Everyone loves to talk about fantasy football sleepers, breakouts and league-winners. But there are so many things that have to go right — from talent to usage to straight-up luck — for a player to outperform their average draft position (ADP).
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I may just be a natural-born hater, but I find it easier to identify overvalued players, the “busts” who are likely to sink your team by failing to live up to expectations.
I’ve written an article like this in both of the last two offseasons, and the results have been excellent… or terrible, depending on how you look at it. Today, I’m trying to keep my streak of successful hating going. Let’s get right into it.
Overvalued Fantasy Football Busts to Avoid
Colston Loveland (TE – CHI) | ADP: 33 Overall/TE3
I already made Twitter mad by calling Colston Loveland overvalued once this offseason, so I might as well double down on that take. But let me start by stating the obvious pros: Colston Loveland is a massively talented young player, and he’s in an excellent situation in Chicago.
Despite being just 21 years old at the time, Loveland dominated down the stretch of last season, including racking up 25 targets across Chicago’s two playoff games. It’s well within his realistic range of outcomes to take a step forward, emerge as Caleb Williams‘ top target in Ben Johnson’s hyper-efficient offense and make me look very stupid en route to a TE1 overall finish.
However, my issue with Loveland isn’t about his upside. It’s his lower-end outcomes that worry me, and which haven’t been properly priced into his late-third-round ADP.
That price makes Loveland the clear TE3 off the board, essentially in a tier of his own. He’s 17 picks behind TE2 Brock Bowers but 19 spots ahead of TE3 Tyler Warren. It’s pretty clear which of those players his range of outcomes is closer to… and it’s not Bowers.
Loveland isn’t the Bears’ only talented young pass-catcher. Fellow 2025 rookie Luther Burden III easily outpaced him in yards per route (2.83 to 2.00) and targets per route (26% to 22%) last season.
Rome Odunze was less efficient across the whole season, but his numbers before suffering a foot injury early in the season also beat Loveland’s. The 2024 ninth-overall pick was also the only member of this young trio to play anything close to a full-time role last season, so it’s not surprising he wasn’t as efficient as his rookie teammates.
Given this level of competition, the median outcome for Loveland is probably that he is a bit boom/bust, with some massive weeks but also some relative duds in which Burden and/or Odunze take center stage.
In that scenario, he’s not paying off a third-round price tag. He might finish as the TE3, matching his ADP, but he won’t be a true weekly difference-maker. Especially at the tight end position, fantasy is a game of difference-makers and players who don’t really matter at the end of the day.
I’m not confident enough that Loveland will emerge as the former to draft him multiple rounds ahead of other upside young tight ends like the aforementioned Warren, Harold Fannin Jr. or Tucker Kraft.
Bucky Irving (RB – TB) | ADP: 44 Overall/RB20
Just like Colston Loveland, Bucky Irving is a talented young player I don’t love betting against. His 2024 rookie season was electric, and he averaged a totally respectable 12.4 half-PPR points in his 10 active games in 2025, too. But there are too many red flags in his 2026 outlook to ignore.
Specifically, Irving’s usage profile is very concerning. The two most valuable types of usage for running back fantasy production are goal-line carries and receiving work. The Buccaneers literally never used Irving at the goal line last season, finishing with zero carries inside the 5-yard line.
In his 10 active games, those looks went to Rachaad White (two) and Sean Tucker (seven). White is now in Washington, but Tucker is back, and I see no reason that he won’t continue claiming goal-line work over Irving, who is undersized for a No. 1 RB.
There are more reasons to be optimistic about Irving’s receiving usage. Despite splitting work with White, a solid passing-down back, he saw over three targets per game in both of his first two seasons. Unfortunately, the Buccaneers have replaced White with an even more threatening receiving veteran in Kenneth Gainwell.
Gainwell ranked fourth among all backs in receptions in 2025, trailing only the dual-threat elites of Christian McCaffrey, Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs.
