Fantasy Football Cheat Sheet: Who To Avoid in 2025, Broncos WRs, and More
Sam Wallace breaks down everything you may have missed over the last week at Fantasy Life to help prep you for your upcoming 2025 drafts.
With a full slate of NFL Preseason games this weekend, let's take a look back and catch up on some of the best from this past week in Fantasy Life. In this fantasy football cheat sheet, expect to find actionable updates, news, and notes all designed to make you a better fantasy football player.
Do Not Draft List for 2025
There's so much content out there trying to tell you the best players to draft: sleepers, values, breakouts, etc. You've seen and read them all. In fact, we have quite a few of those pieces over on our freshly designed website.
Humor me with a different approach for a moment. Let's take a closer look at some players we are encouraging you NOT to draft.
Wait, players to actively avoid? You heard (read) that right.
In one of his latest gems, Matthew Freedman breaks down a multitude of players he is avoiding in his upcoming drafts. Perhaps the best part is he's not just saying, "Hey, don't draft this guy", but he's providing sound, actionable evidence to make you a more informed fantasy manager.
The Tee Higgins fade is all about arbitrage. Why should I draft Higgins when I can get the similar DeVonta Smith a couple of rounds later?
They're both high-end No. 2 WRs behind dominant No. 1 WRs (Ja'Marr Chase, A.J. Brown) in top-tier offenses (Bengals, Eagles), and they have similar projections (WR14, WR15).
And Higgins has missed 13 games to injury over the past four years; Smith, just three.
Higgins is a great player, but so is the comparable Smith, who's significantly cheaper.
Honestly, even as a Higgins fan, this might be one of the most well-written paragraphs I've read in a while. Freedman breaks down a seemingly counterintuitive idea of not drafting a star wideout, but makes it easy to understand.
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Buy, Sell, Hold
Ah, one of the all-time classic articles in the fantasy football space. Everyone loves having to make choices between three options, and Cooter Doodle absolutely smashes in her latest rendition of Buy, Sell, Hold.
As Freedman alludes to in his above-mentioned article, the decisions we make as fantasy managers aren't always simply based on whether we think a player is good or not, but rather on the price to acquire a given player.
An example might be someone making a decision on an elite QB or TE in a vanilla 1QB redraft league. No one is arguing that Josh Allen or Brock Bowers won't be good this year; the question comes down to the cost to draft each of them.
The same idea holds true in Cooter's article and she starts by (perhaps unknowingly) perfectly siding with me on a Year 3 QB.
Yes, we are buying Young in a big way. After being benched for Andy Dalton, Young turned it around and posted solid numbers following Carolina's Week 11 bye.
Week 12: 21-263-1 (rush: 3-20-0) QB14
Week 13: 26-298-1 (rush: 3-17-1) QB 8
Week 14: 19-191-1 (rush: 7-29-0) QB 20
Week 15: 19-219-1 (rush: 3-12-1) QB 18
Week 16: 17-158-2 (rush: 5-68-1) QB 2
Week 17: 15-203-2 (rush: 2-8-0) QB 19
Week 18: 25-251-3 (rush: 5-24-2) QB 1
Toss in first-round rookie wideout Tetairoa McMillan, and Young is in a prime position to exceed expectations in 2025. Our first look at the new duo looked promising last week, even if there are things to work on.
For her sell and hold candidates, along with some pretty stellar draft etiquette suggestions, make sure to read the rest of her article.
Preseason Week 1 Observations
We're so starved for meaningful information in the offseason that we tend to overreact to the first "real" football we've seen in months.
I bring you the NFL Preseason.
Yes, Trey Lance may not be as good as he was in the Hall of Fame game, but data points are data points, especially when they involve the projected first-string offense.
One team with a ton of intrigue heading into this season is the Denver Broncos. They have their QB1 (Bo Nix) and WR1 (Courtland Sutton) locked up, but who will be the next pass-catcher in the pecking order?
There is a ton of ambiguity behind Courtland Sutton in the Broncos’ WR room, so it was pretty interesting to see Mims play a near full-time role with 82% route participation. He averaged 32% route participation last season. It’s never wise to get comfortable when it comes to how Sean Payton will deploy his pass catchers—let’s not forget that this is the same guy who once gave us long, extended looks at ‘Lil’ Jordan Humphrey’—but I’m buying that there’s some signal here.
Again, it's one preseason performance, but it's important to start identifying these trends as early as we can to give ourselves a leg-up on the competition come draft time.
2025 QB Tiers
Tier-based ranking/drafting is the way of the future. Most have come around on this idea already, but if you're new here, let me break it down for you using the latest from our own Ian Hartitz in his Fantasy Football 2025 Quarterback Tiers.
Few would argue the idea that the top-four fantasy QBs are Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, and Jayden Daniels (in some order). Sure, other names can go in there, but you're probably seeing a theme among these four—outstanding rushing ability.
Those four make up Ian's Tier 1 of fantasy QBs. That means that, regardless of who you prefer, it might be in your best interest to snag the cheapest of the four come draft day. You're still getting a top-tier talent and fantasy producer, but you aren't paying the same premium as your leaguemates.
Understanding tiers and using the resources we have at Fantasy Life to make you a more informed manager will help propel you to fantasy greatness this season.
Looking for more amazing content? Use promo code SAM for 20% off ANY FantasyLife+ Tier.
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