The 2025 NFL Draft Prospect Primer (Fantasy Football)

Consider this the appetizer to start the new year in 2025! The goal of this article is to give you a taste of the 2025 NFL Draft prospects and some high-level thoughts entering a season of dynasty debate.

Everyone and their mama has so many opinions about what matters and what doesn’t for NFL Draft prospects. The reality is (Jason Moore would approve) we cling on to so many different pieces of information (a tweet, a chart, what we heard someone say one time on podcast) that it is easy to get lost in a sea of information. It is the classic paralysis by analysis or, in dynasty circles, it is a dump truck’s worth of data about to level your entire fantasy football world. On the Fantasy Footballers Dynasty Podcast, we will come back strong after New Years ready to start talking prospects and offseason news.

Are you ready to navigate these waters or are you catching your breath like me after the end of the season?

Our Fantasy Footballers Dynasty Pass (which comes out on Super Bowl Sunday) will give you the full menu of prospect information:

• Production Profiles
• Dominator Ratings
• Team Opportunity Reports
• Rookie Mock Drafts
• Risers & Fallers

For each of the main offensive fantasy positions, I’ve highlighted the names, the metrics that matter, and questions that remain entering the pre-draft process. Each position is organized by their current MockDraftDatabase Big Board rank, which gives us a consensus of where these players are being mocked for the NFL Draft. Keep in mind, this is different than a ranking for fantasy football purposes. 

There is SOOOO much more to navigate for these prospects. Let this be an initial look and survey. I still have to update all of our statistics through the College Football Playoffs!

Quarterbacks

The Names

The Metrics That Matter

Of all the positions, I find that QB is a nuanced dance learning how to blend what we’ve seen on the field, what a QBs tendencies are, and what we can project for an NFL offense. If you need a refresher, consider the mountain of 1st round QB failures in the NFL and there isn’t just one be-all statistic or reason why they don’t work out.

For QBs, my method for watching film is simple: get out a pen and pad of paper. Watch each pass attempt taking note of the down and distance and simply write down what I see. For a QB, I focus on accuracy, aDOT, footwork, locating 2nd reads, and how they stand in the pocket under pressure. I usually take 7-8 of a prospect’s highest-profile games including bowl games and big-time opponents on the road. You can go back and read rookie profiles on top-notch NFL signal-callers (Joe Burrow, Jayden Daniels, Justin Herbert and even Jordan Love),guys who have slipped recently (Trevor Lawrence and C.J. Stroud) and some ones I was quite blunt about (Zach Wilson and Will Levis) That was a fun stroll down memory lane looking back and some of these write-ups I did over the last decade of doing this.

Intermediate Accuracy

I’ve talked about this way too much over the years on the Dynasty Podcast. We praise QBs who can do this by sheer strength, like how Justin Herbert was blessed with a Howitzer. Or how Josh Allen steps into throws and achieves unreal velocity on throws outside the numbers. We need chunk gains at the NFL level if you want to move the chains. Arm strength is an enigmatic physical trait when it comes to grading QBs. Some might’ve gushed over the eye-popping arm of Josh Allen coming out of Wyoming. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are guys like former Marshall QB Chad Pennington who made his mark in the NFL as an accurate, albeit dink-and-dunk artist always throwing ducks when it went 30+ yards downfield. Regardless, QBs rarely make more than four-to-five 20+ yard throws in a game; honestly, who cares if someone can throw it 75 yards in the air when the NFL game is won in the short-to-intermediate zones most of the time.

Among the top QBs in this group, here are the guys who passed for the most intermediate yardage (11-19 yards)

• 1,515 yards- Cam Ward (Miami)
• 1282 yards- Jaxon Dart (Ole Miss)
• 1,116 yards- Carson Beck (Georgia)
• 1,025 yards- Kurtis Rourke (Indiana)
• 981 yards- Will Howard (Ohio State)

Where is Sanders you ask? Just 16.2% of his attempts were in this area of the field but his 71.8% completion rate was 5th best among qualifying QBs. Jalen Milroe’s overall numbers look much lower as well but he actually posted a solid 71.0 % adjusted completion rate here. I plan to do an even deeper dive on each player in my film analysis.

Pressure-to-Sack Ratio

There has been a lot of discourse in recent years about this subject but the main headline: Sacks are a Quarterback Stat. Offensive line play is obviously a big part of the equation but sack avoidance is part of creating positive plays for your offense and not turnover or turnover on downs plays. I highly recommend this article from Kevin Cole on sack avoidance with prospects and Eric Eager’s on who controls pressure rates.