Gainwell also graded out as an elite pass-blocker in 2025 –seventh out of 49 running backs, per Pro Football Focus (PFF). Irving was one of the league’s worst (46th). Irving should still see targets on early downs, but Gainwell is likely to be the team’s primary back in obvious pass situations.
With Tucker likely claiming goal-line work and Gainwell cutting into his receiving workload, Irving will need to be efficient and explosive as a rusher to provide consistent fantasy value. A year ago, I wouldn’t have been worried about that prospect — again, his rookie year was genuinely excellent.
But Irving’s 2025 was brutal from an efficiency standpoint. He ranked 51st out of 58 qualified backs in PFF rush grade, 45th out of 49 in success rate, per SumerSports, and 50th out of 51 in rush yards versus expected, per NFL NextGenStats. If you like your stats non-advanced, Irving averaged a putrid 3.4 yards per carry and had only four carries of 15+ yards on over 170 attempts.
It’s possible Irving bounces back from what was just a sophomore slump and is more efficient this season. But with Tucker and Gainwell cutting into his most valuable potential touches from both sides, both his ceiling and his floor are lower than you might hope. There’s a lot to lose and little to gain with a two-down, non-goal-line backs, so avoiding Irving in the RB2 range is a no-brainer.
Rashee Rice (WR – KC) | ADP: 23 Overall/WR8
I’m probably cheating a little here. Rashee Rice’s second-round ADP likely hasn’t had enough time to catch up to the recent news that he is headed to jail and just had surgery. But I would still be out on the fourth-year wideout even if he falls a round or two in ADP. And, once he is back “free” and healthy, I expect his ADP to climb back up.
It’s easy to see why fantasy managers are willing to overlook Rice’s injury concerns and off-the-field issues. When he has played, Rice has been a genuine fantasy points machine. He started relatively slow as a second-round rookie in 2023, but averaged 13.6 half-PPR points after the Chiefs’ Week 10 bye.
In a small sample in 2024, Rice ascended to another level, racking up an absurd 17.4 fantasy points per game (PPG) before suffering a season-ending knee injury in Week 4. It was more of the same in 2025, as he missed some time with suspension and injuries, but still ranked as a top-five wideout in points per game (15.5).
Normally, I’d love to fade the injury and off-the-field noise and simply chase the upside of an elite fantasy receiver at bargain prices. But at least for now, this isn’t exactly a bargain. Rice is being selected ahead of other receivers with top-tier upside who aren’t currently recovering from surgery in the Dallas County Jail.
There’s also one more key issue with Rice’s profile, which has understandably been overshadowed by everything else: He’s not as good as his numbers suggest. Rice’s fantasy output is genuinely top-tier, and his underlying metrics (yards per route, target share, etc.) are also stellar. But he ranked just 29th in PFF receiving grade in 2025.
According to Fantasy Points Data, a massive 34% of Rice’s targets came on designed plays. The average mark in that metric for the rest of the top 12 fantasy wide receivers was just 5.6%; for the top 24, it was 6.5%.
Looking at things another way, 32% of Rice’s fantasy production in 2025 came on designed looks. No top-30 wideout in total fantasy points was at even 20%, with the average around 5%. Rice may have seen WR1-level targets, but he was not earning them. They were being given to him. And what is being given can be taken away.
It’s no secret that the Chiefs’ offense hasn’t been its old dominant self over the last few years. I’m not saying that this heavy dose of designed touches for Rice has been the problem in Kansas City, but it certainly hasn’t been the solution.
With former offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy back in charge for 2026, the Chiefs could very well return to a more downfield offense. The addition of Kenneth Walker III will likely also reduce their reliance on short throws to Rice as a replacement for the traditional run game.
There’s also an interaction factor between Rice’s usage-dependent production and his off-field issues. He’s going to miss minicamp while in jail. Will Andy Reid and Co. really want to gameplan for someone who isn’t around and seems liable to take himself off the field with a new dumb decision at any moment?
Maybe, maybe not. But put it all together, and I’m firmly out on Rice, not just at this ADP, but even at the likely incoming discount price.
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