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NBC Sports
2 days ago
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Winning your Best Ball draft with any strategy: Target Jahmyr Gibbs and Travis Hunter
There are endless debates in the Best Ball streets about which strategies are best and which ones are doomed. Smarter drafters than I have spent more time than I can imagine trying to get to the bottom of that endless pit. Instead of telling you how you should draft, why don't you tell me? These are my favorite ways to execute every type of draft I can think of. Get personalized fantasy football insights based on your league settings with FantasyLife+. Your league is unique, your advice should be too. Head to and use code ROTO20 for 20% off. ZeroRB A classic draft strategy that aged like fine wine before rotting in the cellar last year. Even after a down year for ZeroRB, there are still plenty of late-round gems that make this strategy viable. If you spend the first eight or more rounds loading up on other positions, these are my favorite late-round backs. The biggest flaw with a ZeroRB approach last year was the lack of early-season production to pair with the breakout bets. Rico Dowdle, Bucky Irving, and Chase Brown were all massive hits. All three also languished on your bench for a month or more before breaking out. If you need a veteran bridge to make it until your fun clicks pan out, Jaylen Warren is your guy. Kaleb Johnson has struggled in pass protection during camp while Warren has made his bones in the NFL protecting quarterbacks. Warren was rested with the starters in Pittsburgh's first preseason gam. Johnson played behind Kenneth Gainwell. I still expect Johnson to take over this backfield in the long run, but Warren should be the team's lead back through October. The rookie from Tennessee was initially slated for RB3 duties behind fellow rookie Quinshon Judkins and veteran Jerome Ford. Judkins is currently unsigned and awaiting trial for a domestic violence charge. It's unclear when or if he will play for the Browns. Ford is a capable starter but not doesn't factor into the Browns' long-term plans at running back. That leaves Dylan Sampson in line for a backup role early in the year with the ability to earn more reps if he can earn them. Sampson was an explosive runner at Tennessee, logging 22 touchdowns and 1,491 yards on 258 attempts in his final season. He strikes me as the type of player who can quickly out-play a replacement-level runner ahead of him on the depth chart. Another rookie, Bhayshul Tuten heard his name called at pick 104, 22 spots ahead of Sampson. Unlike Sampson, there might not be much of a role for him out of the gates. Tuten was a distant third on the depth chart in Jacksonville's first preseason game and the presumed backup Tank Bigsby has been drawing rave reviews in camp. In Best Ball, at the cost of RB44, I don't care. Tuten was a dominant runner in college with 1,159 yards and 15 scores on 183 attempts. No other Virginia Tech back ran for more than 179 yards. Tuten then crushed the combine with a 9.55 RAS. Now he is the only back with ties to the current Jaguars regime and has been getting reps with the first-team offense as of late. Even if it's an end-of-season play, the Tuten bet is one I plan on making all summer. Rotoworld Staff, HeroRB 'HeroRB' is ZeroRB's pragmatic cousin. If you're afraid to leave the first six rounds without a running back but still like the idea of racing to the FLEX with wide receivers, take one back early and then load up on wideouts. The key for the hero pick is ceiling. You can find floor bets later in the draft, but there are only a few rounds where legendary running backs are forged. If you're going to swing, swing for the fences. Jahmyr Gibbs averaged 32.6 fantasy points per game in three contests with David Montgomery out of the lineup last year. He posted 122 rushing yards and 41 receiving yards per week in those contests. Montgomery returned for the playoffs in a diminished role. Gibbs turned 20 touches into 175 yards and two scores in Detroit's upset loss to Washington. I'm not expecting Montgomery to disappear entirely, but it wouldn't shock me if his role takes a backseat this year. If that happens, Gibbs is the 1.01 in 2026. Bucky Irving fits the same mold. His role ascended as the season progressed and he cemented himself as an RB1 in the final weeks of the season. Irving averaged 18.3 carries for 90 yards and three receptions for 32 yards over his final three regular season appearances. Rachaad White logged nine carries and eight receptions during that stretch. He touched the ball three times in their lone playoff appearance. Irving was incredibly efficient both on the ground and through the air as a rookie. His team then fully committed to him as a workhorse down the stretch. Now he goes at the end of the second round in fantasy drafts? Make it make sense. Robust RB With Best Ball drafters still receiver-crazed, taking running backs with four of your first five or six picks is more viable than it's ever been. It's also not about the running backs themselves. With four early backs, you can mix and match upside plays like RJ Harvey and TreVeyon Henderson with floor bets from Josh Jacobs to Jonathan Taylor with ease. Much like ZeroRB, when you start your draft by loading up at one position, you're doing so with the belief that you can backfill the other later. These are three wide receivers who can help you cover your bases for a variety of different archetypes. I'll keep this really simple. The No. 2 overall pick just played every snap but one with the starting offense in his first preseason game. He also played on defense, but not until later in the match. All signs point to Hunter playing a relatively normal role on offense. You can get him after taking four straight running backs and his upside is WR1 production down the stretch, maybe even out of the gates. DJ Moore, Caleb Williams, and Rome Odounze all get drafted far earlier than where they finished in the standings last year. The latter two have a chasm between what fantasy managers project for their 2025 seasons and what they did in 2024. Even Chicago's rookie tight end is surging into the TE1 ranks. Despite all of the hype surrounding the Bears, drafters can't find it in their hearts to make Luther Burden — the No. 39 overall pick — a top-100 pick. Burden was dominant as a sophomore in college with an 86/1,212/9 receiving line. He posted 3.3 yards per route run and 3.2 yards per team pass attempt. Even in a down 2024 season, Burden accounted for 38 percent of his team's receiving output. Burden is comically cheap on DraftKings, going a few picks into the 