Fantasy Football Risers & Fallers (2025)

We’re inching closer to the season with more preseason games to analyze and roster moves to dissect. All of those affect your fantasy football draft plans, including the players below who are rising and falling on draft boards.

Fantasy Football Risers & Fallers

Players Trending Up

Caleb Williams (QB — CHI) | ADP: QB15

Caleb Williams had a very different rookie season than most people expected. The number-one-overall pick and Heisman Winner was not only one of the most polished quarterbacks to enter the league in recent memory, but he was entering a team that was built to win now. Typically, a team picking first in the draft was super bad the year before — thus the high pick. But the Bears received the top pick thanks to a fortuitous trade with the Panthers the year before and used it on Williams despite finishing the previous season 7-10.

So the expectations for Williams and the team were sky high, relative to previous top picks. And while Williams had a solid statistical season, especially for a rookie quarterback, with over 3,500 yards and 20 touchdowns, the Bears actually regressed to 5-12. The sad part was that the Bears started out 4-2 until their last-second loss to Washington and second-overall pick Jayden Daniels, which kicked off a 10-game losing streak.

The disappointing season led to a purge in the Bears’ coaching staff, and former Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson was named the new head coach. That, coupled with an entire offseason to prepare, has put Williams in a hopeful situation again.

And the preseason is only adding to that hope. In Monday’s preseason game, Williams completed six of his 10 attempts for 107 yards and a touchdown. If he can continue to improve, he’ll improve upon his top-15 fantasy finish from a year ago.

Players Trending Down

Michael Pittman Jr. (WR — IND)/ Josh Downs (WR — IND) | ADP: WR50/WR52

As if the fantasy fortunes for Colts receivers Michael Pittman and Josh Downs weren’t bad enough, it’s about to get worse after the news that Daniel Jones was named Indianapolis’ starting quarterback. Jones was competing with former top-five pick Anthony Richardson to lead the offense and, apparently, showed enough in training camp and preseason to separate himself. Colts Head Coach Shane Steichen went as far as to say that Jones will be the starter for the year. Yikes.

It’s a curious decision for the Colts since Jones doesn’t exactly have the resume of a winner. He made the playoffs with his former team, the Giants, exactly once and has a career 24-44-1 record as a starter. The fantasy stats are worse — he’s never thrown for more than 3,200 yards or 24 touchdowns in a single season and has just 70 passing touchdowns in 70 career games.

For the Colts’ receivers, the choice between Jones and Richardson was a choice for the lesser of two evils; but at least with Richardson, there was still the potential that he could figure the game out in year three. Both Downs and Pittman had over 800 yards last season with Richardson and Joe Flacco under center. Jones didn’t have an 800-yard receiver on his team until his last season with the Giants, as Pro Bowl rookie Malik Nabers totaled over 1,200.

It’s not as if the Colts’ receivers were going to be big values in the later rounds, but this news removes all doubt.