Welcome back for another round of fantasy football ramblings. In today’s edition: Pre-Draft Round Up. This article will use Fantasy Pros data for its discussion of “consensus” rankings and ESPN live draft trends for estimations of actual draft price. Don’t confuse it for a comprehensive guide, but this should be sufficient to at least show up to draft day not completely out of the loop.
As always, a format note upfront: while that is good enough as a proxy for discussion of general trends in 2025 drafts, you should be savvy about reviewing whatever data is available for whatever site you are using, because you can exploit the differences between hosts. By way of example, if you’re drafting on ESPN, Kyler Murray is the 9th QB taken on average and Justin Fields is the 14th QB taken – but on Yahoo!, Fields is being selected BEFORE Murray on average. Put another way, if you think those are comparable players (I don’t, but I digress), you don’t want to overpay for Murray in an ESPN league or Fields in a Yahoo! league. Wherever you play, it’s always worth a quick glance at how the default rankings there compare with drafts happening elsewhere.
That said, let’s dig in.
At the quarterback position, there is a well-defined Top 5 tier, and then another 13-15 or so guys that you’ll find at least some argument could finish toward the back end of viable QB1 starters.
The top tier (Allen, Jackson, Daniels, Hurts, Burrow) is of more interest to Washington fans, because of the debate about Jayden Daniels’ sophomore season prospects – and is the reason this section of this preview will be much longer than the other positions. We’ll touch on this at greater length below, but there is a viable argument for Daniels as the #1 quarterback in fantasy this season that doesn’t require blind homerism to make.
Overall, how to best approach the position this season is in part dependent on which players in the second grouping of QBs one sees the most upside in. Because there is a squishy “middle” of quarterbacks after the top tier, there is a decent chance you can wait deep into your draft (or won’t need to save much of your money in an auction format) and still get one that you like cheaply.
Justin Herbert, Jared Goff, C.J. Stroud, and Jordan Love are all examples of players who are not within the consensus Top 12 quarterbacks but could easily provide low-QB1 production. Pairing one or two of those players with greater investments at running back and receiver could yield a balanced roster poised for success.
But conversely, if you are high on Baker Mayfield, Bo Nix, Kyler Murray, or Brock Purdy (and I’ll note here, I kind of like Nix and Murray, myself), it still may make more sense to splurge on one of the Top 5 QBs – not because that group could not also succeed, but because you’re chasing one of those four at about a 3- to 4- round price increase from the first 4 QBs I mentioned. Basically, at that price you might as well pay a little extra and get more of a sure thing.
To get an idea of the flexibility of the QB position deeper into the draft, look for example at the consensus QB10 (Dak Prescott) and QB16 (Jared Goff). Despite that 6-spot gap in their ranking, 24% of their surveyed experts as of this writing would draft Goff over Prescott, a significant enough share to count as a legitimate difference of opinion. (By contrast, plug in Daniels with Prescott and you get a literally unanimous response – no one is taking Dak over JD5, nor, to state the obvious, should they.)
But if you’re not waiting on the position, just how high should you reach for Daniels? The answer lies in usage stats. Despite an epically great rookie season, Daniels 2024 statline still included some rookie protectionism: He only threw 480 passes in a year where 11 QBs elsewhere around the league threw 532+.
Not all the guys with greater volume were stars either – that grouping includes Geno Smith.
So at its core, the argument for Daniels is this: Even if you assume some regression, even if you expect less rushing yards as the Commanders look to protect Daniels more, and expect less efficiency in the passing game with a weaker TD:INT ratio in his sophomore campaign, projecting Daniels to have 50+ more throws than last season quickly makes an elite projection highly plausible. A hypothetical 2025 season from Daniels that involves the same rushing projection as last year and the same rate of production on throws but with 52 more of them is a fantasy total that exceeds last year’s MVP Josh Allen.
Allen, at least statistically, actually had a down year in 2024. That’s a funny thing to say about a league MVP, but Allen’s 2024 stat line had less passing yardage, and less passing TDs than any year since 2019, and his second-lowest rushing yardage total of the past four years.