12th round. I'll click him until the app stops me. Wide receiver picks you can dream on aren't hard to find, even in the later rounds. On the other end of the spectrum, wideouts who project for meaningful roles generally cost a premium. If you conceded some ground on the ceiling outcomes, Wan'Dale Robinson offers an outstanding floor. Robinson finished the 2024 season ranked top-10 in targets (140) and catches (93) among all wideouts. He was the WR41 and now goes as the WR63. Both he and Demario Douglas fit the bill of PPR scams who will get you through some quiet weeks at receiver if you went RB-heavy early. Hyper Fragile This is possibly the most extreme drafting strategy of them all. The definitions of these strategies change over time, but I would call Hyper Fragile a team where you take three early running backs and draft no more than four total. I'm not sure I have drafted a true Hyper Fragile team yet, but it's more interesting the smaller your roster is. Fast Draft has a Best Ball format with just 15 roster spots. If you want to try a Hyper Fragile build, that's your place. The problem with a Hyper Fragile team is that you still want an elite weekly floor because of how few running backs you have, but skipping out on a season-long ceiling to chase safety is a great way to get passed by other teams. This is to say, when you only have three running backs, you want them to all be superstars every week. Lucky for you, there's one game-changing fantasy back who regularly goes in the back half of the first round. Christian McCaffrey has the first, third, and fifth-best fantasy seasons for a running back over the past decade. When healthy, McCaffrey is the best fantasy asset in the league. Another click I don't make often, but Josh Jacobs undoubtedly fits this build. Going at the 2/3 turn, Jacobs finished last year as the RB6. He scored more than 20 PPR points eight times. Only Bijjan Robinson hit that mark more often. In a similar vein, Kyren Williams, fresh off a three-year extension, offers a solid combination of a high floor and the potential for touchdown-based spike weeks. Elite QB This strategy is as simple as the name implies. Being the first drafter to take a quarterback was taboo in fantasy for years. The last half-decade has blessed us with multiple league-defining options at the position who lap the field in fantasy points and on an annual basis. Going as the QB4, Hurts has advance rates — the rate at which you made the Best Ball playoffs if you drafted him — of 17%, 34%, 21%, and 20% over the past four years. Given that 2/12 teams move on, Hurts has been underpriced for nearly half a decade. I'm betting on that to happen again this year. Philly had the lowest pass rate over expected of any team last year. Their 450 pass attempts through 17 weeks were the ninth-lowest mark of the past decade. For a quarterback, that level of passing volume should be a death blow. It wasn't for Hurts because he can paper over sleepy passing days with Tush Push touchdowns. Hurts will get to combine his free touchdown play with an uptick in passing volume if anything about last year's setup, from the elite defense to a record-setting rushing attack, changes. The theme with both of my elite quarterback bets is the price. Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen are both strong clicks, but what if you could get the same fantasy output in the next round? Including the playoffs, Daniels completed 18 games and left two contests early, one because of an injury and the other when Washington gave their starters most of Week 18 off. Looking at just the games he finished, Daniels averaged just over 23 fantasy points per game. That would have trailed only Allen. His team has since added Deebo Samuel and bolstered their offensive line. If anyone is going to break out as a new QB1 overall, it's Daniels in his second season. Three QB The three-quarterback meta has taken over this year and for good reason. Even in an era of elite quarterbacks dominating the fantasy landscape, building around three cheap options has been profitable if you spend your draft capital properly. This graphic from RotoViz shows the advance rates of Underdog teams since 2021 based on how many quarterbacks you drafted if your first QB was taken after Round 10. Three and even four-quarterback builds both outkicked the coverage on advance rate and playoff success. If you want to get weird with a four-quarterback build, the extra roster spots on DraftKings make it even more viable. The Jags nailed their first-round pick last year with Brian Thomas Jr. and followed it up with Travis Hunter at No. 2 overall. They replaced Doug Pederson with Liam Coen, who just got a career-year out of Baker Mayfield in his first and only season as the Bucs' offensive coordinator. If it was ever going to happen for Lawrence, this would be the year. Jordan Love dealt with knee, groin, and elbow injuries last year. Head coach Matt LaFleur dialed up his most run-heavy offense as a head coach and Love's fantasy stock tanked. The Packers went out this offseason and spent first and third-round picks at wide receiver. If Love can stay healthy, I'm betting on the team letting him air it out far more often. Post-benching Bryce Young was a different man. He made the highlight-reel throws but also protected the ball better than ever. He also ran more than he did as a rookie, totaling five rushing scores in his final 10 starts. Young averaged 20.6 fantasy points per game in those contests. The Raiders' new quarterback is the lowest-drafted quarterback with a clean bill of health and no job security concerns. He is getting both offensive line and coordinator upgrades via his trade to Las Vegas. Geno Smith has finished as the QB14, QB20, and QB5 over the past three years. He currently goes off the board as the QB25. Elite TE There was only one choice for this strategy. Brock Bowers set the record for receptions by a rookie of any position at 112 and went for over 1,200 yards from scrimmage. He caught more passes than Justin Jefferson, went for more yards than Ladd McConkey, and averaged more yards per route than Tyreek Hill. Now he's entering his second year while getting a massive situational. Bowers will break fantasy if he takes a year-two leap like we're projecting for Brian Thomas Jr. and Malik Nabers. Punt TE This strategy isn't just about spending less at tight end. It's based on spending nothing. Over the last five years, drafters who didn't get their first tight end until Round 15 or later and drafted three advanced 18.9 percent of their teams. Like quarterback, even taking four of this position has been profitable as long as you do it late in the draft. All three of