5 Wide Receivers to Avoid (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 below. And you can check out which experts are higher or lower than our expert consensus rankings using our Fantasy Football Rankings Comparison Tools.

Fantasy Football Draft Advice

Let’s dive into players Andrew Erickson likes more or less than the expert consensus rankings.

Players to Avoid

Wide Receivers

Expert Consensus’s Rank	Player	Andrew Erickson’s Rank	Diff.
13	Tyreek Hill MIA – WR	23	10
20	DJ Moore CHI – WR	25	5
21	DK Metcalf PIT – WR	29	8
22	Courtland Sutton DEN – WR	28	6
23	DeVonta Smith PHI – WR	32	9

Tyreek Hill was a mega bust in 2024, but so much of his poor performance can be placed on the injury to Tua Tagovailoa. Now, admittedly, even when Tua was healthy, Hill still underperformed vs. draft expectations. In those 11 games with his southpaw starting QB, Hill went over 100 yards twice, averaging 12.4 fantasy points per game (WR18). He had a wrist injury that he dealt with from Week 1 and his yards per route run cratered to a 1.75 mark – less than half of his 2023 yards per route run. Not to mention, the Cheetah just turned 31 years old, suggesting the age cliff might be near. And let’s not forget Hill’s outburst at the end of the 2024 season, which could lead to Miami moving on from the veteran WR.

DK Metcalf joins the Steelers as their new No. 1 WR after finishing 2024 as the WR32 (WR33 per game) with 992 yards and a career-low 5 TDs in 15 games. However, before a knee injury in Week 7, Metcalf was off to a scorching start – ranking top-5 in targets, yards, and air yards. Now in Pittsburgh’s run-heavy Arthur Smith offense, target share won’t be an issue, but overall passing volume/efficiency may be. Even with Aaron Rodgers at QB, this offense will have a low pass rate. Metcalf’s fantasy ceiling hinges on red-zone usage and big plays. The opportunity is there, but his 2025 value depends entirely on the Steelers’ offensive competency with the 41-year-old QB under center.