Early 2025 Fantasy Football Busts: Overvauled NFC Draft Avoids

The NFC North, East, West, and South are home to a great many fantasy-relevant players. Picking the right ones for your team is extremely important, yet every season, many players from this conference fail to meet their ADPs and become poor draft picks in fantasy football.

It's very important to avoid these, yet while everyone wants to avoid players that bust, not everyone is willing to accept that certain players they like are likely to be not worth drafting. Hopefully, I can help you change that, with plenty of evidence to back it up, of course, for certain players.

There are three that we'll break down today -- two wide receiver and one running back. They will probably all be surprises, but what's the value of writing about a bust that everyone probably knows will bust? Very little, I'd say. So let's dive in.

• 2025 fantasy football rankings (redraft)
• Dynasty fantasy football rankings
• 2025 NFL rookie fantasy football rankings
• Best ball fantasy football rankings
• Quarterback fantasy football rankings
• Running back fantasy football rankings
• Wide receiver fantasy football rankings
• Tight end fantasy football rankings

Josh Jacobs, RB, Green Bay Packers

Jacobs is still a good running back in the NFL. That much can't be denied. But the only thing that really matters in fantasy football is value. There are plenty of solid players that you shouldn't spend a 1st or 2nd-round pick on. Jacobs may be one of them. The situation he had last season was absolutely ideal for his production, and there's a solid chance he won't repeat his 2024 workload in 2025.

8th in yds after contact per att (ahead of Gibbs, Barkley, Jones)
4th in missed tackles forced
8th in elusive rating (ahead of Henry, Gibbs, Barkley)
5th in PFF run grade
3rd in PFF rec grade

The truth about Josh Jacobs' first season with the Packers: https://t.co/DKTjs4mjpp

— Wendell Ferreira (@wendellfp) January 22, 2025

Jacobs was not bad. Quite the opposite, in fact. Yet the Packers spend a 3rd-round pick on running back MarShawn Lloyd in the 2024 NFL Draft, and he got seven touches in just 14 percent of snaps in Week 2 before injuring his ankle. He wouldn't play another down that season.

In addition, RB A.J. Dillon, who frustratingly siphoned carries away from RB Aaron Jones for years, didn't play a single game, and missed the entire year. Jones was an elite running back at one time, and fantasy managers absolutely (and rightfully) fumed at the volume Dillon was getting. Most of the time, Dillon would just run straight forward and crash into the defensive linemen. Yet he was still fed to a high degree.

Jones put together a mostly healthy season in 2022 and carried the ball 213 times. Dillon got 183 carries. This was despite Jones averaging 5.3 yards per rush and AJD gaining just 4.1. Jacobs also didn't have an insignificant amount of passing-game work, though the team seemed to believe that Lloyd would be great with the ball in his hands, had he been healthy.

I still think the Packers have a fun player in MarShawn Lloyd. How he was able to bounce outside and turn this into eight yards was so impressive; his burst is legit. pic.twitter.com/rDtuC4pGCU

— zachary jacobson (@zacobson) February 19, 2025

Nothing like an injury-riddled season makes fantasy football managers forget how good certain players can be. A 3rd-round pick on an RB shows serious faith by an organization in a player in an era where backs are so devalued. I expect at least a moderate dip in Jacobs' volume in 2025. The team will probably use Lloyd a good amount.

A 60/40 split in touches between Lloyd and Jacobs isn't entirely unreasonable, if both stay healthy.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba, WR, Seattle Seahawks

Smith-Njigba is widely viewed as the WR1 for the Seattle Seahawks now, but I'm very skeptical of this trend staying in place. For starters, before WR D.K. Metcalf sprained his MCL, missed two games, and came back looking nothing like his old explosive self, he was the clear WR1 for this team.

Smith made it known, and the stats proved, that Metcalf was the top priority in the passing game. It wasn't until after Metcalf's injury that Njigba started to dominate in fantasy football, and it wasn't entirely because he was an "elite" WR. There were multiple factors at play.

From Weeks 1-7, before DK's knee injury, it was D.K. Metcalf who was the clear WR1 for the Seahawks, not Jaxon Smith-Njigba. 🧵

Air Yards Share -
DK : 43.0%
JSN: 21.7%

Target Share -
DK: 21.8%
JSN: 19.3%

Targets Per Route Run -
DK: 0.23
JSN: 0.20

— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) February 27, 2025

As stated in the thread, Metcalf became much less efficient. His explosiveness seemed to have taken a serious hit from his injury. It's the nature of NFL players to play through serious injuries, even if it hampers their production, and that's probably what Metcalf did.

Njigba is the WR12 in FantasyPros PPR redraft rankings and now has a sky-high value in Dynasty, but I'm not entirely convinced he's even the WR1 on his team yet. Metcalf is the WR24, and before the injury, was just plain outproducing JSN. In fact, from Weeks 1-7, even Lockett was besting JSN in some categories.

In fact, even Tyler Lockett bested Njigba in receiving yards, catch rate, and air yards share in the first 7 weeks of the season, but he too dealt with injury issues. pic.twitter.com/dTBzh9dCgj

— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) February 27, 2025

It feels very premature to declare JSN as the WR1 now. Though Lockett is declining, and will probably not be a big factor by the second half of next season, the presence of Metcalf is highly concerning for Njigba's value, and he seems likely to be a whiff at his inflated ADP.

EDIT: Former Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith was traded to the Las Vegas Raiders, and Metcalf was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Smith's departure is a huge loss for JSN, so unless they get a good QB to replace him, that won't be great, but Metcalf's departure will free up plenty of targets. 

Kyren Williams, RB, Los Angeles Rams

Wake up babe, a new stat just dropped that makes Williams huge drop in efficiency in 2024 look terrible. Dataroma is one of the best X accounts in the business because it distills and presents data that's extremely useful in drawing your own conclusions when evaluating player performances.

The Top 12 RBs (in terms of fantasy production) average yards per carry:

2021: 4.38
2022: 4.63
2023: 4.44
2024: 4.87
**Data via @FantasyPtsData

As NFL defenses optimize towards defending the pass and limiting explosive plays, it seems likely we can expect efficiency among RBs…

— Dataroma (@ffdataroma) February 27, 2025

The continuing shift in defenses doing everything they can to shut down deep passes by doing things like dropping more and more defenders deep into coverage has allowed run games to flourish increasingly in recent seasons. The league's top running backs have thus had more room to run, and have capitalized on it.

As you can see from the above post, the average yards per carry average of top-12 fantasy RBs increased by 0.43 from 2023 to 2024. Naturally, we'd expect to have seen Williams' average go up. Quite the opposite has happened, though. He averaged 5.0 yards per carry in 2023 and just 4.1 in 2024.

I for one am extremely concerned about Kyren Williams dip in efficiency. YBC/Att was sky high in 2023, that drove his 5.0 yards per carry

— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) February 27, 2025

The data tells us why -- among running backs with 120 or more carries, Williams had by far the highest YBCon/Att in 2023. He averaged just 1.5 yards after contact per attempt, though, which was miserable. And the tape backs this up. He absolutely feasted on great blocking and often was just running through wide open space with plenty of green grass all around him.

He was still a great fantasy option in 2024, but he relies on absolutely hogging all the carries and goal-line opportunities. He's very dependent on touchdowns and sky-high sheer volume. It's not clear how much he will get in 2025, or how much his backup, Blake Corum, will end up with.

It's not hard to imagine Corum getting a bigger role, since Williams also hardly did anything his rookie season. If any significant portion of Williams' volume dries up, it could spell serious trouble for his fantasy prospects.

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