my punt TEs have ADPs outside of the top 14 rounds. This pick is a Denny Carter special. Chig Okonkwo had impressive peripheral metrics for two seasons, but Will Levis failed to target our late-round hero and his fantasy output plummeted. Okonkwo rose from the ashes when Levis was benched, delivering seventh-place finishes to everyone still holding onto him. He averaged 9.8 PPR points per game in five contests without Levis. You can even make an end-of-draft stack by getting Cam Ward and Okonkwo. Sometimes you just need a guy who runs routes at tight end. In fact, you can get the guy who led all tight ends in route rate last year in the final rounds of your draft. Cade Otton ran a route on 87 percent of Baker Mayfield's dropbacks and finished as the TE11 in points per game. A late-season surge pushed him into the top 12 at the position. Even if that isn't likely to happen again, Otton is going off draft boards at a TE24 cost. He's a value as nothing more than a bet on routes. I have always been a skeptic of rookie tight ends and that has led me to success more often than not. However, for any great rule there are even greater exceptions. Taylor has already overcome the biggest hurdle for rookie tight ends: playing time. He is reportedly the team's clear TE1 and is now back at practice after suffering an ankle injury early in camp. Barring a setback, he's priced as a rotational tight end with no upside. In reality, he has a stranglehold on the routes and has the upside of being a complete unknown with second-round draft capital. Week 17 Stacks If you're new to Best Ball and don't know what stacking is, boy do I have the article for you. This article explains stacking in general and has some teams to target. It focuses on grouping up players who face each other in the final week of the season, with the hopes that their games erupt in a flurry of points, bringing everyone involved to fantasy glory. Because all of the million-dollar prizes are given out to whoever scores the most in Week 17, finding ways to gain even small edges for the final week of the season can have an outsized impact. This stack is about as obvious as it gets with the No. 1 scoring offense from 2024 taking on the No. 9 offense. The game is also indoors, preventing any winter weather shenanigans from snowing on the parade. The other two top-10 matchups are Eagles vs. Bills and Packers vs. Ravens. Both games are outdoors and feature a pair of bottom-five offenses in 2024 pass attempts per game. I still like targeting both games because good offenses make for shootouts, but Vikings vs. Lions is the gold standard for 2025. Both Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison have seen their ADPs fall since the start of training camp. Addison's tumble is due to his three-game suspension, though that has been nearly a known outcome for months. Jefferson is dealing with a minor injury that isn't expected to be an issue for Week 1. On the other side of the ball, the Lions are all but certain to score fewer touchdowns this year, making them a tricky team to pay full price for. However, adding one of their star players to up the correlation for a Week 17 shootout is far more appealing. I've already talked about Jayden Daniels, though I will add that one of my favorite ways to play this game is with him and a falling Terry McLaurin versus as many Cowboys pass-catchers as I can fit in my lineup. Both teams were outside the top 20 in EPA per play allowed on defense in 2024. Both offenses, in turn, did their part in creating shootouts. Cowboys games went over the Vegas total in 11 of 17 contests. The Commanders were 13-7 to the over. The Cowboys are built to throw early and often. They have the highest-paid quarterback, the third-highest-paid wide receiver, traded for a phenomenal No. 2 receiver, and just made Jake Ferguson a top-10 tight end by annual salary. The veterans of their backfield — Miles Sanders and Javonte Williams — are making a combined $4.2 million this year. Their rookies — Jaydon Blue and Phil Mafah — were both Day Three picks. No team is more pot committed to playing for barn burner victories than Dallas. Scroll Down The art of scrolling down is simply taking players at the end of your roster that aren't drafted in every league. Just like in DFS, getting a player who scores 30 points is exponentially more valuable when you're the only person who took them. In Best Ball finals with potentially hundreds of other managers vying for the crown, this is another small edge we can push. Bill, as he goes by, is drafted more often than not nowadays. He went undrafted for months following the NFL Draft, meaning he might max out at a 50 percent roster rate even if fantasy managers universally agree he should be taken every time in August. Bill missed most of his final season at Arizona because of an eligibility issue. He was a star at New Mexico in his prior season. JCM ran for 1,185 yards and 17 scores on 189 attempts. He ranked top-10 in the nation in: Yards after contact per carry (3.9) PFF rushing grade (92.5) Missed tackles forced per carry (.34) JCM has been making noise in camp and getting occasional reps with the 1s. His only competition for an early-down roll is plodder Brian Robinson. This time it counts, I swear. At this point, the most notable sales pitch for Kendre Miller is that he's a healthy backup. Rookie Devin Neal is hurt and the next man up appears to be converted wide receiver Velus Jones. Needless to say, Miller might run away with the RB2 job. Kendre Miller clearly the RB2 based on usage today. If anything happens to Alvin Kamara or the Saints simply want to keep him fresh, Miller could be in line for a role that far exceeds what fantasy managers are expecting of any 18th-round pick. Bowling Green's Harold Fannin Jr. was a mind-bendingly good prospect. He set the NCAA record for receptions (117) and receiving yards (1,555) by a tight end in a single season. The Browns took him in the third round to sit behind David Njoku for a year, but it sounds like the rookie is forcing Cleveland's hand for playing time already. Per The Athletic's Zack Jackson, 'Fannin is going to play for this team. He's going to play receiver. He's going to play fullback. He's going to play for this team. He might be the reason David Njoku moves on from this team three months from now.' A superstar college prospect got good draft capital and is already carving out a role in training camp? And he's free in all formats?! I'm in. Matthew Berry and the Fantasy Football Happy Hour crew give their deep sleepers for the 2025 season, naming Washington Commanders rookie running back Jacory Croskey-Merritt and Buffalo Bills wide receiver Joshua Palmer.
