5 Wide Receivers to Draft (2025 Fantasy Football)

When preparing for your fantasy football drafts, knowing which players to target and others to avoid is important. The amount of information available can be overwhelming, so a great way to condense the data and determine players to draft and others to leave for your leaguemates is to use our expert consensus fantasy football rankings compared to fantasy football average draft position (ADP). In this way, you can identify players the experts are willing to reach for at ADP and others they are not drafting until much later than average. Let’s dive into a few notable fantasy football players I’m higher on compared to ECR.

Fantasy Football Draft Advice: Wide Receivers to Draft

Wide Receivers to Target

Wide Receivers I Like More Than ECR

Derek Brown’s Rank	Player	ECR	Diff.
4	Brian Thomas Jr. JAC – WR	8	4
11	Davante Adams LAR – WR	17	6
12	Mike Evans TB – WR	18	6
18	George Pickens DAL – WR	34	16
19	DeVonta Smith PHI – WR	25	6

Overall, last year, Brian Thomas Jr. was a stud as the WR11 in fantasy points per game, ranking fifth in deep targets and 15th in red zone targets. As good as those numbers are, they still underrate his upside in 2025 if he can continue what he did down the stretch last year. In Weeks 13-18 last season, he was the WR2 in fantasy points per game. During that span, among 72 qualifying receivers, he was fourth in target share (31.6%), seventh in yards per route run (2.78), fifth in receiving yards per game (98.8), and 17th in first downs per route run (0.108, per Fantasy Points Data). Thomas Jr. posted those numbers with Mac Jones tossing him passes. What do we think he’ll do in 2025 with Liam Coen at the controls and Trevor Lawrence back? It could be a magical season for Thomas Jr.

Mike Evans has finished no lower than WR13 in fantasy points per game over the last four years, and he didn’t show any signs of slowing down last year. While he has dealt with hamstring issues in each of the last three years, he has never played less than 14 games in any season. Last year, Evans ranked 23rd in target share, fifth in yards per route run, 16th in receiving yards per game, fourth in route win rate, and second in separation (per Fantasy Points Data). Evans is primed to produce as a WR1 again in 2025.

At this point, everyone should know and love what they get from DeVonta Smith yearly. He has finished as a top 20 wide receiver in fantasy points per game in each of the last three seasons (WR15, WR20, WR14). Smith was awesome in nearly every metric last year. He was 11th in target share, 19th in yards per route run, 12th in first downs per route run, 17th in separation, and 11th in route win rate (per Fantasy Points Data). While he might not be the sexiest pick of your draft with top 5-10 upside at wide receiver, he’s a known commodity and a damn good one as a stalwart WR2.