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Patrick McGrath identifies the fantasy football IDP sleepers, busts, and breakout candidates for 2025. His IDP analysis and expert tips for 2025 fantasy football.
One of the biggest knocks on IDP fantasy football is that it lacks uniformity. Every league has its own unique quirks, with some starting two linebackers and others starting five. Some treat a sack like a Black Friday flat screen, while others can barely be bothered to acknowledge the play. The result is a landscape with less standardized strategy, fewer clear-cut rankings, and a general lack of advice that can be applied across formats.
Thankfully, almost all IDP decisions ultimately come down to what happens when talent meets scheme. The right scheme can transform an average linebacker into a tackle vacuum, while the wrong one can bury an All-Pro so deep he needs spelunking gear. Whether your league leans tackle-heavy, big-play driven, or somewhere in the middle, there are things to look for when determining which players are worth targeting early, which you can add value with late in your draft, and which should be avoided entirely.
Like all fantasy formats, IDP boards are littered with breakouts, sleepers, and busts. By identifying which defenders are walking into the perfect role, and which are about to see theirs vanish entirely, we can determine who is who in 2025.
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Fantasy Football IDP Breakouts
Greg Rousseau, DL, Buffalo Bills
Greg Rousseau has been building toward a breakout since the Buffalo Bills made him their first-round pick in 2021. His first four years in the league have seen a clean upward trajectory in terms of snaps, pass rush opportunities, and pressures.
Last season, his career-high 63 total pressures were the 12th most in the NFL, but he converted those pressures into sacks at a rate below his career average, bringing the quarterback down only eight times. His 17 QB hits that didn't result in a sack were the third most in the league, making him an obvious positive regression candidate and putting his first double-digit sack season well within reach.
Rousseau came into the league as a massive hunk of raw potential. At 6-foot-6 and 266 pounds, he's a trench wrecking ball with vines for arms. Say his name fast enough and you’re basically talking about Groot. Now working with the third defensive play caller of his young career, he may have found the right hands to mold him into something truly special.
Greg Rousseau is one of the most underrated defensive ends in the league
- Games 17
- Tackles 60 (36 solo, 24 assists)
- Sacks 8.0
- Tackles for Loss so 16
- Forced Fumbles 3
- Fumble Recoveries 1Big Season incoming 💪 #BillsMafia pic.twitter.com/AQmvMXFe2O
— SleeperBills (@SleeperBills) June 21, 2025
Defensive coordinator Bobby Babich came into his first year on the job preaching disruption, and his defense delivered. The 2024 Bills forced 18 fumbles, tied for the third most in the league, and Rousseau personally contributed three of them, doubling his career total in a single season. Approaching Year 2 with an increased sense of cohesion, expect Babich to continue scheming his most dynamic athletes into high-impact situations, and there may not be a more physically gifted player on the roster than Rousseau.
Putting it all together, Rousseau's steady growth, elite pressure rate, and emphasis on creating chaos make him an obvious IDP breakout candidate. Double-digit sacks are on the table, and if he continues to show a nose for the ball, he should be a locked-in DL1 every week he takes the field.
Blake Cashman, LB, Minnesota Vikings
Blake Cashman took the scenic route to fantasy relevance. A fifth-round pick of the New York Jets in 2019, he spent the early stages of his career fighting through injury after injury, starting only eight games in his first four seasons. Since taking over as a full-time starter for the Houston Texans in 2023, though, he's covertly been a fantasy cheat code anytime he's healthy enough to strap on a helmet.
Last year, Cashman signed a three-year deal with the Vikings, and in his first go-round in Brian Flores' exotic, blitz-heavy defense, he looked like he'd been born for the job. He racked up 107 tackles, 4.5 sacks, and eight tackles for loss – numbers matched across the league by only Lavonte David and Kaden Ellis, despite Cashman missing three games due to injury.
