Consider this a companion piece to my latest Big Board, a (very) early look at the top 100 fantasy players for 2025. Here I identify some of the biggest risers and fallers from 2024 and project them forward to next season.
Between free agency, the NFL draft, trades, cuts, off-the-field malfeasance, etc., much will impact player values before next summer’s fantasy drafts. But there’s nothing wrong with setting a baseline to garner perspective as we forge ahead into the 2025 fantasy football campaign.
With that said, here are some hot-button players to keep tabs on this offseason.
Faller: Christian McCaffrey
CMC isn’t the greatest fantasy running back of all time — LaDainian Tomlinson probably has the best argument for that distinction, and Marshall Faulk is not far behind. (Yes, Emmitt Smith, I see you too.) But McCaffrey has logged three full seasons of at least 23.5 PPR PPG, which is tied with LT and Faulk for the most all-time among RBs. And, while McCaffrey’s greatness is unlikely to be lost upon us, so too are we well aware of his three season-ending injuries.
Let’s run through CMC’s injury history (courtesy of Draft Sharks) just to help put things in perspective:
- PCL sprain (2024 — 5 games missed)
- Achilles tendinitis (2024 — 8)
- Calf strain (2023 — 1)
- Ankle sprain (2021 — 5)
- Hamstring strain (2021 — 5)
- Thigh strain (2020 — 4)
- Shoulder strain (2020 — 4)
- High-ankle sprain (2020 — 6)
That’s what you call a laundry list. He’s already saying he feels great and should be 100 percent healthy soon, but you know better than to put blind faith in what a player says about himself. McCaffrey will be 29 years old, he has Achilles tendinitis in both feet, and he has sunk fantasy teams with devastating injuries in three of the past five seasons.
I’m going to put all McCaffrey narratives on mute in the run-up to draft season. Everyone has a price, and no matter how good the news is surrounding him, I won’t consider him at all unless I can get him outside the RB Top 12 (unlikely, I know). It’s shaping up to be a great year for top-end RBs, one that will mitigate the need to take on high-end backfield risk.
Side note: While we’re on the topic of the Niners, how their wide receiver room shakes out ahead of next season is expected to be a top storyline. With the emergence of Jauan Jennings and rookie Ricky Pearsall, in addition to Brandon Aiyuk getting $76 million in guaranteed money before tearing his ACL, Deebo Samuel finds himself as possible trade fodder.
It might be a little generous of me to slot him at WR31 (No. 64 overall), but I’ve always admired his skills, even if they were often deployed to the detriment of my beloved Seattle Seahawks. It doesn’t help his cause, though, that he just delivered the worst fantasy campaign of his NFL career.
The Big Board rankings for the San Francisco receivers will likely be more fleeting than most — there’s much that could happen to impact their values in the coming months. Stay tuned!
Risers: 2024’s rookie receivers
Was 2024 the greatest rookie receiver class ever? In terms of top-level production, it has a strong case.
This season was the only one in NFL history with three rookie wideouts — Malik Nabers, Brian Thomas Jr. and Ladd McConkey, all ranked in the Top 35 on my 2025 Big Board — surpassing 15 PPR PPG. The class also included Top 50 contributions from Marvin Harrison Jr. (30), Xavier Worthy (33) and Rome Odunze (48), not to mention Jalen McMillan checked in as WR8 over the final five weeks of the season, scoring a TD in each game of that span (7 total).
Objectively, though, 2014 probably wears the rookie receiver crown. It had five Top 30 WR finishers — Odell Beckham Jr. (7), Mike Evans (13), Jordan Matthews (24), Sammy Watkins (26) and Jarvis Landry (29) — and that’s not including a few other names you may have heard of in Davante Adams, Brandin Cooks and Adam Thielen. Still, 2024 was undoubtedly a special receiver class, and it left a lasting impression of their inaugural campaign with BTJ, Nabers, McMillan and McConkey all delivering Top 11 WR returns over the final three weeks of the season, and Worthy (23) and MHJ (28) also making their presence felt down the stretch. Expect the helium to push these wideouts higher as we move closer to next summer’s fantasy drafts.
Side note No. 2: Chris Godwin’s impending free agency will weigh heavily on McMillan’s value for next season. Godwin, who suffered a dislocated ankle on a hip-drop tackle in Week 7, is expected to see plenty of interest from WR-needy teams (perhaps Pittsburgh, New England, Carolina and the Chargers, to name a few). A return to the Bucs would certainly suppress McMillan’s fantasy football ascent but could also cap Godwin’s value — you can’t completely mothball McMillan now that he’s proven to be a viable threat. If Godwin moves on, especially to a place with obvious upside, both Godwin and McMillan will need to be generously bumped up in the rankings.
Faller: Tyreek Hill
Some of you may be ready to quit him. I’m not. Miami just never got back on track after Tua Tagovailoa sustained another concussion in Week 2 against the Bills, missing the next four games. Not only did Hill have to suffer Skylar Thompson for a month, but he was also dealing with a wrist injury he could never shake during the regular season. Now Hill is talking about maneuvering his way out of Miami and into the arms of a contender (or, depending upon your view of Miami, a different contender).
