It’s important to get more than your fair share of the right players in fantasy drafts. But it’s even more important to avoid the wrong players in fantasy drafts.
Our draft picks are precious; we don’t want to squander them on busts. It’s essential to dodge the bear traps that lay in wait in every fantasy draft.
Here are some of the players I’m avoiding in my 2025 drafts.
Players to Avoid
Quarterbacks
He’s become a quality NFL quarterback, but Mayfield is being overvalued after his career year in 2024.
Mayfield had 41 touchdown passes last year. He had never thrown even 30 TD passes in any other season. Mayfield also ran for a career-high 378 rushing yards last year. He’d never had even 200 rushing yards in any previous season.
It’s easy to understand Mayfield’s appeal. The Buccaneers are loaded at wide receiver with Mike Evans, Emeka Egbuka and, eventually, Chris Godwin. The Bucs also have one of the better offensive lines in the league, although star left tackle Tristan Wirfs is expected to miss the Bucs’ first few games.
But after a season in which Mayfield established new career highs in pretty much every statistical category across the board, regression is in order.
Also, Mayfield is getting another new offensive coordinator after losing Dave Canales following the 2023 season and Liam Coen following the 2024 season. The Buccaneers’ new playcaller is 34-year-old Josh Grizzard, who’s never been an NFL offensive coordinator.
Mayfield’s ADP is QB8, 78th overall. That’s too rich. Last year was the time to invest in Baker Mayfield. Don’t chase last year’s fantasy points.
Goff threw a career-high 37 TD passes last year — five more than his previous career high of 32 with the Rams. His TD rate of 6.9% was a full percentage point higher than his previous single-season high. He also had a career-high completion percentage of 72.4% and averaged a career-best 8.6 yards per attempt.
Regression is coming for Mr. Goff.
There are other concerns, too.
The Lions are going from Ben Johnson, one of the better playcallers in the league, to new offensive coordinator John Morton, who hasn’t been an NFL playcaller since 2017, when he was with the Jets under head coach Todd Bowles. Morton was fired after that season.
Stalwart Lions center Frank Ragnow announced his retirement.
And Goff provides almost zero rushing value.
Pass on Goff at his ADP of QB14 and instead draft Drake Maye or Jordan Love, who are both coming off the board later.
Herbert is a fine quarterback who might be a fantasy star in different circumstances.
The Chargers were the 10th run-heaviest team in the league last year under run-loving offensive coordinator Greg Roman, and the Chargers have since spent a first-round draft pick on RB Omarion Hampton.
The Chargers’ offense operated at the second-slowest pace in the league last season, averaging 28.7 seconds between offensive snaps. Only the Buccaneers were slower at 28.9 seconds between plays.
With a run-heavy offense and a sluggish pace, Herbert simply won’t get enough pass attempts to have a chance to be a needle-moving QB.
Running Backs
Hall is a talented back, and I generally don’t like fading talented players because of seemingly worrisome situations.
But Hall’s situation is pretty worrisome.
New Jets head coach Aaron Glenn has repeatedly talked about wanting to use all three of his running backs — Hall, Braelon Allen, and Isaiah Davis. It’s been a recurring theme in Glenn’s offseason media sessions. For instance …
“I would say that we have three running backs on this team that we’re gonna utilize as much as possible.”
“It could be a 1-2-3 punch with the guys we have.”
“If we can get them all on the field at one time, we’ll do that.”
(Hat tip to Greg Brainos of the Coachspeak Index for the Glenn quotes.)
In the preseason, the Jets rotated Hall, Allen and Davis when starting QB Justin Fields was on the field. Don’t tell yourself, “It’s just the preseason.” Preseason usage establishes regular-season usage patterns.
Passing-game usage is the other concern with Hall.
Hall has been a productive pass catcher. He’s averaged 66.5 catches a season and 4.0 catches a game over the last two years. But the Jets’ new quarterback is Justin Fields, a prolific rusher. Running QBs tend to check down to their RBs less often, because they’ll often just run themselves when pass protection breaks down. When Fields was the Bears’ full-time quarterback in 2022, Chicago running backs combined for just 46 catches that season. In 44 career games as a starter, Fields has averaged only 25.1 pass attempts per game.
Cook’s touchdown totals for the last three seasons: 3, 6, 18. Which number looks like the outlier?
Weighing in at less than 200 pounds, Cook doesn’t have workhorse potential. His single-season high in carries over three NFL seasons was 237 in 2023.
And while Cook is a good pass catcher, he’s only averaged 38 catches over the last two seasons. Again, running quarterbacks tend not to throw to their running backs that much, and the Bills’ Josh Allen is a prolific runner.
The Bills have a mantra for their skill-position players other than Allen: “Everyone eats.” The team rotates its RB and WRs and uses two TEs.
Ray Davis will get work behind Cook. When Cook missed a game with turf toe last year, rookie backup Ray Davis rolled up 152 yards from scrimmage in a win over the Jets. Ty Johnson will play on passing downs and actually led all NFL running backs in air yards last season.
Tread lightly with Cook, whose ADP is a pricey RB14.
As with Jared Goff, I have concerns about how the departure of 2024 Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and the retirement of center Frank Ragnow will affect Montgomery.
There’s also the Jahmyr Gibbs factor.
Sure, the near-50/50 division of labor between Gibbs and Montgomery has worked well for Detroit the last two seasons. But Gibbs is a freak of nature. He averaged 5.6 yards per carry and 8.2 yards per target last year, and he scored a league-high 20 touchdowns. Perhaps the Lions would be better served by giving Gibbs a few more touches and Montgomery fewer.
