Andy Behrens offers a way-too-early look at plausible draft trends for next fantasy football season.
If it seems premature and potentially useless to discuss upcoming fantasy football draft trends when the calendar has not yet flipped to February … well, we will concede the point.
We still have three postseason games and multiple coaching hires ahead, to be followed by the scouting combine, the free agency period, the draft, minicamps, various cuts and trades, and, eventually, the opening of training camps. No reasonable fantasy manager is making draft plans seven months in advance.
But let’s be honest: If you’re reading fantasy football content in January, you are an atypical manager and certainly not reasonable in the traditional sense. For you, a way-too-early look at plausible draft trends is right on time.
Running backs will reclaim the first round
To be clear, no one is suggesting we will ever return to 1990s-level running back hoarding in fantasy. However, the position is coming off a notably strong season, particularly near the top of the ranks. Four NFL players topped 1,800 scrimmage yards last season, all of them running backs — and all were actually drafted inside the top-20 picks in fantasy. Our hit-rate on early round backs was pretty spectacular in 2024.
While the elite running backs were surging, the luxury wide receivers were mostly disappointing. Ja’Marr Chase finished fifth in the league in scrimmage yards last year and Justin Jefferson ninth, but they were the only two non-running backs in the top-18.
Entering 2025 drafts, it’s gonna be easy to construct an argument for any of three different backs (as well as Chase) as the top overall fantasy pick. While we are not going back to the era in which eight or nine of the first ten fantasy selections were running backs, there’s certainly a good chance the position will rule the opening round. When the timer is ticking down in your draft, it’s only natural to be influenced by the prior year’s stats — and those numbers tell a favorable story about plenty of RBs.
Quarterbacks will be cast back into the draft abyss
OK, maybe that’s a bit strong. But the top-tier quarterbacks could (or at least should) find themselves back in the fourth and fifth rounds.
This might seem like a wild thing to suggest coming off a year in which Lamar Jackson delivered one of the best statistical seasons in the history of the position, but, as it turned out, there were many ways to solve the QB problem in 2024.
Among the five quarterbacks who appeared on the most title-winning rosters in Yahoo leagues last season, three were waiver adds (Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Bo Nix) and another was a late-rounder (Jayden Daniels). This was simply not a roster spot at which managers needed to invest serious draft capital — and, historically, that has generally been the case. Fantasy analysts have been rightly telling you for years that replacement value is extremely high at this position, and it was true again in 2024.
In all likelihood, there’s going to be someone in your draft who won’t have the discipline or experience to wait at QB, but that manager’s panic-pick should not trigger a position run.
One or more rookies will be drafted as top-8 (top-6?) tight ends
This one would actually represent a huge departure from the way drafters have traditionally treated first-year tight ends — a complete repudiation of fantasy dogma. Tight end has long been viewed as a slow-developing position, because … well, because it has in fact been a slow-developing position.
But then Sam LaPorta feasted in his first season, finishing as the overall TE1 in fantasy in 2023, forcing us to reconsider the old rules. This year, Brock Bowers broke a bunch of rookie and positional records — some of which were on the books for decades — and finished as the overall TE2.
The incoming rookie class at tight end is loadedwith proven, productive receivers — including a pair of likely first-rounders — and the league has no shortage of ideal landing spots. Let’s reunite Michigan’s Colston Loveland with Jim Harbaugh and just see what happens.
And let’s maybe find a way to drop multi-purpose Penn State tight end Tyler Warren into Sean Payton’s offense. And let’s get Bowling Green’s Harold Fannin Jr. to literally any healthy offensive environment.
We’re past the point of merely keeping an open mind with rookie tight ends in fantasy. When the right prospects land in the right spots, we need to proactively target them.