NBC Sports
08-08-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Matthew Golden fantasy football preview 2025: Stats, season outlook, predictions
Kyle Dvorchak, Matthew Golden 2025 Fantasy Football Snapshot Golden flashed late at Texas, then blazed a 4.29 Forty before landing in GB. Joins crowded Packers WR room with Christian Watson rehabbing ACL. Big-play upside likely makes Golden a boom-or-bust Best Ball target. Get personalized fantasy football insights based on your league settings with FantasyLife+. Your league is unique, your advice should be too. Head to and use code ROTO20 for 20% off. 2024: Golden transferred from Houston to Texas for his third and final season of college football. He didn't immediately take over as a clear No. 1 receiver, but his presence was impossible to ignore. Golden had multiple touchdowns in three games before the college football postseason. He then erupted for 411 yards in the SEC Championship and three playoff games. What's changed: Golden cemented his status as a first-round pick at the NFL Combine by running a 4.29 Forty. The Packers finally took the plunge on a Day One receiver by taking him with the No. 23 overall pick. He joins a messy receiver room with Jayden Reed, Romeo Doubs, Dontayvion Wicks, and fellow rookie Savion Williams all fighting for work. Christian Watson is recovering from a late-season torn ACL, putting his Week 1 availability up in the air. 2025 Outlook: Golden should step into a starting role right away, but his ability to earn targets alongside Green Bay's stable of receivers is the biggest question. He was targeted on 17.7 percent of his routes in college, an underwhelming mark for NFL or NCAA standards. The Packers are also coming off a season that saw them rank 30th in pass attempts per game. Fantasy managers should expect plenty of splash plays from the rookie, but our inability to predict them could make Golden a stereotypical 'better in Best Ball' pick. **Projections from Spotlight Sports Group Go to: All players | QBs | RBs | WRs | TEs
Yahoo
31-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
2025 Best Ball stacks to target: 49ers and Bills are underpriced
For the uninitiated, 'stacking' is simply drafting multiple players from the same NFL team in the hopes of capturing loads of fantasy points all at once. In massive Best Ball tournaments, it's easier to rise to the top of a field of hundreds of thousands of drafters when you concentrate your bets on a few teams. If you want to win big in Best Ball, these are some teams worth targeting. 2025 Fantasy Football Player Previews 2025 fantasy football previews, projections, stats and more for every position from Rotoworld and NBC Sports. Finding valuable stacks As is the case with any fantasy game, whether a player or a team is worth drafting all depends on price. That's why I have put together a chart of stack cost versus implied team total. The implied team totals are taken using early Vegas spreads and totals to derive a projected number of points scored by each team in a game. Establish the Run's Adam Levitan was nice enough to do the legwork for us. Of note, this data is a little old, though we wouldn't project lookahead lines to shift that much this far out. For the cost of each stack, I converted ADP into a numeric value to account for the importance of earlier picks. The difference between pick 160 and 180 is 20 spots but not a whole lot of value. The drop from 1 to 21 is the same number, but the difference between players who go at each range is immense. I then totaled up the cost of the top two receivers plus each team's quarterback and first tight end to get a price on acquiring all of the biggest names in every passing attack. The right side of the chart features the more expensive teams and the highest-scoring teams are at the top. As you would expect, the more a team projects to score, the higher their cost. The chart needs a few caveats. This chart only looks at the price of a team's passing attack but it compares that to all of the points they are projected to score. Teams that tilt disproportionately toward rushing touchdowns will look better in this simple metric than they should. It also ignores plenty of depth receivers who will have an impact on fantasy football this year. Marvin Mims, Christian Kirk, and Hollywood Brown, to name a few. Teams with highly drafted third and fourth receivers will look cheaper in this chart than they actually are. I'll be referencing the chart some throughout this article as it's a good shorthand for potentially undervalued stacks. It's also far from the final say on the matter. Buffalo Bills Vegas has the Bills pegged as the highest-scoring team in the league. They ranked second in scoring and EPA per play last year, so that's not much of a surprise. What is almost shocking is that they have the second-cheapest WR1 by ADP in Khalil Shakir. Do they have another wide receiver close in ADP or a tight end people expect to soak up targets? Of course not. Keon Coleman goes for the board over two rounds later and Dalton Kincaid is drafted as a TE2. This is mostly because the Bills ranked 28th in pass attempts per game last year. Despite the lack of volume, Buffalo finished eighth in passing touchdowns per game and 11th in yards per game. Shakir ranked 21st in PFF receiving grade and was the WR18 in yards per route run. He finished as the WR33 in PPR points per game. The team committed to him with a four-year contract extension after the season and now he goes as the WR45. Kincaid has been a fantasy disappointment for two seasons, but tight end is a notoriously difficult position for young players in the pros. As a pass-catcher, Kincaid has largely been successful. He averaged a respectable 1.5 yards per route run and was targeted on an extremely high 23 percent of his routes in his second season. Both of those metrics and his PFF receiving grade, plus his grades as a run and pass-blocker, improved in his second season. Dawson Knox is now missing the start of training camp with an unknown issue, giving Kincaid a chance to prove himself as an every-down player. New England Patriots If you take implied points divided by stack cost, you get a simple value metric of how cheap each projected point is to acquire. The teams that filter to the top are universally the worst teams, so the metric alone isn't telling us much. Value is nice, but everyone looks cheap in the 15th round. What's more interesting