Over at NFFC (National Fantasy Football Championship), they host high-stakes fantasy football contests, which tend to attract experienced and knowledgeable managers. But playing for high stakes doesn’t make these drafters infallible. Like every fantasy football site, NFFC features some average draft position (ADP) prices that aren’t quite right.
I already looked at the best values on NFFC, but today I’m looking at the most overvalued players in the current NFFC ADP. As always, I’ll be comparing these players’ ADPs to their ranks in FantasyPros’ PPR Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR). Let’s get started.
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Overvalued Fantasy Football Players to Avoid on NFFC
Saquon Barkley (RB – PHI) | NFFC ADP: 3/ECR: 9
Let’s start right at the top with one of the most polarizing players of this fantasy offseason. Saquon Barkley is amazing. There’s no denying that. In his first season as an Eagle, he led all running backs with over 22 PPR points per game. He also led the league with over 2,000 rushing yards and ranked either first or second in missed tackles, breakaway yards, yards over expected per attempt and yards per carry. On the league’s best team behind arguably its best offensive line, he is in an ideal situation to continue racking up yards in 2025.
Why do expert rankings have him as the ninth player overall, behind two other backs in Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs, and six different receivers? The key issue is that, beneath the surface, Barkley’s situation in Philadelphia isn’t as great as it might seem. Last season, Barkley didn’t see elite or even above-average receiving usage: His 9.6% target share ranked 20th among qualified running backs.
Barkley also doesn’t score many goal-line touchdowns thanks to the power of the tush push. Although he did tie for seventh in the league with 17 carries inside the 5-yard line last season, Barkley only scored four touchdowns on such carries, tying him for 19th in the NFL with 12 other players, including not-so-exciting names like Alexander Mattison, Tank Bigsby and Gus Edwards. Jalen Hurts had 19 such carries (if you can call tush push attempts carries), converting 11 for touchdowns.
Without elite receiving work or goal-line touchdown equity, Barkley essentially needs to rack up legendary numbers on the ground to provide top-tier fantasy production. Of course, he’s capable of doing that. He routinely broke off big plays in 2024, with 18 carries of 20+ yards, seven carries of 40+ yards and four touchdowns of at least 60 yards. But relying on huge volume and huge plays is a relatively thin path to fantasy greatness, especially in full PPR formats.
If the Eagles’ defense or offensive line regresses, they choose to mix in their backup running backs more often or just a few of those big plays don’t materialize, Barkley suddenly looks more like a backend RB1 than a worthy third-overall pick. If you plan on drafting a whole portfolio of teams, it might be worth taking Barkley at least occasionally at his ADP, to ensure you aren’t left in the cold if he has another dominant season.
But if you’re only drafting a team or two on NFFC, I recommend sticking to the ECR and fading last year’s RB1 — his profile has enough risks that it’s simply safer to grab one of the other elite options available at the third pick.
Isaiah Likely (TE – BAL) | NFFC ADP: 163/ECR: 196
In general, tight ends tend to be cheaper on NFFC than you would expect based on their consensus rankings. Of the 23 tight ends in the top 200, only seven are being drafted higher on NFFC than their ECR. Of those seven, Isaiah Likely leads the way with a price that is 18% more expensive than the consensus thinks it should be. This isn’t just an overall difference, either: Likely’s ECR makes him the TE23, but he is the 19th tight end off the board in NFFC drafts.
It is easy to see why NFFC drafters might be excited about Likely. The 25-year-old ranked eighth among tight ends in yards per route run in 2024. He had the usage profile of an elite fantasy tight end, with nearly 70% of his routes coming from either out wide or in the slot and top-six ranks in both average depth of target (aDOT) and yards after the catch per reception (which are usually negatively correlated).
Likely finished as the PPR TE16 despite playing behind Mark Andrews, who will be 30 by the time the season starts and was considered a trade candidate early in the offseason. Especially in a format with such deep rosters, Likely is appealing both as a backup tight end and as a high-upside option if he is ever the Ravens’ No. 1 TE, either because Andrews is unavailable or because he won the job outright.
But that’s the big issue. Right now, Andrews is available. There’s also reason to believe the former All-Pro will be more effective in 2025 than he was last season, as he is a year further removed from both the tightrope surgery on his broken ankle and the car crash that impacted his 2024 preseason. From Week 6 onward, as Andrews’ role grew, Likely averaged just 6.5 PPR points, the 31st-most among tight ends in that span.
Likely was more involved in the playoffs, with seven catches for 126 yards and a score in the Ravens’ two postseason games. However, those two games were without Baltimore’s top receiver, Zay Flowers, who was out with a knee injury. Based on last year, Likely is an afterthought, and not a viable fantasy option, when all of the Ravens’ weapons are healthy. That makes him just a glorified handcuff, which isn’t worth spending a 14th-round pick on in a deep format where every pick matters.
Joe Burrow (QB – CIN) | NFFC ADP: 27/ECR: 49
Honestly, it makes sense that Joe Burrow is higher in NFFC ADP than he is in the ECR. As the reigning NFL leader in passing touchdowns, he benefits greatly from NFFC giving out six points per passing touchdown instead of the traditional four. Quarterbacks in general are also more valuable on NFFC, as the very deep rosters mean a strategy of finding usable quarterbacks on the waiver wire is much less viable.
The vast majority of quarterbacks are “overrated” in NFFC ADP compared to ECR, and that’s not necessarily a mistake. But Burrow stands alone with an absurd 58% difference between the two numbers (no other signal-caller is at even 20%), and that is a mistake.
Although six points per passing touchdown tilts the scale in his favor, the argument against taking Burrow this high is the same as it always is: He doesn’t run. That means, just like Barkley at the running back position, Burrow’s path to truly elite fantasy production is narrower than that of other top-tier fantasy quarterbacks who rack up points through the air and on the ground.
To repeat last year’s performance, Burrow needs Cincinnati’s defense to be one of the worst in the league again, his elite weapons to stay healthy and his coaches to remain uniquely aggressive (the Bengals led the league with a pass rate 11.9% above expected, no other team was at even 7%). That’s all possible, but it’s certainly not guaranteed.
Even with all those factors in place, we can’t expect Burrow to throw for 43 touchdowns again. His league-leading 652 attempts (68 clear of the next quarterback) certainly helped, but he also had a 6.6% touchdown rate. JJ Zachariason, the originator of the late-round quarterback strategy, has done excellent work showing that passing touchdown rates that high tend to regress and that fantasy ADP does not account for that regression.
And before you argue that Burrow is simply built differently, consider that 6.6% mark was his career-high, and he posted just a 4.1% touchdown rate in 2023. Don’t get me wrong, Burrow is an elite fantasy quarterback, especially in six-point touchdown leagues. But I can’t get behind drafting him ahead of top-tier dual-threat options. The NFFC ADP has him as the QB3, ahead of Jayden Daniels and Jalen Hurts, two true Konami Code players. Don’t slide him down to his ECR of 49 in your NFFC rankings, but don’t blindly draft him at his 27th-overall ADP, either.
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Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for FantasyPros.com. Find him on Twitter and Bluesky @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.
