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Will's fantasy football wide receiver busts among second-year players. His top sophomore draft avoids and overvalued players, including Marvin Harrison Jr.
Every year in fantasy football, some second-year players hit a wall in their sophomore campaigns. Avoiding these landmines is crucial to drafting a winning fantasy team.
In 2024, Tank Dell, Jayden Reed, and Zay Flowers were all prominent examples of second-year players at the wide receiver position who failed to live up to their draft-day cost. Collectively, they serve as reminders of how easy it is to overhype a talented young player.
Let’s look at five second-year wide receivers who will underperform their average draft position and rookie season production in 2025.
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Marvin Harrison Jr., Arizona Cardinals
The number four overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, many believed Harrison would immediately produce like a superstar wide receiver as a rookie. It didn’t quite pan out that way, as Harrison recorded 62 catches for 885 yards and eight touchdowns in 17 games for the Cardinals.
Harrison finished as the WR40 in per-game PPR scoring, averaging 11.6 PPR points per contest. It’s hard to argue that Harrison won’t be better than that in his second year, but he’s currently being drafted as the WR17 per Sleeper ADP.
Projecting Harrison to take a 23-spot leap up the wide receiver ranks is wishful thinking. Earning a 22.2% target share in 2024, Harrison was the clear number two option in Arizona behind superstar tight end Trey McBride (29.3%).
The Cardinals also preferred to utilize Harrison outside the numbers as a downfield receiver rather than moving him around the formation. His 13.5-yard aDOT was the 12th-deepest out of 91 receivers who ran at least 250 routes.
Marvin Harrison Jr had the highest depth of target of any rookie—and the highest rate as an isolated WR. On the pod, talked about how I thought OC Drew Petzing needs to make life a little easier for the 2nd year WR.
📺: https://t.co/nAxJKO06AY pic.twitter.com/TvNS8Vvs5Q
— Mina Kimes (@minakimes) July 31, 2025
Other than prospect pedigree, there’s not much reason to believe Harrison is going to be the type of receiver who racks up monster reception and yardage totals. His 1.79 yards per route run in 2024 put him in the same range as secondary target options like Deebo Samuel Sr. (Sleeper ADP of WR40) and Michael Pittman Jr. (WR48).
Harrison also averaged a miserable 2.4 yards after catch per reception in 2024, which ranked 150th out of 187 qualified receivers. As long as his aDOT remains among the highest in the league, expect that lack of YAC production to continue.
Harrison is a talented ball-winner, which should help him score touchdowns. However, until his reception and yardage-volume profile improves, he’ll be dependent on finding the end zone to score fantasy points. He’s a great option as a boom/bust WR3 or flex, but drafting him as a mid-tier WR2 is a recipe for disappointment.
Keon Coleman, Buffalo Bills
A second-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, Coleman caught 29 passes for 556 yards and four touchdowns in 13 games as a rookie. He struggled to separate from man coverage and earned just a 15.5% target share in a Bills offense that lacked premium pass-catching talent.
BE AWARE ‼️
Keon Coleman was charted with just a 3rd, 23rd, & 8th percentile success-rate vs Man, Zone, & Press as a rookie.
(Via @RecepPerception)
DON’T WASTE A PICK ‼️ pic.twitter.com/hOnNsnHCVN
— David J. Gautieri (@GuruFFWrld) July 29, 2025
Coleman finished 2024 as the WR61 in per-game PPR scoring. Standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 215 lbs., he’s a big-bodied receiver who showed the ability to win down the field and via contested catches in the red zone. Unfortunately, Coleman’s usage as a rookie was limited almost exclusively to those two areas.
Coleman’s 15.2-yard average depth of target was the seventh-highest among 91 receivers who ran at least 250 routes. Because he was utilized so frequently as a deep-ball receiver, Coleman only recorded catches on 50.9% of his targets, 88th out of 91 qualified receivers.
With wide receiver Khalil Shakir and tight end Dalton Kincaid able to soak up the short and intermediate area targets, Buffalo doesn’t have much motivation to move Coleman around the formation. The Bills need him to consistently threaten defenses over the top, which makes his role unlikely to change in 2025.
The Bills’ offense is also one of the most run-heavy in the NFL, so Coleman’s already limited target share leads to even less opportunity in Buffalo than it might elsewhere. The Bills ran the ball on 49.3% of their plays (fourth-most in the NFL) in 2024 and finished second in EPA per rush (0.10).
Coleman is WR53 off the board by Sleeper ADP, so he does not come at a huge draft cost. However, that price still accounts for improvements from the numbers he posted as a rookie.
