Miami Dolphins 

At this point, I've written seemingly endlessly about Hill's red flags. But they boil down to a few key points. The Miami offense is miserable now. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa constantly gets hurt, and when he's hurt, Hill is awful. And Hill seems to have faded athletically.

Sure, he might have just not been putting much effort into last season. But he's also 31 years old, so that doesn't help. His separation on vertical routes fell off a cliff last season. And Miami's offense leaned into the short passing game as much as possible. That doesn't benefit Hill at all.

Considering that Hill's value gets pushed up by his propensity for big plays, and those huge plays are basically all of his value when he's not force-fed targets, it seems like the perfect year to bail on Hill. It's not great to draft as if age-related athleticism fall-offs don't happen at all, so I wouldn't recommend it.

For Hill to be worth taking very early, the Dolphins would have to magically bring back their 2022 and 2023 offenses. Those are likely relics of the past. Their offensive line can't hold up well enough, and their receivers aren't getting open downfield as much because defenses have adjusted. That's how the NFL works.

There's plenty of film evidence to show that defenses were content with dropping a ton of defenders into deep coverage to limit Miami's explosive plays. And it worked. While tight end Jonnu Smith and running back De'Von Achane feasted, Hill and WR Jaylen Waddle suffered.

Tagovailoa had the lowest average depth of target in the league, by far. Not great. Hill is not a screen or short pass guy for the most part. He could be running a lot of wind sprints in 2025, at least a lot more than he's used to. That top-end athleticism he has is the core foundation of his game, and it's the first thing to fade with age.

Ashton Jeanty, RB, Las Vegas Raiders 

It's been a long time since a rookie running back has paid off being drafted at an obscenely high price. Jeanty has never stepped on an NFL field before. More importantly for me, he's now on an unproven offense with a shaky offensive line. And he didn't even play in a premier conference in college.

He could have an excellent season for a rookie back and still not be worth his pick. On FantasyPros right now, he's ranked as the RB5 in ADP, with an 11th overall pick price tag. That's absolutely absurd. While the common consensus is that there are zero flaws with his game, no prospect is perfect.

There isn't a lot of negative writing out there about Jeanty. I am one of the few analysts who think his ADP is absolutely absurd. Two big factors that drove his production in college, though, were his underrated run-blocking and (more obviously) his incredibly easy schedule.

He had big games against better defenses, but the sample size is small, and his stats are skewed by runs like the one in the post above, where he had excellent blocking and was completely untouched. You could praise his speed, sure, but you could do so for faster running backs like Tuten as well, who's much cheaper.

Tuten was tested against stiffer competition and actually compared favorably to Jeanty on inside runs. Why not take an elite player that you know is elite early in drafts? Jeanty could have some issues in his game to work out. Maybe the Raiders' offense doesn't go as planned.

There's also the angle that Las Vegas had a mediocre to bad defense last year, and lost a few key pieces. And they face a very tough schedule in 2025. Everyone's already made the assumption, seemingly, that the Raiders will be a ridiculously run-heavy team, but I don't imagine they'll have that luxury.

Jeanty wasn't very productive as a pass-catcher last season. And even in seasons prior, he never tested his pass-catching abilities against a season-long schedule of tough opponents. I believe many in the community are wrongly assuming that he'll just be an elite receiver if the Raiders have to pass the ball frequently.

I can imagine they'll be motivated to get him the ball in the passing game, but they have wide receivers Jakobi Meyers, Jack Bech, and Thornton, as well as tight end Brock Bowers, who will certainly earn their targets. Thornton and Bech are rookies, to be fair.

Vegas likely won't need to throw the ball Jeanty's way a lot. So I don't think they'll do it at some insane rate. It's just crazy to me to take Jeanty over a guy like Christian McCaffrey, who's on a proven-elite offense, is an elite pass-catcher, and will face the easiest schedule in the league in 2025. Or any other proven stud he's going over.

Kyren Williams, RB, Los Angeles Rams

Refer to the section above about Hunter, the rookie back that the Rams drafted. I've written extensively about the very real (in my opinion) chance that Williams loses his job, or at least a significant amount of volume, to Hunter in 2025. I think it's in McVay's best interests to give Hunter the starting job.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba, WR, Seattle Seahawks 

Another player I've covered extensively is JSN. I have a few chief worries -- he didn't break out last season until WR DK Metcalf got hurt and basically played decoy after that. He was in a very high-passing-volume offense as well, and he had a huge downgrade at the QB position in terms of play under pressure.

Smith-Njigba is also primarily a slot receiver. The team signed WR Cooper Kupp, who's also a slot receiver. Kupp was a horrible separator on the outside last season. He's a poor athlete as well, so it seems like his only good home is in the slot.

It's not in the best interests of offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak to run Kupp on the outside much. Maybe he finds a way. But Kubiak is a run-first OC, so there will be fewer targets to go around for all the WRs, and Metcalf wasn't targeted much after his injury. Perhaps Kupp and third-stringer Marquez Valdes-Scantling will account for more volume.

Either way, even if he maintains a similar target share, the Seahawks still have an abysmal offensive line. That's not going to get fixed, because general manager John Schneider has never done such a thing in his over a decade tenure with Seattle. I think this team's passing offense could be horrific this season.

Rome Odunze, WR, Chicago Bears

Quarterback Caleb Williams was horribly inaccurate last season. On throws of over 20 air yards, even from a clean pocket, Williams was easily the least accurate QB in the NFL. The offensive line has a lot of reinforcements, but you can't blame them for CW's issues.

And the Bears made it very clear what they thought of their pass-catching corps when they spent their first two picks on tight end Colston Loveland and wide receiver Luther Burden III in the 2025 NFL Draft. It's not possible for an offense to support four fantasy-relevant WRs.

Where are the screaming warning sirens and bright flashing warning signals about Odunze? Nowhere, really, apparently. "Year 2 WRs always break out, and Odunze was an elite prospect" are the most common takes to refute this. But even with the Detroit Lions last season, only three pass-catchers were fantasy-relevant.

And one of them, tight end Sam LaPorta, was a disappointment at ADP. In the second half of the season, when the two rookies start getting more acclimated to the NFL, I'm unsure what people think will happen. I'm certainly not buying Odunze. His tape wasn't anything special, and his QB is inaccurate.

And there's a ton of target competition around him now.



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