is when a good team looks underpriced. Per the data, the highest-value team with a weekly total over 22 is the New England Patriots. The thesis with New England is as simple as it gets. They're all cheap and Drake Maye looks like an astounding bet to make the leap from good to great. Maye posted a 2.8 completion rate over expected and Pro Football Focus charted 66.5 percent of his throws as accurate. Those marks ranked 11th and fifth in the league. For fantasy, his most important attribute was his mobility. Throwing out two starts Maye left before halftime, the rookie passer averaged 37.3 rushing yards per game. That would have been good for 634 yards over a full season. The fantasy targets are clear at receiver. Stefon Diggs is starting training camp as a full participant in practice, meaning he's good to go after tearing his ACL last year. Diggs' efficiency declined on a defunct Houston offense in 2024, but he was still a target magnet. He earned a 24 percent target share and was targeted on 23 percent of his routes. ESPN's player tracking data ranked him seventh in Open Score. If anyone is going to consolidate opportunities in this offense, it's Diggs. Rookie wideout Kyle Williams is the cheap, high-upside bet of the offense. Williams broke out as a true freshman at UNLV in a COVID-shortened season. Over the past decade, only five other Day Two receivers have recorded an age-18 breakout. Two of the five hit 190 PPR points as rookies and a three topped 200 points within their first three years. Williams also has the backing of film-watchers, who universally praised his ability to create separation. Tennessee Titans Being cheap isn't the only qualification for a good stack, but it certainly helps. The other piece of the puzzle is upside. If Drake Maye has an MVP-caliber season, the rising tide will lift all boats. Many of the most affordable stacks don't have a ceiling that can bring everyone along for the ride. The Steelers might look undervalued on paper, but there isn't a scenario where we look back at the end of the year and realize loading up on Pittsburgh players was the way to win fantasy leagues. The No. 1 overall pick, on the other hand, is a bet with outsized returns. Cam Ward is the perfect archetype for a Best Ball passer. He throws deep and he runs a little. Ward ranked fifth in the country in PFF passing grade on deep throws last year. He compiled the sixth-most yards and the fourth-most touchdowns on these attempts. Ward ran for at least 300 yards in four straight seasons and punched in 17 rushing touchdowns over his final three years of college ball. His accuracy on deep looks is going to be a night and day change for his top receiver, Calvin Ridley. Tennessee's No. 1 receiver led the NFL with 1,883 air yards last year. Per PFF, 20 of his incomplete targets were deemed as the quarterback's fault. Those looks accounted for 565 air yards, the second-highest total of incomplete air yards. The Titans have some interesting ancillary pieces worth a look as well. Chig Okonkwo is free in most drafts and showed some signs of life when the Titans didn't start Will Levis. He averaged 9.8 PPR points per game without Levis. The WR2 spot is wide open and the only thing standing between it and Elic Ayomanor is what's left of Tyler Lockett. Ayomanor averaged respectable efficiency marks in college with 2.2 yards per route and 2.3 yards per team pass attempt in his career. He shone in the market share numbers, accounting for 39 percent of his team's passing output over two seasons. He also left college after three years, a green light for NFL production. Given the lack of hype for a great quarterback prospect with underrated weapons, this Titans stack is eerily comparable to Texans stacks ahead of Stroud's rookie season. San Francisco 49ers Few teams are as likely to rebound in 2025 as the 49ers. San Francisco ranked third in yards per play and 11th in EPA per play last year in a season that saw them lose every one of their skill position players at some point, outside of Brock Purdy. Their actual scoring, however, lagged behind their advanced metrics. San Francisco ranked 13th in points per game, largely because they couldn't get past the finish line. They closed the year ranked 14th in red zone success rate. Shanahan had them as the best team in the red zone two seasons ago. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, but it's safe to assume an offense as successful between the 20s as San Francisco should score more points. The San Francisco offense has also become increasingly easy to stack. 49ers GM John Lynch previously said Brandon Aiyuk is 'not anywhere close to having a concrete timeline' to return from his 2024 torn ACL. Aiyuk is likely looking at a return midway through the season. Ricky Pearsall, the team's 2024 first-round pick, missed much of the offseason with a hamstring issue and was held out of the first week of camp. Pearsall also missed most of his first offseason and much of the regular season while recovering from a gunshot wound. He showed some promise when active but averaged a lackluster 1.3 yards per route run on the whole. Pearsall is an interesting ceiling bet, but fantasy managers shouldn't count on him to be a weekly starter. That leaves us with the stack: George Kittle, Jauan Jennings, and Brock Purdy. Kittle was as dominant as ever last year, leading all tight ends in yards per route (2.6) and PFF receiving grade (92.4). He closed the year as the TE1 by points per game. Kittle might be the most talented tight end in the league, but he hasn't crossed 100 targets in a season since 2019. If he were ever going to repeat that feat, it would be this year. Jennings' year five breakout last season was almost unprecedented, causing fantasy managers like me to be skeptical that he can repeat the performance. The spreadsheets show a player who is here to stay. Jennings averaged 2.3 yards per route run, was targeted on 26 percent of his routes, and was ESPN's No. 24 receiver in Open Score. With Deebo gone and Aiyuk facing a lengthy recovery, the deck has been cleared for a Jennings encore. Even Purdy brings something to the table beyond just throwing the ball to the aforementioned pass-catchers. Kyle Shanahan cut him loose in 2024, allowing him to make plays out of structure more than ever. A byproduct of that was an uptick in rushing output for Purdy. He posted a 60/323/5 rushing line a year after running for 144 yards and two scores.