Take C.J. Stroud for example. What was the biggest difference between his breakout rookie campaign and this year? Yes, he had WRs hurt but it was the sacks.

On some QB rankings factoring in EPA, Stroud slipped in a major way actively hurting the Texans despite his name and pedigree. I wrote in Stroud’s Rookie Profile that he was a master manipulator of the pocket willing to roll right and avoid pressure. However, what did NOT show up on film is what I want to highlight. Here, let me just screenshot what I wrote about Stroud:

“What am I not seeing?” is a question I ask often when evaluating prospects. It is easy to splice together highlight reel takes and forget that we are looking at college football players; in other words, the majority of players the prospect faced will never be playing on an NFL field and likely will be vying to sell you life insurance or go to high school coaching. We cannot only glean from film watching based on what our eyeballs are showing us. This is a puzzle in which none of us have all the pieces to assemble a final product. Not even NFL scouts and franchises with billions of dollars are able to see the whole picture of what a prospect can be at the next level considering there is an emotional and psychological component for this type of limelight and profession. The offensive system, the coaching, the skill position players all factor in as well. (See Zach Wilson. Remember Jamarcus Russell. Never forget Mitch Trubisky.)

Here are the top-5 QBs in terms of Pressure-to-Sack Ratio according to PFF:

• 22.8%- Quinn Ewers (Texas)
• 20.4%- Shedeur Sanders (Colorado)
• 17.1%- Carson Beck (Georgia)
• 17.1%- Jalen Milroe (Alabama)
• 16.3%- Cam Ward (Miami)

Scrambling Ability

College stats are going to fail us if you only end up box-score watching. College QBs are credited for negative rushing yards on sacks taken which skews some of the overall numbers. However, we can certainly meet in the middle of looking at the statistics, scramble rates, and film to confirm what we truly want for fantasy: a gamebreaker. Jayden Daniels averaged 4.8 scrambles per game per PFF. He posted the highest scramble rate (31.7%) of any college QB in their final season with 250+ dropbacks over the last decade. The “Daniels scramble” was a perfect blend of his skillset plus how NFL defenses are adjusted in 2024 with more two-high safety looks.  A scramble is the most valuable QB rush attempt between the 20s worth more than two times as many fantasy points as a designed run in 2023. QBs with 20+ scramble attempts averaged over 7 yards per carry last year for context. Even Drake Maye had things in profile that should’ve led you to him being a dual threat for fantasy. He led all FBS QBs in PFF grade on throws between the hashes (a good marker for reading NFL defenses) and he was willing to scramble (5.6% of his non-pressured dropbacks) to the point where you can foresee extending plays and adding goal-line runs as part of his future. He became one of 7 rookie QBs to average 35+ rushing yards per game since 2000.

I looked at every 1st round QB drafted since 1995 (75+ different guys) and then narrowed that list to every QB that saw at least a 10 percent rush share in their best rushing season, a total of 36. That was the threshold I found where college rushing production dictated that they were likely to carry over into the NFL. You can also see the emphasis on dual-threat QBs over the last two decades where the “pro-style” drop-back passer of yesteryear slowly faded as a 1st round must at the position.

Every 1st round QB since 1995 who surpassed 18+ % of their team’s rushing yardage (best % season). pic.twitter.com/A8QCHrEdIA

— Kyle Borgognoni (@kyle_borg) February 5, 2024

I wrote a couple of years ago about Rookie QBs & What History Can Tell Us when Kyler Murray came into the league. The main findings were since 1990, every rookie QB that crossed 80 rushing attempts has not only been a fantasy force but maintained a top-10 QB per game pace. To give perspective, 80 rushing attempts is 4.7 per game in this new 17-game era. I backed this up in Jayden Daniels’ Range of Outcomes & Recent Dynasty History and it is a good reminder of how rushing breaks our game.

Here are how the top QB prospects stack up in terms of scramble rate noting that these games* do NOT include the New Years College Football Playoff games in the data set.

QB Questions That Still Need Answering:

1. If the Patriots have the #1 pick, who trades up?
2. How many NFL teams are in the market for a rookie QB?
3. Is Shadeur Sanders’ accuracy a true trump card?
4. Does Sanders have the same bugaboo as Caleb Williams: holding onto the ball too long?
5. Does Cam Ward’s long history count against him? Or are we in a new era of QB transfers?
6. Does Ward have one skill that towers above the other prospects?
7. Is Ward a true dual threat for fantasy purposes or is his rushing more just a bonus?
8. Which teams are the best fit for Jalen Milroe?
9. Does Milroe’s intermediate accuracy turn off some teams?
10. Which QBs will climb in the pre-draft process?