Yes, he’ll be 31 in March, but his career-best fantasy return was only a season ago when Tua played all 17 games. This season, Hill averaged 15.8 PPR PTS in the 10 full games logged by Tua and had a paltry 8.6 mark in the seven contests in which Thompson or Tyler Huntley played.
Hill still passes my eye test. He just needs competent QB play. I think Miami will safeguard against a Tua injury better in 2025, but if Hill forces his way out of South Beach, I’d expect him to land with a QB to believe in, wherever that may be — dare to dream on locales like Washington or the Los Angeles Chargers. I currently have Hill ranked as a Round 3 choice for next year’s drafts, but unlike CMC, I’m all ears when it comes to his offseason narratives. A solid QB backup plan in Miami or a move to another promising locale will motivate me to move Hill into Round 2, at the very least.
Riser: Chuba Hubbard
Nobody really wanted to invest in the Carolina backfield in 2024 fantasy drafts. After all, the team drafted Jonathon Brooks as their RB of the future, with a debut ETA expected to be a month or so into the season once he recovered from an ACL injury suffered in college. In the meantime, Hubbard, with a dash of Miles Sanders, was viewed as a likely stop-gap combo platter. Of course, we know how wrong those assumptions were, and those who made a waiver wire bet on Hubbard early in September were rewarded with RB1-level production from Weeks 2-16. (Injury knocked him out of the final two games.)
After suffering another ACL injury just a couple of weeks after his long-overdue debut (Week 12), Brooks is not looking to figure much into Carolina’s plan for next season. And Sanders nets the team more than $5 million in cap relief if he’s cut this offseason — I’ll bet on that. Long story short, Hubbard, who was Top 20 in Yards Before Contact and Yards After Contact, is sitting pretty for 2025. He also received a Top 15 grade (PFF) among RBs in pass blocking, which is kind of a big deal for former No. 1 overall pick Bryce Young.
Hubbard is currently my RB17 (No. 42 overall), but I love his potential to turn a profit at that value.
Riser: Jerry Jeudy
I had Jeudy as a top sleeper pick for 2024. You don’t need to click on the link and read my reasoning because some of it had to do with Deshaun Watson having the best arm talent Jeudy’s ever worked with (insert facepalm emoji here). In reality, the team turning to Jameis Winston at QB and trading away Amari Cooper had a lot to do with Jeudy’s career-best WR16 finish.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming this was a Winston-infused fluke. Jeudy also posted a combined 18 receptions for 157 yards in Weeks 17-18 (good for WR19) with Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Bailey Zappe under center. And Jeudy was WR22 in 2022 for a Russell Wilson-led Denver team with the lowest scoring average in the league (16.9) — sorry to Denver fans if I triggered a gag reflex.
Call me a Jeudy apologist, but with even a modest upgrade at QB in Cleveland, I’ll be all-in on the Browns receiver at my mid-WR3 Big Board valuation.
Fallers: Free agent 30-something former alphas
Stefon Diggs, Amari Cooper and Keenan Allen were all drafted, on average, as WR3s in last summer’s fantasy drafts — Diggs and Cooper at the front of that class and Allen at the back. Allen ended up delivering an equal ROI (WR34), but Diggs suffered a season-ending ACL tear eight games into the season, and Cooper was sent to Buffalo at the trade deadline to be mostly an afterthought in the Bills offense.
All three are set to hit free agency, and it will be interesting to see how much attention their name brands will generate on the open market. As recently as 2023 they were all Top 20 fantasy wideouts, with Allen and Cooper landing in the Top 10. But the fall can often be hard and fast for receivers in their 30s, and there’s a very good chance that at least one of these receivers will never again see fantasy relevance. For now, their good names have earned them a place on the tail end of the Big Board, but their hold on those spots is tenuous at best.
Faller: Travis Etienne
I slotted Etienne in my last Big Board spot, No. 100. Honestly, that might be too kind.
How the mighty have fallen. A consensus Top 10 RB selection in 2024 drafts after finishing behind only McCaffrey and Breece Hall in 2023 PPR PTS at the RB position, Etienne managed a career-low 3.7 yards per carry, falling into a platoon with Tank Bigsby. The two were near equals in posting backend RB3 value (8.8 PPR PPG for Etienne vs. 8.7 for Bigsby). Etienne is on the hook for just over $6 million in 2025, which makes him someone to watch in the trade market. But I suspect Jacksonville might stay the course with this newfound platoon, considering it at least tenable for another season. In other words, don’t expect an Etienne revival in 2025.
Final side note: You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who has lost money on Jakobi Meyers over the past four seasons. Working backward from 2024 to 2021, he’s finished as WR20, WR27, WR30 and WR30, and his ADP was in the 50s ahead of each one of those seasons. He’s the new Jarvis Landry, the underappreciated target magnet. He’s like having a hotel on Baltic Avenue in Monopoly. I have him ranked at WR43 with the full understanding that he will likely be better than that.
(Top photo of Malik Nabers: Scott Galvin / Imagn Images)