Blake Cashman of the @vikings has become one of those do-it-all linebackers who does everything at a very high level. Well, maybe work on catching the ball. It's not easy to become the green-dot guy in Year 1 in a defense this complex, but Cashman nailed it. pic.twitter.com/S8oGGf0qqQ
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 6, 2025
Flores' system has long been a feeding ground for anyone wearing the green dot. Since 2019, in his six seasons as either head coach, defensive coordinator, or linebackers coach, only one of his defenses failed to produce a 100-tackle linebacker, a mark Cashman hit in just 13 games.
While he might have been considered undersized when he first came into the league, at 6-foot-1, 237 pounds, his range and relentlessness make him the perfect fit in Minnesota. He's a sideline-to-sideline missile who can sniff out screens and get home quickly on delayed blitzes, and Flores weaponized him all over the field last year.
His 168 pass rush snaps nearly doubled his career total, and his 28 total pressures ranked fourth in the league among off-ball linebackers.
Cashman's injury history is bound to scare some drafters away, and that's just fine. Let them chase durability over upside. Because if Cashman stays upright, he's as productive as any linebacker in the league, and in Minnesota's relentlessly aggressive defense, he could threaten to be the overall LB1 in 2025.
Fantasy Football IDP Sleepers
Tyler Nubin, DB, New York Giants
Tyler Nubin's rookie season ended prematurely with a high-ankle sprain in Week 14, but not before he gave us a glimpse of what he can do at the NFL level. Before the injury, the Giants' second-round pick was producing like a top-25 DB in most IDP formats, including a stretch of three straight 12-tackle games.
What makes Nubin so intriguing heading into year two isn't just what he showed as a rookie, but what still might be left to see. New York deployed him as a classic box safety on approximately half his snaps, living near the line of scrimmage and cleaning up many a mess on a defense that struggled to get off the field.
That role propped up his tackle floor, but it also masked the part of his game that made him a Day 2 pick in the first place.
"You're going to get it all" 🥺 pic.twitter.com/egVqpkcLGR
— New York Giants (@Giants) April 27, 2024
While at Minnesota, Nubin was a bona fide ballhawk. He finished his college career with 13 interceptions and five touchdowns, including a respective five and two as a senior, routinely baiting quarterbacks into mistakes and showing the instincts of a center fielder. After an offseason investment into their defensive line, the Giants could opt to tap into Nubin's natural skillset in year two.
Without completely removing him from the box, we could see more deep-zone looks and opportunistic blitzes mixed in, raising his ceiling to DB1 upside in all formats. Should his role remain static, though, the appeal is still obvious. With few notable improvements to the other side of the ball, the Giants' defense should see plenty of field time again in 2025, and tackle-heavy scoring leagues love box safeties.
With Nubin already proving he can thrive in the role, he offers a rock-solid floor with the untapped potential to be moved all over the field and into valuable fantasy opportunities. He’s one of the few players in the league with 100-tackle and five-pick potential, essentially making him an IDP unicorn.
Jack Sanborn, LB, Dallas Cowboys
Jack Sanborn isn't going to go viral on Sundays. He's not a combine legend, a traits darling, or the kind of linebacker who's going to frighten anyone getting off the bus. What he is, and what IDP managers should care about, is a scheme-anchored grinder, in line for an every-down role in Dallas.
After three steady but unspectacular seasons as an occasional starter in Chicago, Sanborn followed new Cowboys defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus to Dallas, where he has adorned the green dot since day one of training camp. That's not just a ceremonial honor; it's a direct signal that the staff trusts him to be their every-down traffic cop. And in Eberflus' system, that's a valuable gig.
Since 2018, Eberflus-coached defenses have never failed to produce a 100-tackle linebacker, a feat accomplished by six different players. In that same seven-year stretch, only twice has his top linebacker finished outside the top-8 in IDP scoring for the position.
Sanborn hasn't been without competition for the job either. The Cowboys traded for former first-round pick Kenneth Murray Jr. Still, he's been one of the NFL's most inconsistent linebackers since entering the league, often running himself clean out of position while hunting splash plays.
