2025 Fantasy Football Rankings: Christian McCaffrey
SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 01: Christian McCaffrey #23 of the San Francisco 49ers runs with ... More the ball against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium on October 01, 2023 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by)
Even though we're extremely far out from the 2025 fantasy football season, one of the most talked about players is going to be Christian McCaffrey. There's a good reason for this, as McCaffrey has the ability to win managers their league.
The downside is that McCaffrey has been injured in three out of his last five seasons. That said, the last time McCaffrey played in at least 16 games, he scored 24.5 PPG.
Below, we'll be breaking down the risk versus the reward and putting McCaffrey in my 2025 fantasy football rankings.
After scoring 29.4 PPG in 2019, McCaffrey has been priced extremely high in fantasy football ever since. That's why losing McCaffrey due to injury has hurt so many fantasy teams. It's extremely hard to overcome your first round pick going down for most of the year.
In 2020, McCaffrey had an ADP of one on Fantasy Pros (PPR), one in 2021, two in 2022, 2.3 in 2023 and one in 2024. McCaffrey was not just priced as an elite player, but it was baked into your draft position that you were getting one of the top two players in fantasy almost every year.
Now jump ahead to 2025 and McCaffrey's ADP has dropped down to 12. In fairness McCaffrey is now 28 years old, he only played in four games last season and in that stretch he only had 11.9 PPG.
However, there's a clear opportunity for McCaffrey to be one of the best picks in fantasy football now that his ADP has fallen this far.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - FEBRUARY 11: Christian McCaffrey #23 of the San Francisco 49ers looks on during ... More pregame warmups before Super Bowl LVIII against the Kansas City Chiefs at Allegiant Stadium on February 11, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by)
Since McCaffrey was a rookie in 2017, where he had 14.9 PPG, there has never been a season where a healthy McCaffrey has scored less than 21 PPG. The definition of healthy in this case is removing the years where McCaffrey played less than eight games.
Especially in a PPR format, McCaffrey is going to dominate due to his elite hands and route running. In terms of his 2025 outlook, it's much better than last year.
Although Deebo Samuel is gone, there's so much to be positive about. First round wide receiver Ricky Pearsall is stepping into year two, Brandon Aiyuk is coming back after missing most of 2024 with an ACL and MCL tear. On top of that, 11 time Pro Bowl tackle Trent Williams should be coming into 2025 healthy, as he only played in 10 games last season.
With the 49ers offense projecting out much better for 2025, McCaffrey should see a boost in his value. Most importantly, there haven't been any negative reports about McCaffrey's health.
In fact, outlets such as ESPN (April 22nd) have reported on McCaffrey's injury update in a positive light.
Now that we've gone over the case for McCaffrey, it's time to rank him for the 2025 fantasy football season. These rankings will be for a 1QB, PPR format.
As of now, McCaffrey is the 11th ranked player in my 2025 fantasy football rankings. This makes him the RB4 as well. As of now, I'm slightly higher than consensus on McCaffrey, but he may rise even higher as I dive deeper into my research this offseason.
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