Running Backs

The Names

The Metrics That Matter

Dominator Rating & Yards per Team Play

The stickiest of stats for RBs is not a super complicated thought: they scored and gain yards. Touchdowns translate incredibly well to the NFL. Who knew?! Beyond raw counting stats, we often refer to a RB’s Dominator Rating in the Dynasty Pass as a measure of a player’s impact for a college offense.A running back’s dominator rating (DR) is calculated based on games played and gives double weight to yards compared to touchdowns. A DR greater than 15% indicates a potential breakout season but anything over 30% is what we are looking for in college. The higher the better because it shows an absolute workhorse role.

Yards per Team play is another metric that our own Marvin Elequin highlights a lot in his offseason analysis. While there are a few exceptions, players who dominate in college usually produce at the NFL level. In fact, we consistently see higher hit rates when we control the sample size for draft capital and production. This factors in usage but also efficiency relative to each team’s offense. Anything above 1.5 yards is relatively strong but every offense needs context.

Here is a chart from Marvin highlighting some of the top RBs in this class and their strangehold on their offenses:

Pass-Catching Work

This isn’t rocket science but we know how valuable targets are for fantasy. Depending on half or full PPR settings, a target is generally work 2.25-2.5x a rush attempt in today’s NFL. Targets are gold for fantasy. For example, an RB who sees only 125 rush attempts but adds 70 targets has the same expected fantasy points as the bell-cow with 300 carries. I’ve done a far amount of studies over the years on Vacated Targets and the RB position, as well as The Myth of 3rd Downs and the RB Position. We get it… pass-catching work is nice.

In 2023 (so not even this year), Ashton Jeanty averaged 23% of the team’s receiving yards. How unique is it for a running back to average over 20% of their team’s receiving yards? Since 2013, we have only two Day 1 RBs drafted that exceed that threshold in a single collegiate season: Christian McCaffrey and Jahmyr Gibbs. That is an impressive list and one we can add Jeanty’s name to in April.

Among this group of RB prospects, here are the top pass-catchers from a raw target and TPRR perspective:

RB Questions That Still Need Answering:

1. Is Jeanty a lock for the top-15 in the draft? Or are we projecting team needs versus actual NFL drafting?
2. How much passing work will Jeanty see at the next level?
3. Is Omarion Hamption a nice consolation prize for non-Jeanty managers?
4. Is Kaleb Johnson’s vision 2nd only to Jeanty in this class?
5. Which Ohio State RB does the NFL prefer? Is Judkins just an early down grinder?
6. Which RB might be overlooked based on size but runs with authority ala Bucky Irving?
7. Is Ollie Gordon another classic example of RBs peaking too early?
8. Is Cam Skattebo just a fun college bowling ball? Or can he test well at the combine?

Wide Receivers

The Names

The Metrics That Matter

Per-Route

It can be hard to zero in on a couple of metrics and proclaim, “These are the ones worth paying attention to!” There are deeper studies out there (highly recommend Ryan Heath’s chart on stable & predictive stats) but for the sake of this article, we will focus on routes-based data.

We talk all the time about how targets are earned; they show skill.  Routes give context because they mix in opportunity (or lack thereof) for a WR. It is worth noting that route data is not widely available and is often found behind paywalls. Why? It is data and sites like PFF or FantasyPoints have put in a ton of time and hard work collecting this data. Do them a favor and subscribe or at least acknowledge that tracking every single route in every single game in the NFL takes time and a desire for accuracy. I mostly use the route data available from Pro Football Focus for college evaluation.

Yards per Route Run (YPRR) gives a well-rounded figure to work with as we are able to simply divide the total receiving yards by the number of routes they run on the field. It is less prone to outlier skewed stats (Yards per Target, Yards per Reception) but it’s not perfect. YPRR needs roughly 11 games or 180+ routes to start to stabilize for WRs. Targets per Route Run (TPRR) is another metric we discuss frequently on the Fantasy Footballers podcast. It measures how involved a player is and weeds out cardio kings such as Marquez Valdes-Scantling who might be the best-conditioned players on the field but shots in the dark for fantasy. TPRR closely follows target share but it gives us an even deeper look at team opportunity. When this player is running route, how often does their QB look their way? You might’ve seen the highlight of a long 60-yard TD the week before but when you peel back the curtain, MVS might’ve been targeted just 10% of the time, an atrociously low figure. I wrote a primer on this stat back in 2021 and one of our writers (AJ Passman) does a weekly article in-season.