NBC Sports
31-07-2025
- Business
- NBC Sports
2025 Best Ball stacks to target: 49ers and Bills are underpriced
For the uninitiated, 'stacking' is simply drafting multiple players from the same NFL team in the hopes of capturing loads of fantasy points all at once. In massive Best Ball tournaments, it's easier to rise to the top of a field of hundreds of thousands of drafters when you concentrate your bets on a few teams. If you want to win big in Best Ball, these are some teams worth targeting. Finding valuable stacks As is the case with any fantasy game, whether a player or a team is worth drafting all depends on price. That's why I have put together a chart of stack cost versus implied team total. The implied team totals are taken using early Vegas spreads and totals to derive a projected number of points scored by each team in a game. Establish the Run's Adam Levitan was nice enough to do the legwork for us. We now have lookahead lines for every game this season. Which means we have implied team totals every team, every week. How that looks in implied points per game right now: Of note, this data is a little old, though we wouldn't project lookahead lines to shift that much this far out. For the cost of each stack, I converted ADP into a numeric value to account for the importance of earlier picks. The difference between pick 160 and 180 is 20 spots but not a whole lot of value. The drop from 1 to 21 is the same number, but the difference between players who go at each range is immense. I then totaled up the cost of the top two receivers plus each team's quarterback and first tight end to get a price on acquiring all of the biggest names in every passing attack. The right side of the chart features the more expensive teams and the highest-scoring teams are at the top. As you would expect, the more a team projects to score, the higher their cost. The chart needs a few caveats. This chart only looks at the price of a team's passing attack but it compares that to all of the points they are projected to score. Teams that tilt disproportionately toward rushing touchdowns will look better in this simple metric than they should. It also ignores plenty of depth receivers who will have an impact on fantasy football this year. Marvin Mims, Christian Kirk, and Hollywood Brown, to name a few. Teams with highly drafted third and fourth receivers will look cheaper in this chart than they actually are. I'll be referencing the chart some throughout this article as it's a good shorthand for potentially undervalued stacks. It's also far from the final say on the matter. Buffalo Bills Vegas has the Bills pegged as the highest-scoring team in the league. They ranked second in scoring and EPA per play last year, so that's not much of a surprise. What is almost shocking is that they have the second-cheapest WR1 by ADP in Khalil Shakir. Do they have another wide receiver close in ADP or a tight end people expect to soak up targets? Of course not. Keon Coleman goes for the board over two rounds later and Dalton Kincaid is drafted as a TE2. This is mostly because the Bills ranked 28th in pass attempts per game last year. Despite the lack of volume, Buffalo finished eighth in passing touchdowns per game and 11th in yards per game. Shakir ranked 21st in PFF receiving grade and was the WR18 in yards per route run. He finished as the WR33 in PPR points per game. The team committed to him with a four-year contract extension after the season and now he goes as the WR45. Kincaid has been a fantasy disappointment for two seasons, but tight end is a notoriously difficult position for young players in the pros. As a pass-catcher, Kincaid has largely been successful. He averaged a respectable 1.5 yards per route run and was targeted on an extremely high 23 percent of his routes in his second season. Both of those metrics and his PFF receiving grade, plus his grades as a run and pass-blocker, improved in his second season. Dawson Knox is now missing the start of training camp with an unknown issue, giving Kincaid a chance to prove himself as an every-down player. New England Patriots If you take implied points divided by stack cost, you get a simple value metric of how cheap each projected point is to acquire. The teams that filter to the top are universally the worst teams, so the metric alone isn't telling us much. Value is nice, but everyone looks cheap in the 15th round. What's more interesting is when a good team looks underpriced. Per the data, the highest-value team with a weekly total over 22 is the New England Patriots. The thesis with New England is as simple as it gets. They're all cheap and Drake Maye looks like an astounding bet to make the leap from good to great. Maye posted a 2.8 completion rate over expected and Pro Football Focus charted 66.5 percent of his throws as accurate. Those marks ranked 11th and fifth in the league. For fantasy, his most important attribute was his mobility. Throwing out two starts Maye left before halftime, the rookie passer averaged 37.3 rushing yards per game. That would have been good for 634 yards over a full season. The fantasy targets are clear at receiver. Stefon Diggs is starting training camp as a full participant in practice, meaning he's good to go after tearing his ACL last year. Diggs' efficiency declined on a defunct Houston offense in 2024, but he was still a target magnet. He earned a 24 percent target share and was targeted on 23 percent of his routes. ESPN's player tracking data ranked him seventh in Open Score. If anyone is going to consolidate opportunities in this offense, it's Diggs. Rookie wideout Kyle Williams is the cheap, high-upside bet of the offense. Williams broke out as a true freshman at UNLV in a COVID-shortened season. Over the past decade, only five other Day Two receivers have recorded an age-18 breakout. Two of the five hit 190 PPR points as rookies and a three topped 200 points within their first three years. Williams also has the backing of film-watchers, who universally praised his ability to create separation. Draft WR Ranks are out and podcast is up Really really deep class Tennessee Titans Being cheap isn't the only qualification for a good stack, but it certainly helps. The other piece of the puzzle is upside. If Drake Maye has an MVP-caliber season, the rising tide will lift all boats. Many of the most affordable stacks don't have a ceiling that can bring everyone along for the ride. The Steelers might look undervalued on paper, but there