Last week, we looked back on the fantasy season’s misses to help us avoid the signature mistake of each whiff come the 2025 draft. As promised, we’re now doing the same thing with the hits, wrapping up our fantasy season on a positive note.
The tricky part is handling Week 18, which will influence every player’s profile next year when we project based on 2024 full-season stats. But here, we’re looking back on fantasy relevance, so we’re only focusing on the fantasy season, which ended last week for most of us.
One of the supposed lessons people are taking from this season is that early-round QB is a winning strategy. No, it’s not. The top three QBs drafted averaged 334 points. Great. But Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield (QB21 ADP), and Jared Goff (QB14) averaged 320 points and were barely drafted (or, in Darnold’s case, hardly drafted at all). Teams that waited on QB, or just acted for a marginal cost early in free agency, had an extra Top-36 player at WR or RB. And they were barely beaten at QB by the top teams (2-3 points per week is nothing of consequence).
Another lesson people seem to be taking out of this season is that zeroRB (waiting past five rounds to take a running back) doesn’t work. Remember, as I wrote in the summer, zeroRB is only a strategy in Flex10 leagues (three wide receivers and a flex) and preferably full-PPR. If you are Flex9 (two WRs and a flex), you must prioritize RBs early in the draft.
But for Flex10 managers, zeroRB worked great. Seventeen running backs scored more than 200 points, and 41% of them were drafted, on average, in the sixth round or later: Chuba Hubbard, Aaron Jones, Bucky Irving, David Montgomery, James Conner, Chase Brown and D’Andre Swift. That’s exactly as we draw it up. There was not the usual attrition at the position due to injury and the related waiver-wire opportunity, but that’s a fluke that is extremely unlikely to be replicated in 2025.
An additional lesson learned from Hubbard’s situation is not to expect rookies coming off ACL injuries within the past year or two to present competition and start anytime soon. With Conner, the takeaway is that non-chronic injury histories at running back are not predictive. All RBs have the same base-rate risk of getting hurt. So when one is discounted too heavily for a run of bad luck, take the savings.
Alvin Kamara was a fifth-round pick and a big winner for the teams that selected him. We should never expect NFL disciplinary suspensions to come before a trial or resolution, which, as we have seen, can take years.
Josh Jacobs was a winner. The Packers prioritized running back in free agency, so it was safe to assume they wanted to run and their targeted RB would be their bell cow.
Ja’Marr Chase fell in drafts because of a holdout. Let’s resolve to ignore this on future draft days. No one is holding out today, given the CBA rules. I don’t know if Chase was your No. 1 receiver, but he should have been. He had a touchdown every 8.9 catches entering the season. In 2024, he had one every 7.5 — the NFL average is one every 14.4. Chase is a TD machine. Sometimes, we overcomplicate the game. The king of TDs at a position should be the No. 1 pick at the position.
At the other end of the spectrum was Terry McLaurin, who had a TD every 16.6 catches from 2021-23. This year he exploded in scoring. He always had the chance to be the No. 1 touchdown scorer on a more prolific passing offense; then came Jayden Daniels. He was my top target in his draft range for that reason. Obviously, he outperformed even the most bullish expectations, but we all should have forecasted the Washington passing game to be far more productive than in McLaurin’s past.
Brian Thomas Jr. was the top-scoring rookie WR. He was drafted WR42. That’s well below fellow rookie WRs Marvin Harrison Jr. (WR8) and Malik Nabers (WR18). We need to follow the rules of prospects outlined 20 years ago by Cade Massey and Richard Thaler in their seminal paper, “The Loser’s Curse,” which advised against trading up in the real NFL draft. The next player picked at a position in the draft had a 47% chance to be the better player. There was one WR between Nabers and Thomas (Rome Odunze), but the point is we should have seen these players as basically equal. You want to give Nabers a slight edge? Fine. But that doesn’t equal five rounds in your fantasy draft. Thomas was screaming value.
Furthermore, the Massey-Thaler research proved its current relevance with Harrison vs. Nabers, separated by just two real-life overall draft picks. It made no sense for Harrison to be drafted a round higher in fantasy.
What we did with Thomas and Ladd McConkey was smart — on average, they went basically back-to-back in drafts. That was the value pocket. Compare that to Xavier Worthy going nearly two rounds before those two. Why? Worthy wasn’t even a bad pick but was still an overpay, applying the principle that rookies should be grouped at their position rather than where they were selected overall. In other words, Nabers and Thomas were rookie WRs No. 2 and No. 4, not overall pick No. 4 vs. No. 23.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba was a player I missed. My mistake was ignoring draft pedigree so early in his career. Underwhelming in Year 1 is not that unexpected. Apply this lesson next year with Odunze and Keon Coleman (first pick in the second round in real life). Take those expected discounts. I’m not sure I can personally get there with Ja’Lynn Polk, given he was basically invisible, but he’ll likely be completely free (WR75 or so) in 2025.
While he wasn’t as productive as JSN, Jameson Williams was slightly cheaper, and I did apply the draft-pedigree principle to drafting (and ranking) him. He was a 200-point player, about a Top-25 WR. Williams hadn’t proven to be bad. He merely hadn’t yet proven he was good, and there were extenuating circumstances with injury and suspension. So, he was worthy of speculation, especially relative to Worthy’s cost. Drafting Worthy so far ahead of Williams made zero sense, in retrospect.
Finally, the tight ends. Brock Bowers, George Kittle and Jonnu Smith were the big hits. I had Kittle as my No. 1 target and wrote an entire column about him (ironically, he was pretty consistent). He performed as a Top-20 WR, which is golden at the position.
About Smith I wrote: “He’s a freak athlete and very fast. The Niners system (that Miami employs) does utilize the position. If Smith dominates TE snaps and MIA becomes closer to average in targeting TEs, we’re looking at a 60-725-6 season. Smith feels like a Dolphins player.”
Smith crushed that and was a 200-point tight end.
I was off of Bowers as I don’t trust drafting rookie tight ends based on draft capital because teams generally have difficulty adapting their offensive philosophy to make a tight end the focal point of the passing offense. Plus, Bowers unexpectedly benefited from Las Vegas losing likely top-targeted WR Davante Adams first to injury and then to trade. But obviously Bowers performed like a true WR. Will I change anything about my philosophy when the next tight end is highly drafted? No, I will not.
(Photo of Brian Thomas Jr.: Nathan Ray Seebeck / Imagn Images)
