2025 Fantasy football drafts feature four new first-rounders. Are they worthy?

New York Times

2 days ago

Out with the old; in with the new. Entering the 2025 fantasy football season, there's a 33% turnover in the players being selected as first-round picks. Do the newcomers deserve the faith of fantasy managers, and are the demoted now bargains?
According to NFFC's ADP as of July 17, Malik Nabers (No. 7 overall by ADP, WR4), Ashton Jeanty (9, RB4), Puka Nacua (10, WR6) and Brian Thomas (12, WR7) are now being valued in the first round.
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The players they're replacing? A.J. Brown (18, WR10), Jonathan Taylor (21, RB9), Garrett Wilson (26, WR12) and Breece Hall (34, RB13).
With the NFFC's valuation of the newly anointed projected first-round picks above, I'm using my positional rankings in this section. I don't mess with overall rankings because of the vast differences between Flex 9 and Flex 10 formats, but I grade all these players — except Nacua — as worthy of their new first-round ADP in three-WR and Flex leagues.
He's hamstrung because of his quarterback situation, but that didn't crush his value last year. Nabers was top-10 in targets in the red zone and inside the 10-yard line, where he ranked third (in percentage). He was the 10th fastest player in max speed, just a whisker above Marvin Harrison (I'm surprised he didn't trounce Harrison). However, he won just three of 17 tight targets, a win rate that was 74th among WRs. His yards after catch were negative relative to expected. Nabers can fairly be called a volume player, but I think the targets are earned. Overall, I'm slightly below market on Nabers.
Jeanty's status as a top-10 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft matters. This century, 11 of 17 running backs selected in the top 10 had over 200 PPR points as rookies (65%), seven of 17 had over 246 points (41%) and just four of 17 were flat-out busts (24%). His team probably has the 22nd-ranked offense as a floor and the upside of an average offense. Quarterback Geno Smith is at least average and drives my projected range for the offense.
Las Vegas' offensive line is generally young and has some upside, but it doesn't enter the season highly regarded. However, we know less about offensive lines in football in the summer than we do about any other position group. Jeanty opened as one of the long shots to lead the NFL in rushing touchdowns at 50-1 odds, and most major sportsbooks have him at 28-1 now; his rushing-yards-leader prop is 18-1 on FanDuel. Fantasy is way more bullish on him than the oddsmakers. I can see Jeanty making his way to all the magazine covers in 2026 and being valued as the top overall pick.
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Nacua ran 239 routes with Cooper Kupp. When he did, Nacua was targeted at a rate of 38% vs. Kupp's 24%. Davante Adams is better than Kupp, so maybe that's 33% to 29% now, which means I expect a 13% decline in usage for Nacua. His 17-game pace last year was 128 receptions, 1,624 yards and five touchdowns. Even if you adjust for the missed games, his red zone and inside-the-10 target rates are bad for a true alpha. He doesn't have the speed to score from deep — 70th in max radar speed behind Amon-Ra St. Brown and, yikes, Adam Thielen. Nacua was also one of the lowest-targeted WRs in the red zone at just 16%. Expect Adams to dominate that area of the field.
Thomas did very little with Trevor Lawrence. In basically eight games with Lawrence, Thomas had a 33-580-5 line, which offered great value (the best value, basically, according to me) based on where he was drafted in 2024. And I refuse to believe Mac Jones is better for Thomas than Lawrence. With Jones, Thomas' prorated numbers for a full season were 97-1,263-9, but will Lawrence be able to sufficiently feed a first-round WR?
You have to ask whether you think Lawrence, the supposed generational QB prospect, is as talented as Baker Mayfield. Under new head coach Liam Coen, we'll likely see something akin to last year's Mayfield-Buccaneers offense from Jacksonville. According to the radar, Thomas was the fastest WR in the league last year. He was also top-20 in generating yards over expected per catch. Travis Hunter playing alongside him makes his situation better, not worse; the Jaguars' passing tree will be very narrow.
Given their fall from first-round status, how do we now value the banished?
Brown's environment is a shame. Due to the Eagles' reliance on the run, he would have needed a monstrous 30% target rate to reach just 134 total targets in 17 games last year (he actually got less than 25% in his 2024 starts).
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It's the size of the pie that's the problem. Will the Eagles' defense and running game efficiency regress? Sure. But they'll still be extremely strong in both areas.
Here's the bottom line on Brown: Put him on the Bengals and Ja'Marr Chase on the Eagles, and Brown would be the WR1 and Chase the WR9. You can't let Brown fall too far because there is a (maybe 30%) chance the Eagles will throw much more in 2025. Brown was third in YAC per catch over expected for WRs, and the two receivers above him had far fewer catches. He's a great player.
I have to start by saying how much the nerds hate Taylor, who ProFootballFocus rated the second-worst among qualifying RBs in the NFL last year. I'm ignoring these largely subjective assessments, but they must be noted. Taylor's great year in our game was under the radar unless you played him or against him in the fantasy postseason. Most of the fantasy community had checked out by then.
He averaged over 100 rushing yards per game for the season. He also averaged about a TD per game on a team that was 17th in scoring (surprisingly high, at least to me).
Can he be more productive as a receiver? Taylor only averaged 2.2 targets per game with Joe Flacco. With Daniel Jones, Saquon Barkley averaged 3.9 targets per game. I would expect similar numbers out of Taylor with Jones. With Anthony Richardson, Taylor averaged 1.1 targets per game. If Richardson gets the nod, the projection is about 25 targets per 17 games vs. an expected 65 targets per 17 games with Jones – a huge swing in value.
Wilson has franchise WR money (now) and ability. He's very fast — Jameson Williams' top speed on the radar was 21.03 mph and Wilson's was 21.01. He wins 38% of contested catches, well over average. He's positive in expected YAC. Last year, after Davante Adams arrived, Wilson was used too often on clear-out routes; for the year, he had the fourth-highest rate of nine routes, according to TruMedia, at 25.5%. What a waste.
He was 14th in the lowest rate of combined in or out routes, which is even more of a disservice, given his skill set and quick feet. Now he's the only show in town, so the Jets' expected passing volume shouldn't hurt him. New York will have a different offense in 2025 (Detroit's, but with Wilson cast as St. Brown). In 2023, DJ Moore finished with a 96-1,364-8 line, and 72-1,109-8 came when Justin Fields was under center. When they played college ball together, Wilson and Fields combined for 1,155 yards and 11 TDs during Wilson's first and second years. However, Fields has been a terrible passing quarterback who loses so many dropbacks to sacks and scrambles, although both rates have declined in the past two years. Still, many of Fields' previous issues will likely continue.
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See the article I wrote to kick off this draft season. To that, I'll add that Hall broke a tackle once every 30 carries (40th among qualifiers). You can push back and say Hall was third with 80% of team rushing attempts inside the 5-yard line last year, but this is a new staff, and Hall is below average in converting short-yardage and goal-line runs. The Athletic's Zack Rosenblatt anticipates Braelon Allen could serve as the Jets' David Montgomery with Hall their Jahmyr Gibbs (though probably not with the 2024 near 50/50 goal-line split).
(Photo of Malik Nabers: Luke Hales / Getty Images)