- Ja’Marr Chase tops the list once again: Chase was the choice for safest Round 1 target last year, and after finishing the season as WR1, expectations should be more of the same from the Cincinnati Bengals top pass catcher.
- Josh Allen has been consistently elite as a fantasy quarterback: Having never finished worse than QB2 in each season since 2020, there’s no reason to be concerned about Allen at QB1 overall prices heading into 2025.
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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
With fantasy football draft season in full swing and average draft positions (ADP) starting to solidify during the preseason, there is a wide range of outcomes for several different fantasy options for 2025. However, we may only want to take the risk on certain players, especially in the earlier rounds of drafts. This can also be true in guillotine formats where it’s about avoiding the floor each week.
Going round by round, we’ll identify the players with the safest range of outcomes, assuming good health, that drafters may want to target to secure some of the more reliable production floors for 2025. We will be using Yahoo Fantasy’s ADP as a reference.
Round 1: WR Ja’Marr Chase, Cincinnati Bengals
Last season’s WR1 also made this list last year, and heading into 2025, all the same reasons to feel safe with Chase as your first-round pick remain. Chase is not only an elite talent at the position, coming off a season where he led the NFL in receptions (127), receiving yards (1,708) and receiving touchdowns (17). Helping Chase’s case is having the league’s highest-graded passer last year, Joe Burrow, at quarterback and feeding Chase as the clear No. 1 target in this offense, even with an excellent WR2, Tee Higgins.
Since Chase entered the league in 2021, no player has more regular-season receiving touchdowns than him (46), and almost all of those games have come with Burrow at quarterback. Chase also ranks third in receiving yards (5,425) over that stretch. Heading into 2025, the situation remains the same in Cincinnati, as the Burrow-Chase connection is once again set to thrive as fantasy managers should feel very comfortable spending a first-round pick on the WR1 overall from last season.
Round 2: QB Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills
Allen has been a picture of consistency for fantasy purposes over the past five years, as he’s never finished worse than the overall QB2 in any given season. Being drafted as the overall QB1 right now in the second round of drafts is still a perfectly good bet to make, considering the levels of production Allen can deliver each week. Allen is not just reliant on his passing ability, where he is still very good – ranking top-10 in the league in passing grade every year since 2020 – but he also brings elite upside with his rushing.
Just last season, Allen delivered 7.8 fantasy points per game with his rushing production alone, which ranked second behind only Jalen Hurts. Over the last two seasons, Allen has also been able to overcome the lack of a true top receiving threat on the Bills roster to get the ball to, showing he doesn’t need a Stefon Diggs, for example, to boost his fantasy production. There is no concern with Allen heading into 2025, as the expectation should once again be that of a top-two fantasy quarterback.
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