One more thing. Gibbs has scored 25 touchdowns in 28 regular-season games over the last two seasons. The Lions ranked fifth in scoring in 2023 and first in 2024. If the Detroit offense hits a speed bump in 2025, Monty’s TD total could disappoint.
Wide Receivers
It feels like I’m picking on the Lions, doesn’t it?
St. Brown’s fantasy scoring was down last year. He went from 20.7 PPR fantasy points per game in 2023 to 18.6 last year. St. Brown was still a top-three fantasy receiver in 2024, but …
Getting within 2.1 fantasy points per game of where he was in 2023 required St. Brown to score a career-high 12 touchdowns and boost his catch rate by 9 percentage points to a career-high 81.6%.
St. Brown averaged 10.3 targets per game in 2023, but only 8.3 targets per game in 2024. Two fewer targets per game is a significant drop. The emergence of Lions WR Jameson Williams was part of it. And now the Lions’ offense has to adapt to losing Ben Johnson as the offensive coordinator.
Belittling St. Brown would be foolish. He’s obviously a terrific player. But there’s reason to believe he’ll merely produce very good numbers in 2025 rather than great numbers. It’s a minor distinction, but an important one if you draw a mid-first-round pick and have to choose between St. Brown, Puka Nacua, Malik Nabers, and Brian Thomas.
I’m taking all of those other receivers over St. Brown.
We’ll probably get some sort of rebound from the Cheetah after his down year in 2024. After two consecutive 119-catch seasons with more than 1,700 yards, Hill had 81 catches for 959 yards last year, even though he played all 17 games. His six touchdowns were the fewest in a single season since his rookie year in 2016.
Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa averaged a career-low 5.7 intended air yards per attempt last season, per Pro Football Reference. In 2023, Tagovailoa averaged 7.7 intended air yards per attempt. In 2022, he was at 9.5.
The loss of verticality in the Miami passing game undoubtedly had something to do with Tagovailoa missing time with a concussion early in the season. He has a worrisome concussion history, and Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel used shorter throws as part of his Tua preservation plan.
What if that’s still the plan? Or what if that plan needs to be resurrected after another Tua injury?
Also, Hill is 31, an age at which speed-merchant receivers such as DeSean Jackson and Mike Wallace started to become less productive.
Sure, a bounce-back season is possible, but I’m not interested in drafting Hill at his high-end WR2 ADP.
Hunter is a terrific football player, and we’re lucky we’ll get to watch him play on Sundays after a fabulous college football career that ended with a Heisman trophy.
But the two-way thing makes me nervous about making a fantasy football investment in Hunter (except perhaps in IDP leagues).
The Jaguars have said they plan to use Hunter primarily as a wide receiver but will also use him at cornerback. Jaguars head coach Liam Coen says he expects Hunter to play about 80% of the offensive snaps. But it’s possible the Jaguars adjust the dials in-season and Hunter plays less wide receiver and more cornerback than people are expecting in 2025.
And Jacksonville does not have a good group of cornerbacks. When the Jaguars face the Bengals and Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins in Week 2, or when they face the Rams with Puka Nacua and Davante Adams in Week 7, or when they face the Chiefs, 49ers, Texans or any other team with a quality passing game, are we sure Hunter is only going to play limited snaps at cornerback?
You’d have to squint pretty hard to see Hunter drawing enough targets to be a fantasy difference-maker as long as Brian Thomas Jr. is healthy. Thomas has quickly established himself as one of the best receivers in the league.
Hunter’s ADP of WR31 seems overly ambitious. As talented as he is, Hunter is a fade at that price.
A lot of people are really into Downs. I tend not to chase undersized slot receivers, but Downs is admittedly a high-quality representative of that archetype.
On a different team, Downs might have more fantasy appeal. But the Colts are likely to have mediocre quarterbacking this season, with Daniel Jones as the starter and Anthony Richardson waiting in the wings.
Even if the Colts get better quarterbacking than expected, rookie TE Tyler Warren could quickly become a focal point of the Indy passing game and steal a lot of the short-range targets that Downs thrives on. Warren reportedly had an outstanding training camp, and he played nearly every snap with the starters in the preseason.
Downs has scored seven touchdowns in 31 career games. He’s also been nursing a hamstring injury. There’s more downside than upside with Downs.
Tight Ends
Hockenson had a mid-June ADP of TE5, 85th overall. People are overpaying for a respected brand name.
The veteran tight end tore his ACL and MCL late in the 2023 season and didn’t make his 2024 debut until Week 9. From that point on, he was TE19 in PPR fantasy points per game among tight ends who played at least five games over that span.
Granted, Hockenson had some TD misfortune — he didn’t score a touchdown last season — but it’s not as if he’s been a TD machine at any point in his career. Hockenson has never scored more than six touchdowns in a single season.
Hockenson will be sharing targets with stud WRs Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, and those targets will be coming from J.J. McCarthy, who’s never thrown a pass in a regular-season NFL game.
It’s not often that you see a player break out in his eighth season. After seven years without a TE1 fantasy finish, Smith hit career highs in catches (88), receiving yardage (884) and touchdowns (8) last year to finish TE4 in fantasy scoring.
The Dolphins’ offense was heavy on short passes last season after QB Tua Tagovailoa returned from a concussion. That meant a big target bump for Jonnu.
Now, Jonnu joins a Steelers offense that figures to be run-heavy and already has a capable tight end with Pat Freiermuth. The narrative is that Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith loves Jonnu, whom Smith also coached in Tennessee and Atlanta. But Jonnu has never exceeded 70 targets in any of the seasons that Arthur Smith was his playcaller.
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