Second-year linebacker Marist Liufau is an intriguing athlete, but he's better suited as a developmental Will than for the rock-solid Mike role Sanborn has made his own by doing everything Eberflus asks of his middle linebacker.
Who is 2025's Zack Baun?
Probably nobody... but what if it's Jack Sanborn? 😈@joshraymer @adamIDP @IdpBob dig into why the new Cowboys LB could be in for a breakout 2025 season.
Full episode: https://t.co/J24PZp22Cc pic.twitter.com/yPBK5r5CyD
— The IDP Show (@theidpshow) August 12, 2025
Meanwhile, Sanborn diagnoses quickly, stays clean and involved, and finishes plays. He's played at a high level whenever called upon in Chicago, averaging 9.8 tackles per game during his six-game stint as a starter in 2022, the longest consecutive stretch of his career.
While he won't wow you on film, your fantasy scoreboard won't care. He's plugged into the middle of a defense designed to funnel action his way, and if he handles the role anything close to the way he has in the past, he could sneak into the LB2 territory at a price tag closer to LB5.
Fantasy Football IDP Busts
Nick Cross, DB, Indianapolis Colts
Third-year safety Nick Cross was one of 2024's great IDP stories, transitioning to strong safety in Gus Bradley's loaded box scheme and erupting for 140 tackles, second only to Budda Baker at the position. He took up residence in the box, living within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage on almost 65% of his snaps, essentially masquerading as a weakside linebacker. For fantasy managers, it was glorious.
Cue the chalkboard scratch. Bradley has been replaced as defensive coordinator by Lou Anarumo, and the outlook for one of last year's darlings has gotten a lot murkier. In his six seasons running the Bengals' defense, Anarumo has historically been much more conservative in the way he deploys his safeties, opting to keep his DBs deep and relying on his linebackers for cleanup work.
To varying degrees of success through the years, his safeties have been tasked with limiting explosive plays rather than manufacturing them. In those six seasons in Cincinnati, his top-producing safety has averaged just 95 tackles per year, and none of his strong safeties have cracked 100 since Vonn Bell in 2020.
That's a stark contrast to the box-heavy role Cross feasted on in 2024, and expecting another linebacker-like stat line is going to get a lot of drafters in trouble this year. Even a moderate shift to a deeper alignment could see his tackle floor crumble from elite DB1 levels to middling DB2/3 territory.
Cross is currently being drafted as if last year's 140 tackles are the new normal. Plainly put, they're not. He's a talented player on a solid defense, but IDP production is as much about usage as ability, and Anarumo's usage history screams regression.
Xavier McKinney, DB, Green Bay Packers
Xavier McKinney's first year in Green Bay looked great on paper. His top-ten fantasy finish saw him build an impressive highlight reel on his way to a first-team All-Pro selection, including a career-high eight interceptions. Unfortunately, that particular stat did a lot of heavy lifting, and with only nine career picks in his previous four seasons, it will likely prove to be an outlier.
In moving from Don Martindale's safety-friendly scheme in New York, McKinney's tackle production dropped by more than 1.6 tackles per game from his final season as a Giant. And while he was able to compensate by nearly doubling his career interception total, interceptions are one of the least stable IDP stats, fluctuating wildly from year to year.
Banking on another eight-pick season to justify a premium draft slot is akin to building your retirement plan on lottery tickets.
Jeff Hafley's system will still put McKinney in a prime position to capitalize on opponents' mistakes, and he'll have his splash weeks in big-play formats. Still, his week-to-week reliability is not on par with others in his tier. In balanced or tackle-heavy scoring systems where consistent volume reigns supreme, his bust weeks will outnumber the booms.
He can still be drafted as a volatile DB2/3 in big-play leagues, but again, you're not going to want to be the manager who chases last year's ceiling only to get this year's regression.
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