Paradoxically, it’s also why Allen remains so highly regarded: there’s a fair argument for him to improve from his MVP form in 2025. 4,283 yards, with 29 passing TDs, and 510 rushing yards would be Allen’s second-worst total in all of those categories from 2020 to the present, and would simultaneously be an increase of 553 passing yards and 1 TD from 2024, with just 21 less rushing yards.
He was MVP in 2024 by throwing 12 less INTs than the year prior, and by cashing in 12 rushing TDs. Even with some modest regression in those two categories, its easy to see the potential for him to follow up his MVP season, in which he was QB3 in ESPN standard scoring, with an even more productive encore.
Lamar Jackson, meanwhile, has almost an inverse profile from Allen. He threw for 4,172 yards and 41 TDs in 2024 despite only having one season above 3,127 and 26 TDs previously, and his 915 rushing yards were his most since a 1,005 yard campaign in 2020. Regression seems inevitable there, but it’s critical to realize just how gaudy his 2024 stats were: You could cut 17% of Jackson’s 2024 production, and he’d still score more fantasy points in ESPN standard scoring than 2024 Jayden Daniels.
For my money, Allen and Jackson remain safer QB1 and QB2 picks, if only because projecting Daniels at QB1 asks him to improve from a rookie performance that was already historically great. It’s inherently difficult to finish as #1 at any position; in a bet between any specific candidate and the entire rest of the field, the field is going to have the advantage.
The cat is out of the proverbial bag on Daniels, you can’t get him at much of a discount (unless you have him from last year in a keeper format), and so there’s a decent chance if you’re reaching to put him on your fantasy roster, you’re getting quality starts out of him but not surrounding him with enough in the rest of your starting lineup to get the wins you want.
But safer does not mean guaranteed. There is non-negligible chance Daniels finishes as the top QB in fantasy – and there’s something to be said about securing the Commanders leader for your team in a game that is, of course, also supposed to be fun! Take him confidently in the third round, and with about $30 of your budget in a $200 auction format.
The story of the running back position this year is a glut of rookies joining the fray. Ashton Jeanty, Omarion Hampton, TreyVeyon Henderson, RJ Harvey, Kaleb Johnson, Jacory Croskey-Merritt, Cam Skattebo, Quinshon Judkins, Bhayshul Tuten, and Dylan Sampson are all among the Top 50 running backs drafted, and without a single NFL carry among them to date, they represent a higher variance of potential outcomes that would normally come from mostly mid- to late-round options.
Some of those names are players who ultimately won’t get enough carries to make a significant impact – Tuten, for example, seems buried on the Jaguars’ depth chart behind Travis Etienne Jr. and Tank Bigsby, and Judkins and Sampson are competing for touches with each other on the Browns. Others, like Jeanty and Hampton, have plenty of hype – Jeanty may be the fourth running back taken behind Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs and Saquon Barkley in some overzealous drafts, and Hampton has flown up draft boards since Najee Harris’ offseason fireworks mishap.
But some chunk of these guys will be 20+ carry players by mid-season, if not Week 1, and in keeper or dynasty formats they all project to have value in future seasons as well, making it a great year to get away with prioritizing other positions at the top of the draft.
In any format, given the attrition rates of running backs, two thirds of your bench should be RBs – so that still may mean getting at least one highly-rated RB among your top three picks. But a team with an RB1 from among the consensus Top 12 running backs on the board, and then six other RBs with multiple rookies likely has enough lottery tickets to find RB2 and RB3 production from later in the draft, and still leave draft day with high-end options at WR and either QB or TE as well.
Guys I like better than the consensus?: Kyren Williams (massive usage doesn’t bode well for him in the long-run, but you can ride his youth through another 200+ carry season for this year); Alvin Kamara (getting long in the tooth, but who else projects to do anything on that Saints offense?); Breece Hall (a first-round RB pick last year whose draft stock plummeted when the Jets offense faltered, but he’s still put up 1,300 all-purpose yards in back-to-back years and is young enough to improve further); and Najee Harris (you get a guy who has never been under 1,000 rush yards in a season, put him on a Harbaugh-coached team that wants to run the ball heavily, and kill his draft stock with an offseason injury that won’t actually keep him out Week 1 and a rookie draftee who is getting all the hype – that screams bargain).
