Navigating your fantasy football draft can be tricky, especially when certain players come with more risk than reward. To help you dodge potential pitfalls, we’ve gathered insights from our collection of Featured Pros to highlight the biggest 2025 draft landmines to avoid. These are the players our fantasy football experts believe are overvalued, injury risks or simply unlikely to live up to their average draft position (ADP) this season. Before you make a costly mistake on draft day, check out who the pros are steering clear of-and why.
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Fantasy Football Draft Landmines to Avoid
What one WR inside the top 50 overall in our consensus ADP do you plan on avoiding in all or most of your drafts relative to their price and why?
Terry McLaurin (WR – WAS)
“Terry McLaurin feels like a no-brainer to add to the fade list. Ask yourself these questions: Can Jayden Daniels easily mimic or exceed his numbers from last year? Can Terry McLaurin keep up the touchdown totals from last year? Both questions can be answered with history stating that teams adapt and learn to limit players. Add in a holdout for McLaurin, and now we have an increased risk of injury with an addition to the wide receiver room in Deebo Samuel stealing opportunities.”
– Joe Pepe (Beyond The Gridiron)
“Terry McLaurin at WR17 (39th overall) feels like a massive trap. Even if he ends up staying on the Commanders, I’m not sold he’ll be involved enough to make that price worth paying. If he ends up leaving, a similar outcome could occur, as he’s already missed a lot of the offseason. Receivers need time to bond with their quarterback, and McLaurin is missing out on that time. Until we see how his contract shakes out, I’m fine passing and letting someone else hold the bag.”
– Andrew Hall (FantasyPros)
“Before last season, Terry McLaurin‘s career 17-game pace was 80 catches for 1,126 yards and 5.4 touchdowns. That trend generally continued, as he caught 82 passes for 1,096 yards, but he happened to pop for 13 scores. His touchdown rate ballooned from a career rate of 6.6% to 15.8% in 2024. Some of this increase is rightfully attributed to an improvement in quarterback play, but enormous regression is likely headed McLaurin’s way. FantasyPros currently has McLaurin projected for 8.3 scores in 2025; if he caught that many last year, he would have tied for WR23 in half-PPR points per game. Pair all of this with the Commanders’ difficult strength of schedule and McLaurin’s current holdout/trade request (although I expect him to stay in Washington), and there is enough risk for me to choose to go elsewhere in the fourth round of drafts.”
– Charlie Sisian (The Fantasy DC)
Marvin Harrison Jr. (WR – ARI)
“We’re doing it again. Consensus is inflating Marvin Harrison Jr.’s ADP with little to prop up his top-20 wide receiver price tag. Harrison didn’t come close to living up to the hype in his rookie season. He finished as the WR39 in fantasy points per game and the WR27 in expected fantasy points per game. After such a disappointing first year, we’re left wondering, entering year two, “Can Harrison live up to last year’s hype and breakout in 2025?” I’ll start by saying I’m doubtful, and I’ll likely remain below consensus on him entering the year, but there’s a pathway for it to happen. OK, let’s get back to 2024. In Weeks 1-9, Arizona deployed Harrison Jr. primarily as a downfield receiver, with only 29.9% of his routes being horizontal breaking routes and 49.6% of them being vertical breaking routes. In that sample, he drew a 21.4% target share (32nd) with 49.4 receiving yards per game (43rd), a 28.2% first-read share (29th), 0.093 first downs per route run (36th) and 1.97 yards per route run (38th), per Fantasy Points Data. This was a horrible game plan by Arizona’s coaching staff. Last year, Harrison ranked 84th and 51st in vertical route-breaking separation and route win rate, as opposed to 16th and 19th in those categories when it came to horizontal-breaking routes. The good thing for Harrison is that in Weeks 10-18, his horizontal route % climbed to 41.4%, while vertical breaking routes made up 38.5% of his usage. The problem is that in Weeks 10-18, his numbers didn’t improve; instead, they worsened with the usage change. He had a 20.6% target share (33rd), 55 receiving yards per game (37th), a 27.1% first-read share, 0.078 first downs per route run and 1.56 yards per route run. His late-season usage and per-route numbers with horizontal routes offer hope, but his declining efficiency with the usage change muddles the 2025 waters. Harrison is a tough player to get excited about, given that his usage and efficiency are in question, and there are no concrete answers to suggest we should expect better results moving forward.”
– Derek Brown (FantasyPros)
Ladd McConkey (WR – LAC)
“I will choose not to highlight the obvious choice of Washington’s Terry McLaurin. Instead, I’ll pivot to Ladd McConkey. While I believe he will have another good season, his ADP price tag is just too high for my tastes. As the WR11 in half-PPR ADP, I have a preference for other wideouts in his range like Tyreek Hill and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Should McConkey slip out of the WR1 range, I’ll have to reconsider, but I believe the Chargers will strike a better balance to get their other pass-catchers like Tre Harris, Quentin Johnston and Najee Harris more involved to diffuse the offensive production better.”
– Matt De Lima (Athlon Sports)
“It pains me to say this as he was one of my guys last year, but Ladd McConkey’s price assumes he will perform like he did at the end of the year last year, and there are some problems with that thesis. The Chargers had no healthy NFL starting-caliber running backs at the end of last year, and the team couldn’t run the ball the way Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman want. McConkey also had virtually zero competition for targets. Now, McConkey is a great route runner and target earner, and will get his, but that was a perfect storm for massive volume last year. This year, they added a first-round running back and (maybe) Najee Harris to get back to the ground game they want, and added Tre Harris, KeAndre Lambert-Smith, Oronde Gadsden II and now Keenan Allen. At a WR11 ADP, he has to maintain his super high volume from last year to pay it off. The situation doesn’t seem to be conducive to that for me.”
– Jay Wood (Daily Dynasties)
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