With the NFL Draft mere days away, we can take a look at some relatively settled depth charts and situations for fantasy that likely won’t change with a rookie stepping in. Lots of things can happen between now and Week 1, but we’re putting our foot down on some of these wide receivers for 2025 as players to avoid.

Let’s take a look at three wide receivers we’re avoiding for 2025.

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Wide Receivers to Avoid (2025 Fantasy Football)

Tyreek Hill (WR – MIA)

Tyreek Hill has been a mainstay among elite wide receivers for last nine seasons, but enters his 10^th season with some serious doubts to his fantasy viability for the first time in his career. Outside of his 2019 where he missed four games, Hill has been a top-10 fantasy wide receiver in every season until 2024.

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When looking at some of Hill’s stats over the past few seasons, there was a sharp drop-off in Hill’s targets per game, yards per target, a precipitous decline in YAC, as well as some of his target-earning metrics like targets per route run (TPRR) and his first season under 2.00 yards per route run. Collectively, those are hard to ignore for a wide receiver over the age of 30.

Hill was hampered by off-the-field happenings as well as a wrist injury that may have sapped some of his productivity as he finished last season with under 85 receptions, less than 1,000 receiving yards, and less than seven touchdowns for the first time since 2019. Add in some MORE off-the-field distractions with a domestic incident involving Hill and trade talks current swirling about a possible trade of Hill, although Miami has rebuked trading Hill publicly.

Sounds like something someone looking to trade Tyreek Hill would say https://t.co/i3Ub8Ar8pz

— Pat Thorman (@Pat_Thorman) April 15, 2025

It doesn’t feel great to draft Hill in the second round of early drafts and remember, we are talking about a 31-year-old wide receiver here. Father time is undefeated and all good things must come to an end. I can’t in good conscience draft Hill in the second round and while he may be a in a new locale by the time Week 1 rolls around, the bloom may be off the rose here with Hill’s fantasy value.

DK Metcalf (WR – PIT)

Prior to his move to Pittsburgh, DK Metcalf was a pretty solid fantasy receiver through his six seasons in Seattle. We always expected more though with his size and frame, but never really capitalized and dominated games like we thought he eventually would. With a six-season average of 118 targets, 73 receptions, 1,054 yards, and eight touchdowns, we can hardly call Metcalf a failure by any stretch.

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Enter Arthur Smith and the Steelers offense, where the passing game compared to the rest of the league is non-existent. The Steelers passed the ball at the fifth-lowest rate (54 percent) last season and when they DID pass, the quarterbacks passed to the wide receivers at the fourth-lowest distribution – 46 percent.

Pittsburgh will probably retain their low passing volume in 2025, and Metcalf gets to catch a limited amount of passes from [insert whoever Pittsburgh decides to sign or draft] along with George Pickens (for now?), Pat Freiermuth, and Jaylen Warren. That’s a bit of a crowded receivers room for Metcalf to hit any kind of ceiling projection considering an Arthur Smith offense spanning back to his time in Tennessee has finished no better than 20^th in total passing attempts.

We know what an Arthur Smith top pass-catcher looks like:

It doesn’t seem great, folks!

At WR27 in FantasyPros’ Expert Consensus Rankings, Metcalf’s price is entirely too steep to pay for a ceiling of A.J. Brown in 2020. I don’t have much faith in Smith’s offense in Pittsburgh providing any more upside than what we’ve seen in the last six seasons.

Brandin Cooks (WR – NO)

Brandin Cooks has name value, but don’t let that fool you: Cooks is on the downturn of his career ending his age-32 season. Wide receivers at age 32 don’t exactly age like fine wine and Cooks hasn’t been a reliable fantasy contributor since his stint with the Texans four seasons and two teams ago.

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What can we expect from the Saints in 2025? Well, it’s not exactly off to a great start for new head coach Kellen Moore and offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier. Quarterback Derek Carr‘s 2025 status is already in doubt thanks to a shoulder injury suffered last season. Is the quarterback going to be a rookie? Spencer Rattler? Are we wanting to deal with a team’s WR3 who is over 30 with two receivers and a running back ahead of him?

Cooks is already fighting an uphill battle for targets with Chris Olave, Alvin Kamara, and Rashid Shaheed above him in the pecking order. And that’s without mentioning Taysom Hill or Juwan Johnson. Cooks’ days of 100 targets are likely done. Same with even seeing a usable routes percentage as he only had above 80-percent routes in a game in 5-of-10 games in 2024.

While Cooks will likely hang around in the later portion of best ball and redraft fantasy drafts this summer and into the fall, don’t let his name value fool you. Cooks might just be cooked, so you can let somebody else try to squeeze whatever juice is left when fantasy drafts commence.

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Kevin Tompkins is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Kevin, check out his profile and follow him on Bluesky @ktompkinsii.bsky.social