I wrote a massive article entitled Dynasty WR Thresholds That Matter if you want a full discussion on this topic. Since 2015, WRs in their final* year of college averaged:

• Round 1: 28.1% TPRR, 3.16 YPRR
• Round 2-3: 27.8% TPRR, 2.70 YPRR

Anything sub 20 percent is not optimal when you compare it to other WRs. At its core, TPRR is a measure of efficiency; it tells us a player’s ability either to get open or be a part of the offensive scheme. We say it often: earning targets is a skill. And that skill, expressed as TPRR, has a strong correlation with fantasy relevance. Since 2006, 92% of receivers who finished as a WR2 or better (top 24) had a TPRR of at least 20%.

From the 2024 class, we have some absolute standouts with still the College Football Playoff games remaining:

• 38.0%- Tre Harris (Ole Miss)
• 31.0%- Tez Johnson (Oregon)
• 30.9%- Kobe Hudson (UCF)
• 29.1%- Jayden Higgins (Iowa State)

Alignment Data

Some of the numbers these players put up in college are going to be eye-popping! Finding out where a WR was running the majority of their routes adds context. Malachi Corley was an obvious example from last year’s draft class. His 32.5% TPRR sounds wild but with 80% of his targets coming out of the slot and over 38% coming behind the line of scrimmage, his gadgety role needed to be foreseen.

Whether they are in the slot or not, this allows us to add context around TPRR:

• What type of routes are they running? The nine routes in the NFL are going to draw very few targets.
• Is there competition for targets? Many offenses such as Dallas have multiple high-end targets. This is why players like Alec Pierce can end up among the league leaders in routes run but rank so low in TPRR in target efficiency. In other words, other guys were commanding targets (CDowns & Pittman) and Pierce’s percentage plummeted.
• Is the efficiency off the charts? Efficiency is fun when it’s hitting in your favor every week but eventually, the lack of targets turn into 2-for-22 weeks.

Among this year’s crop, here are the leaders in percentage of snaps coming out of the slot from the 2024 season:

• 90.5%- Xavier Restrespo (Miami)
• 80.9%- Emeka Egbuka (Ohio State)
• 78.9%- Tez Johnson (Oregon)
• 69.6%- Jaylin Noel (Iowa State)

For those looking for more Travis Hunter thoughts, I’m starting this eval process out acknowledging that this man is a true outlier, in almost every sense of the word. 94% of his snaps were out wide and while his gaudy Heisman resumè as a WR (121 targets for 96/158/15) speaks for itself, there are still a lot of unknowns about his utilization at the next level. No other wideout among this year’s class played a higher percentage of snaps out wide. The only others in this group (Bru McCoy- 92%, Kaden Prather- 91.5%, Ja’Corey Brooks0 89.1%) are not nearly as highly regarded. It’s wild to see that Hunter played only 36 snaps (and 8 total targets) in the slot in 2024 despite being on the field more than any other human being on the planet with 1,551 total snaps. Part of that is the product of where Hunter felt comfortable with Sanders in the zone-running, shotgun scheme under new OC Pat Shurmur. As a pure athlete and arguably the best we’ve seen in a long time coming out college, please don’t take this is as “Hunter can’t play in the slot” but more “he wasn’t asked to” in 2024. In 2023, he saw over 60% of his targets in the slot adding more context to a generational college player. I bet by April I will have hundreds of thoughts on Hunter so consider this the beginning.

Coverage Killers

While we might have some first-round locks in our mind, we must remind ourselves that the WR position is somewhat immune to the landing spot. There is an awesome article (“What Matters More for Rookies: Skill or Landing Spot?“) by one of our former writers (Harvard PhD candidate Matt DiSorbo) if you want a full dive on the subject. DiSorbo found that skill was TWICE as strong as the situation.

Because the WR position is dependent on a QB’s efficiency, “available targets” can be overrated. Your evaluation and the metrics that matter for WRs come into play even more than perceived opportunity. Can they beat ZONE coverage? Very few level up from college to the pros in this area.

Here is a table of some of last year’s prospects and a chance to review which guys you liked and didn’t like in the process. Did their skills translate to the NFL level?