isn't a scenario where we look back at the end of the year and realize loading up on Pittsburgh players was the way to win fantasy leagues. The No. 1 overall pick, on the other hand, is a bet with outsized returns. Cam Ward is the perfect archetype for a Best Ball passer. He throws deep and he runs a little. Ward ranked fifth in the country in PFF passing grade on deep throws last year. He compiled the sixth-most yards and the fourth-most touchdowns on these attempts. Ward ran for at least 300 yards in four straight seasons and punched in 17 rushing touchdowns over his final three years of college ball. His accuracy on deep looks is going to be a night and day change for his top receiver, Calvin Ridley. Tennessee's No. 1 receiver led the NFL with 1,883 air yards last year. Per PFF, 20 of his incomplete targets were deemed as the quarterback's fault. Those looks accounted for 565 air yards, the second-highest total of incomplete air yards. The Titans have some interesting ancillary pieces worth a look as well. Chig Okonkwo is free in most drafts and showed some signs of life when the Titans didn't start Will Levis. He averaged 9.8 PPR points per game without Levis. The WR2 spot is wide open and the only thing standing between it and Elic Ayomanor is what's left of Tyler Lockett. Ayomanor averaged respectable efficiency marks in college with 2.2 yards per route and 2.3 yards per team pass attempt in his career. He shone in the market share numbers, accounting for 39 percent of his team's passing output over two seasons. He also left college after three years, a green light for NFL production. Given the lack of hype for a great quarterback prospect with underrated weapons, this Titans stack is eerily comparable to Texans stacks ahead of Stroud's rookie season. San Francisco 49ers Few teams are as likely to rebound in 2025 as the 49ers. San Francisco ranked third in yards per play and 11th in EPA per play last year in a season that saw them lose every one of their skill position players at some point, outside of Brock Purdy. Their actual scoring, however, lagged behind their advanced metrics. San Francisco ranked 13th in points per game, largely because they couldn't get past the finish line. They closed the year ranked 14th in red zone success rate. Shanahan had them as the best team in the red zone two seasons ago. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, but it's safe to assume an offense as successful between the 20s as San Francisco should score more points. The San Francisco offense has also become increasingly easy to stack. 49ers GM John Lynch previously said Brandon Aiyuk is 'not anywhere close to having a concrete timeline' to return from his 2024 torn ACL. Aiyuk is likely looking at a return midway through the season. Ricky Pearsall, the team's 2024 first-round pick, missed much of the offseason with a hamstring issue and was held out of the first week of camp. Pearsall also missed most of his first offseason and much of the regular season while recovering from a gunshot wound. He showed some promise when active but averaged a lackluster 1.3 yards per route run on the whole. Pearsall is an interesting ceiling bet, but fantasy managers shouldn't count on him to be a weekly starter. That leaves us with the stack: George Kittle, Jauan Jennings, and Brock Purdy. Kittle was as dominant as ever last year, leading all tight ends in yards per route (2.6) and PFF receiving grade (92.4). He closed the year as the TE1 by points per game. Kittle might be the most talented tight end in the league, but he hasn't crossed 100 targets in a season since 2019. If he were ever going to repeat that feat, it would be this year. Jennings' year five breakout last season was almost unprecedented, causing fantasy managers like me to be skeptical that he can repeat the performance. The spreadsheets show a player who is here to stay. Jennings averaged 2.3 yards per route run, was targeted on 26 percent of his routes, and was ESPN's No. 24 receiver in Open Score. With Deebo gone and Aiyuk facing a lengthy recovery, the deck has been cleared for a Jennings encore. Even Purdy brings something to the table beyond just throwing the ball to the aforementioned pass-catchers. Kyle Shanahan cut him loose in 2024, allowing him to make plays out of structure more than ever. A byproduct of that was an uptick in rushing output for Purdy. He posted a 60/323/5 rushing line a year after running for 144 yards and two scores.
NBC Sports
15-07-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
2025 Miami Dolphins Fantasy Preview: Make or break for Tua Tagovailoa
The Dolphins gave us more of the same in 2024. They were dynamite when Tua Tagovailoa was healthy and a disaster when their quarterback was out of the lineup. Business as usual. Despite the spreadsheets going brrr, the design of the offense was vastly different, creating jaw-dropping risks for fantasy managers in 2025. 2024 Miami Dolphins Stats (Rank) Points per game: 20.3 (22nd) Total yards per game: 325.4 (18th) Plays per game: 63.6 (9th) Dropbacks per game: 42 (9th) Dropback EPA per play: 0.09 (15th) Rush attempts per game: 26.4 (19th) Rush EPA per play: -0.25 (31st) Tua on the hot seat The Dolphins played two games with Tua to start the year before he suffered a concussion that landed him on injured reserve. That sent Miami scrambling and left them with Tyler Huntley at quarterback. The move, in turn, forced them into a check-down scheme for the ages. Their team aDOT of 6.7 was the third-lowest of the last decade. Head coach and offensive mastermind Mike McDaniel schemed up easy throws for his backups and kept that philosophy in place even when Tua was active in the second half of the season. This resulted in career receiving numbers for Jonnu Smith and De'Von Achane, but the wide receivers were left hanging. Injuries were also an issue on the other side of the ball, but Miami's defense held on and finished the regular season ranked eighth in EPA per play. We're probably discussing at least a playoff loss for the Phins if McDaniel knew how to get more out of his backup quarterbacks. Instead, McDaniel is on the hot seat and Tua's career is on the ropes. Passing Game It's hard to stress this enough, but Tua was one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the league last year. Tagovailoa ranked: EPA per play - 7th Completion percent over expected - 8th Adjusted completion rate - 2nd Huntley, on the other hand, couldn't match that production. He