With Ja’Marr Chase the #1 pick in many leagues this year, it is definitively the year of the wideout. (I prefer Bijan Robinson #1 in non-superflex formats, but with 1,455+ yards and 13+ TDs in half of his NFL seasons, Chase does have the consistency to make the argument for him at the top. Moreover, owing in part to the number of late rookie fliers at RB and the depth of the WR position – you can get Courtland Sutton, who some threw out as a poor man’s McLaurin comp during Scary Terry’s contract saga, as the 25th WR off the board – wide receivers should be taken early and often in 2025.
The trick here is that while there are enough productive WRs to go around, there is a dropoff somewhere around the WR3 ceiling. WRs going after Sutton are a mix of rookies with upside (Tetairoa McMillan, Travis Hunter), veterans with good past seasons but now on unproductive offenses (Calvin Ridley, Chris Olave, Jerry Jeudy), and usage questions (Zay Flowers, Jaylen Waddle – both of whom are good players but whose fortune may depend on factors influencing what their team’s offense will look like that are outside their control, like the health of an older Derrick Henry or Tua Tagovailoa). So an ideal draft may go wide receiver heavy, early, before a run on mid-tier backs.
At the top, Chase and Justin Jefferson are their own tier, with an outside argument to include CeeDee Lamb or Brian Thomas Jr. as elites. Nico Collins, Malik Nabers, Puka Nacua, and Amon-Ra St. Brown are also comfortable WR1 options. Notable for Washington fans, while Terry McLaurin has come off draft boards as a WR2, some of that is likely attributable to his contract situation, and he may now come at a discount in the final days of draft season as the prior uncertainty is priced into his acquisition cost but no longer relevant.
Other names worth a look: Jaxon Smith-Njigba (1,000+ yards and 6 TDs in 2024 with Metcalf stealing targets); D.J. Moore (being drafted as a declining player, but 1,000+ in 4 of 5 seasons prior to 2024, and going from Matt Eberflus to Ben Johnson ought to at least make the Bears offense more creative); Jauan Jennings (quietly the most dependable 9ers receiver with Deebo gone and Aiyuk coming off injury); and Jayden Reed (WR40 consensus for a third-year breakout candidate already averaging 7 TDs a season?).
As is true most seasons, the tight end position is boom-or-bust. New to that dynamic is the idea that Travis Kelce is finally old enough to potentially be on the wrong side of that divide. Brock Bowers and Tre McBride will be deservedly the top two TEs taken in most leagues. George Kittle and Sam LaPorta will form the next tier (LaPorta also could be a steal after a sophomore slump in 2024). And it gets awfully thin, awfully quick beyond that.
You’ll find some true believers in T.J. Hockenson as a Top-5 option, but injuries have prevented that from being true much of his earlier career. You’ll still find some buyers on Kelce as a post-peak bargain now that he can be had for a mid-rounds pick. And you’ll find some hype for Colston Loveland and Tyler Warren as rookie producers on below average teams that may dump off passes to their tight ends at significant volume.
But anything below LaPorta is likely to be fairly interchangeable. I don’t like leaving the draft with the replacement-level talent of a Dallas Goedert or Evan Engram, but if the Kittle/LaPorta tier is off the board, I’d rather spend my early draft capital on wide receivers and elite backs, and I’m certainly not taking a backup at fantasy’s week-to-week least impactful position.
Finally, a word about defenses, special teamers, individual defensive players, and any other draftees that may make it to your draft board depending on your league’s format. They matter on a week-to-week basis, but not enough to invest draft capital in the vast majority of leagues. If your draft settings allow, these are spots where you consider taking an extra RB or two for the remote possibility of a key injury late in camp suddenly catapulting a backup to a starter’s role, and then make a late free agency move with an eye toward the schedule.
Best of luck in 2025, and happy drafting!
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