Among these year’s group here are the some of the top WRs versus zone coverage posting 2.8+ YPRR in 2024:

• 4.05 YPRR- Tre Harris (Ole Miss)
• 3.13 YPRR- Jack Bech (TCU)
• 3.08 YPRR- Jaylin Noel (Iowa State)
• 2.92 YPRR- Jalen Royals (Utah State)
• 2.87 YPRR- KeAndre Lambert-Smith (Auburn)

WR Questions That Still Need Answering

1. Will more than two WRs go in the top-10 of the NFL Draft?
2. How do NFL teams view Travis Hunter: full-time WR, full-time CB, or part-time? How does that affect a dynasty projection?
3. How many Mike Evans comps are going to be thrown around for McMillan until get sick of them?
4. Is McMillan a refined route runner or just a bully ball guy?
5. Do you think Luther Burden II measures 2 inches shorter? Is he DJ Moore or Kadarius Toney?
6. Did Emeka Egbuka wait one year too long declaring for the NFL Draft?
7. Does Elic Ayomanor gain a ground swell of supporters?
8. Do we care about either Oregon WR or are they a product of their offensive system like a long line of other Ducks WRs?
9. Does Isaiah Bond’s physical traits overcome lack of high-end production for scouts?
10. Which zone busters fit best into NFL schemes as a Day 2 pick?

Tight Ends

The Names

The Metrics That Matter

Per-Route

Much like WRs, we want a clearer picture of how effective these players are on a per-route basis. In fact, TEs might need even more clarification as snap rates actually hide some of the meaningful intricacies of a player’s participation in the offense. TEs are expected to run block and even worse for our fantasy projections: pass block. Therefore, what a TE does on a per-route basis is even more magnified. What we care about is TEs who run routes, who are targeted on those routes, and the elite ones who create yards. Thus, yards per route run gives us a solid indicator of how a TE is performing relative to his opportunity. Here are the averages over the last decade of Targets Per Route Run & Yards Per Route Run among TEs drafted:

• 1st Round TEs– 22.8% TPRR, 2.32 YPRR
• 2nd Round TEs– 22.6% TPRR, 2.05 YPRR
• 3rd Round TEs– 18.4% TPRR, 1.64 YPRR

We will detail all of the TE prospects soon but Harold Fannin Jr. breaks some of the spreadsheets.  He posted the highest YPRR (3.74) of any TE in my database which goes back more than a decade. He laps the field compared to the next best prospects.

YAC-Ability

I wrote an article a few years back entitled How Do We Identify Breakout TEs in Dynasty? The TLDR version is that we don’t want the Jack Doyles and Austin Hoopers of the world who fall down every time they catch the ball. Yards-After-Catch can show tackle-breaking ability and chunk gains.

The only downside of looking at this stat is that it can be skewed. For example, a TE who breaks one tackle on a 5-yard out and runs for another 20+ yards looks like a YAC king compared to the guy who catches a 25-yard seam route and is immediately tackled. It’s the same yardage but one showcased the ability to gain a target down the field while the other can show tackle-breaking ability.

Among TEs with 50+ targets, here the TEs averaging 6.5+ YAC/Reception among this year’s class:

• 9.1- Terrance Ferguson (Oregon)
• 7.5 Harold Fannin Jr. (Bowling Green)
• 7.4- Eli Stowers (Vanderbilt)
• 6.8- Gunnar Helm (Texas)
• 6.8- Tyler Warren (Penn State)

For context, Brock Bowers averaged 8.5 YAC/Reception in his three seasons at Georgia. It is just another feather in the cap for players you might like in the pre-draft process.

Freakish Athleticism

This is the wait-and-see portion of the prospect evaluation process as the combine measurements and 40-times ultimately will “unlock” certain prospects in the eyes of the NFL. Perhaps no skill position is more influenced (ok let’s be honest, QBs are highly influenced by their pro days) by the “underwear Olympics” than TEs.

RAS Score is often the metric thrown around on Twitter. This metric takes into account all the things we care about at the combine (HT, WT, Speed, etc.) and combines it into one number which allows evaluators to see a player’s total athleticism and compare over the last few decades.

Over the last decade, 152 different TEs were taken in rookie drafts with only seven real hits in rookie drafts. That is an abysmal rate. For every Brock Bowers, there is a Kyle Pitts and some looming. Often we find TEs with draft capital don’t necessarily match that within the first couple of years. Yes, we’re shooting for the moon here trying to find difference-making TEs and the reality is: not many of them exist!

TE Questions That Still Need Answering

1. Will more than one TE warrant 1st round draft status?
2. Does Tyler Warren elect to participate in the combine?
3. Will Harold Fannin come in under 230 lbs.?
4. Does the NFL have a consistent playing spot on the field for Fannin?
5. Is Colston Loveland the ideal combo of size, speed, production, and age?
6. Which NFL teams are the best landing spots for young TEs?
7. Who is the sneaky combine TE who breaks out and into Day 2 draft consideration?