ranked: EPA per play - 37th Completion percent over expected - 12th Adjusted completion rate - 12th Huntley showed some ability to execute what was asked of him, but, at the end of the day, his efficiency was putrid. That's to say nothing of a single dreadful start made by Skylar Thompson and a few comically futile snaps from Tom Boyle. As expected, all of the Miami players experienced drastic splits with and without Tua. Will Tagovailoa play a full season this year? Who knows. He's undoubtedly more prone to concussions and likely to spend longer on the bench when that does happen than the average passer. In redraft—where you can cut players at will—his availability is not an issue. The 2024 passing yardage leader is free money as the QB22. The risk becomes much more tangible in Best Ball drafts where you are stuck with him for the entire season. Moving to his receivers, Miami simply gave up on their explosive passing game last year, leaving both Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle out to dry. Hill's falloff from 3.72 yards per route to 1.75 is one of the most dramatic falloffs of the past decade. If Hill's woes were exclusively related to his wrist injury or the design of the Miami offense, he could easily bounce back as a WR1 in 2025. He started to pick up the slack at the end of the season with two 100-yard games over the final five weeks. On the other hand, if he simply lost a step as the league's premier speed receiver, his days as an elite fantasy asset are over. Waddle experienced a similar dropoff in efficiency—cratering from 2.5 YPRR to 1.5—but he's five years younger than Hill. You wouldn't expect him to be past his prime already, though that's not entirely impossible. Waddle is going at a discount compared to his 2024 ADP, but drafters are far more confident in him rebounding compared to Hill. He has fallen 24 spots versus last year while Hill is down 20 spots. Given the value of early-round picks, that's a massive discount for Hill and only a modest markdown for Waddle. Hill offers a better ceiling outcome and comes at a better price relative to his 2024 cost. If you want to gamble on this offense, he's your man. Miami only had one other relevant pass-catcher last year—Jonnu Smith—and they just sent him packing to Pittsburgh. Smith emerged as a premier checkdown option in Miami's stunted offense. He averaged a 6.9/67/.9 receiving line over the final eight weeks of the season. Even including his slow start, only four tight ends averaged more yards per route than Jonnu (1.95) on the season. The Dolphins lured Darren Waller out of retirement to replace Smith. Waller averaged 1.55 YPRR, 9.4 PPR points per game, and had a 73.1 PFF receiving grade in his final season with the Giants in 2023. All three marks were top-15 among tight ends. He could be a viable seam-stretcher for Miami if he still has some juice in 2025, but it's hard to bet on a player who last played an (almost) full season in 2020 and has spent more time in the past year pursuing a rap career than professional football. Malik Washington's 2024 stats tell you all you need to know about Miami's WR3. He averaged .86 YPRR, good for 105th in the NFL. That put him just a handful of spots ahead of dead last among wide receivers. He wasn't bad with the ball in his hands. The rookie posted 4.7 yards after the catch per reception, placing him 38th among qualified wideouts. He simply couldn't earn a target to save his life in a crowded pass-catching room. Whether he or free agent addition Nick Westbrook-Ikhine wins the WR3 job is immaterial to fantasy managers. Running Game Miami's underwhelming passing output was surprising, but their dead-on-arrival ground game was shocking. Their -.21 EPA per play average on rush attempts ranked 315th out of 320 team-seasons over the past decade. Raheem Mostert ran for 18 touchdowns at 4.8 YPC in 2023. He found the end zone twice at 3.3 YPC last year. Achane, the team's lightning-in-a-bottle on the ground, went from 7.8 YPC—the highest market for a running back with at least 100 attempts in NFL history—to 4.5. Achane also set the record in NFL Next Gen's rush yards over expected metric at 2.87 per carry two years ago. The previous high-water mark was 1.86. He fell to -.42 RYOE per attempt in 2024, one of the worst marks in the league. While some of this can be chalked up to Achane running hotter than the sun as a rookie, a large part of his decline has to be blamed on the environment. Miami's stuff rate (carries stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage) was 29.3 percent last year, the fourth-highest mark of the past decade. Achane is a back who thrives on clear runways but doesn't have the power to turn small losses into modest gains. With the team's offensive line collapsing and the threat of a deep shot vanishing from the passing attack, Achane never had a chance to show off his home run speed last year. The good news is that he became a de facto third receiver for the Phins by leading all running backs in slot routes (120) and wide routes (58). Achane caught 78 balls for 592 yards and six scores. He led all running backs in all three categories, allowing him to finish as the PPR RB5 despite the poor rushing metrics. With Jonnu gone, his receiving role gives him an unprecedented floor. The upside for elite efficiency also gives him an immense ceiling. Jaylen Wright appears to be in line for the RB2 role with Mostert being cut early in the offseason. Like Achane, Wright's rushing metrics were underwhelming to say the least. He averaged a paltry 3.7 YPC on 68 attempts as a rookie. Miami only spent a sixth-round pick on Ollie Gordon and $1.4 million on Alexander Mattison as potential replacements for the backup job. GM Chris Grier traded a future third-round pick to move up for Wright in the fourth round last year. He isn't guaranteed the backup gig or any standalone work, but an RB51 pricetag is a minimal cost for a likely handcuff in an offense built on efficiency. 2025 Miami Dolphins Win Total DraftKings Over/Under: 7.5 Pick: Under (-105) The Dolphins are an all-or-nothing team. Either Tua stays healthy and the team excels or he misses time, McDaniel is fired, and the team looks to reset in 2026. I'd take the under on them this year, given the fragility of Tagovailoa's health and the potential for Hill to be over the Hill (pun intended). If you want to bet overs, taking a long shot like +750 to win the AFC East makes more sense than a simple win total play.
