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2025 rookie dynasty fantasy football drafts are fast approaching, and whether your league drafts before or after the "real" NFL Draft, it's never a bad idea to get an early start on diving into the new class of rookies. This rookie wide receiver class isn't viewed as elite, but there are always a handful of pass-catchers who emerge as key fantasy contributors right away or in the future.
Three of the top wideout prospects in this year's stable include Ole Miss' Tre Harris, Colorado's Travis Hunter, and Texas' Matthew Golden. The trio of wideouts have very different skill sets and ranges of outcomes, but each one is worth consideration in rookie drafts.
Below, we'll dive into the rookie draft outlooks for Harris, Hunter, and Golden. Read our analysis and potential areas of the draft to target them.
Tre Harris Dynasty Fantasy Football Outlook
Harris could sneakily be the best WR in this class because he is the most fluid and smooth route-runner, and he is so impossibly efficient that it defies logic. The prevailing truth was that if you put a man on Harris this season, he was going to get burned.
Dart's teammate Tre Harris absolutely destroyed man coverage this year:
+ 9.85 YPRR (Most among all WRs since PFF started tracking in 2015)
+ 94.4 PFF receiving grade (Best among all WRs since DeVonta Smith in 2020)Data via @PFF https://t.co/YHK3FERM0h
— Dataroma (@ffdataroma) February 4, 2025
And that's exactly what happened. Yet scouts are lukewarm on Harris even though he put up DeVonta Smith Heisman Campaign level PFF grades and crushed the efficiency stat so hard that he obliterated charts doing so.
WRs in college football against Man coverage this season (min. 50 targets).
Tre Harris...lol pic.twitter.com/ZIukHsSLVT
— Tyler Brooke (@TylerDBrooke) February 5, 2025
Hysterically crushing charts like this so hard that the whole picture has to be zoomed out is something that shouldn't be ignored. Outlandishly outlier is the only way to describe Harris' 2024 season other than unfortunately marred by injury. NFL teams notice these things, and Harris going inside the first round, as the above post implies, wouldn't be a surprise. Plenty of Harris' production came against poor competition, but you can just cut his Man YPRR by 33 percent, and he'd still easily have led the country.
The ease with which he manipulates defenders is incredible. His routes look easy and smooth, and though he lacks elite top-end speed, he can still win vertically due to the threat of his horizontal breaks. We love picking him at the end of the first round.
Travis Hunter Dynasty Fantasy Football Outlook
It's very difficult to evaluate Hunter for fantasy purposes. He played very well as a receiver, and if he dedicated to that position full-time, he could be the best WR in this class. Yet the prevailing wisdom is that he'll primarily play cornerback in the NFL.
He possesses a rare skill set, and while he's a bit raw as a route-runner and separation technician, he could make absurd plays that no other receiver could this past season. This is a risky pick to make.
One thing you notice about Travis Hunter at the receiver position is how well he transitions the tempo of his releases.
You see this tempo work with Hunter at the top of routes as well as after the catch - cornerstone trait of his offensively.
— AngeloFF (@angelo_fantasy) October 27, 2024
Conventional wisdom says he won't play most of his snaps at WR, but if you're willing to take a chance on him and that turns out to be false, you're landing a huge win.
Matthew Golden Dynasty Fantasy Football Outlook
Golden is a lukewarm in the early second round. He's leapfrogged one of his teammates in making it to the top of the second round. We feel he has the potential to develop into a nice WR2 with time. Again, though, this is a weak WR2 class. It's not a bad strategy to punt this position until later if you don't get a wideout like Harris.
While he's not ridiculously explosive out of his breaks, the pacing of his routes and the intelligence with which he plays is very impressive. He's relatively twitchy, as the below post says, and varies his speed to control his position on the field and where he ends up, making the DB's job harder. Golden is not an outside WR. He's a Josh Downs-lite type player.
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