There are high-upside receivers like Rashid Shaheed of the New Orleans Saints and Jayden Higgins of the Houston Texans in Coleman’s range who are better bets to outperform their draft cost.
Jalen McMillan, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
A third-round pick out of the University of Washington in 2024, McMillan had a productive rookie season with Tampa Bay. In 13 games, McMillan caught 37 passes for 461 yards and eight touchdowns.
McMillan finished 2024 as the WR46 in per-game PPR scoring and currently holds a Sleeper ADP of WR63. Good value? Unfortunately, no. Tampa Bay’s increasingly crowded wide receiver room and McMillan’s likely touchdown regression limit his ceiling as a sophomore.
Before Buccaneers wide receiver Chris Godwin’s season-ending ankle injury that he suffered in Week 7, McMillan had just one game with double-digit PPR fantasy points. Not only will Godwin be back in action this season, but the Bucs also drafted wide receiver Emeka Egbuka in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Add future Hall-of-Fame wideout Mike Evans to the mix, and the receiver room in Tampa Bay is quite crowded. Somebody has to lose out on targets, and that somebody is most likely to be McMillan.
Zooming in on McMillan’s rookie season, there are a couple of under-the-hood metrics that stand out as worrisome. McMillan only averaged 1.28 yards per route run, the 68th-best mark out of 91 qualified receivers. He also ranked 45th out of 91 receivers in catch rate (63.8%). Combine those metrics with a 12.6% target rate, which is what McMillan posted last season, and it’s difficult for him to be a useful fantasy wide receiver.
What saved him in 2024 was touchdowns. His 22% touchdown rate from 2024 is impossibly high, especially considering he’s likely to be Tampa Bay’s WR4 when everyone is healthy. On another team, McMillan’s outlook would likely be very different. Playing for the 2025 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he’s unlikely to be a viable option in fantasy.
Xavier Legette, Carolina Panthers
A first-round selection in the 2024 NFL Draft, Legette played in 16 games for Carolina as a rookie and tallied 49 catches for 497 yards and four touchdowns. He finished the season as WR69 by measure of per-game PPR scoring.
Legette’s rookie season was even more underwhelming than his surface-level numbers suggest. In a Panthers offense that was desperate for playmakers at wide receiver and lost top target Adam Thielen for seven games in the middle of the season, Legette only earned a 17% target share.
He wasn’t very efficient in his limited usage either. Among 91 receivers who ran 250 routes in 2024, Legette finished 67th in yards-per-route-run (1.30) and 74th in catch rate (58.3%).
Bro watching Xavier Legette’s Rookie tape is so confusing and frustrating bc NONE of these issues showed up on his college tape.
My biggest concern was him just not being able to consistently get open. But he did.
But c’mon man. This was his strength
— IAmWestsideFetti 💙🖤🤟🏾 (@4MR_Fetti) April 19, 2025
Carolina used their 2025 first-round pick on wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, which may be an indication of how the organization feels about Legette’s upside. With Thielen back to full strength, Legette projects as Carolina’s WR3 at best heading into 2025.
There’s not a lot of risk attached to drafting Legette at cost, as his Sleeper ADP is WR67. However, outside of the pedigree that comes with being a former first-round pick, there’s not a ton of upside in his profile either.
Devaughn Vele, Denver Broncos
A seventh-round pick out of Utah, Vele was not expected to be a key contributor going into his rookie season. He surprised many by finishing the season with 41 catches for 475 yards and three touchdowns despite missing four contests due to injury.
Vele was a modest but steady contributor in fantasy. He recorded double-digit PPR points seven times and finished as WR66 on a per-game basis. That may seem like an attainable target for him to match in his second year, but the circumstances surrounding Vele in Denver have changed.
Through the first eight games he played in 2024, Vele averaged 5.1 targets per game. Over his final five, that number dropped to 2.8. In that same five-game stretch to finish the year, Denver receiver Marvin Mims Jr. averaged 5.2 targets per contest. Mims may have usurped Vele’s role as Denver’s WR2 (behind Courtland Sutton) in that stretch, recording 341 receiving yards and five touchdowns.
It’s not just the emergence of Mims that Vele has to contend with. Denver signed tight end Evan Engram over the offseason, a player who averaged over seven targets per game across his last three seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Broncos also used a third-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft on wide receiver Pat Bryant, and still roster 2024 fourth-round wideout Troy Franklin.
Vele is essentially free according to average draft position, so this isn’t a situation where he should be faded due to draft-day value. It’s a bet against the upside of a former seventh-round pick facing increased target competition going into his second season.
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