Fantasy football is a game of minuscule samples. Every fantasy season is just 17 weeks, and a player’s performance in a given week is often decided by a single play. Random variance can easily have a huge impact on a player’s fantasy ranking for a significant stretch of any given season. With this in mind, it’s important to be skeptical of stats that follow the trend of “X player scored Y points in this Z-game stretch of the season.” Taking the already small sample of an NFL season and slicing it up further is a recipe for misleading data.
One of the most common ways to slice up a year’s worth of stats is by focusing on the end of the season, whether it’s the second half of the year, from Week 10 onward, or just the last few weeks. Intuitively, this makes sense. Logically, a player who finished a given season strong may have unlocked something that will allow them to continue that performance into the following year. Alternatively, a player who finished slowly (especially an older one) may have lost a step that they will never regain.
However, we should be careful not to over-index on end-of-season splits. A player catching fire in Weeks 12-17 of 2024 is just as likely to be a result of random variance as a different player popping off in Weeks 6-11, but you’ll only ever see one of those six-week stretches cited in their outlook for 2025.
With that said, this doesn’t mean looking at second-half or late-season performances is never useful. Especially for players in shifting situations or those at either end of an age curve, a late-season trend can sometimes be expected to continue into the following year. Today, I will identify three second-half performances of note from last season, good and bad, that fit this criteria. These are the players you should fade or target in 2025 based on how they closed out 2024.
2024 Second-Half Fantasy Football Performances To Note
Chase Brown Took Over the Bengals’ Backfield
No player’s 2024 was a tale of two seasons more than Chase Brown’s. In Weeks 1-8, the sophomore back split work with veteran Zack Moss, averaging a passable 10.3 half-PPR points per game. But Moss was shut down after Week 8 due to a neck injury, at which point Brown took off. He averaged 18.4 points over his final eight games — truly elite production.
The key thing to note about Brown’s blistering finish to the season is that it came on truly absurd volume. With Moss out for the year, the Bengals had no one else to turn to. Between Week 9 and Week 17, Cincinnati running backs other than Brown recorded just eight carries and one target total. Plenty of solid fantasy backs see one of their teammates record that many touches every week, not across eight games. Brown played 86% of the Bengals’ offensive snaps, handled 95% of their RB carries and added a 13% target share for good measure. No other back could even sniff those metrics for more than a game or two at a time.
So it’s clear that Brown was a fantasy stud without Moss in 2024, thanks mainly to an absurd level of backfield dominance. The tougher question is what to make of this fact heading into 2025. On the one hand, it’s incredibly unlikely that the Bengals plan to use only one running back for an entire season. Moss himself is back healthy, and Cincinnati reunited with veteran pass-catcher Samaje Perine and drafted rookie Tahj Brooks out of Texas Tech. A pessimist would argue that we can’t expect Brown, whose efficiency was nothing special in 2024, to repeat as an RB1 with less than a historically dominant workload.
But if we’re looking at this glass as half full, the Bengals can’t put this genie back in the bottle. Their backfield was better with Brown vacuuming up work than it was with Moss taking 10 carries a game for 3.3 yards apiece. Moss, Perine and a seventh-round rookie aren’t exactly threatening competition. Even if he doesn’t continue where he left off as a league-winning top-five fantasy back, Brown could lose a solid chunk of work and still be an RB1.
As always, the right answer is likely somewhere in the middle. Brown won’t see every touch in the Bengals’ backfield, but we’re not going back to the start of 2024 when he was the 1B to Moss’ 1A. I lean toward being in on Brown at his RB12 ADP. He’s still a decent young runner who is set to be the lead back on arguably the most exciting fantasy offense in the league. Feel free to form your own take; just remember not to blindly trust Brown’s season-long average or his late-season dominance.
Jayden Reed‘s Role Somehow Got Even Smaller
Among players who played all 17 games, Reed leads the way with the biggest dropoff in fantasy points per game from the first half of the season to the second. The sophomore receiver averaged 12.8 half-PPR points through Week 9, making him a high-end WR2. From that point onward, his points per game (PPG) was cut essentially in half to 6.8, outside of the top 50 receivers.
At first, I was ready to dismiss this difference as exactly the kind of thing I warned about in the intro: Random statistical noise that looks significant because it happens to line up with the midway point of the season. To a certain extent, this is true. Reed is a dynamic player who relies heavily on big plays to score fantasy points, and those big plays just happened to be more prevalent early in the year. In Weeks 1-9, he had 14 plays of 20+ yards, including five plays over 40 yards. In Weeks 10-18, with just one fewer game played, he broke only four explosive plays, none of which went for 40 yards.
However, while I do think some of that discrepancy is just random, there is more to Reed’s fall-off than a purely random lack of big plays. A slot specialist in the Packers’ system, he always ran less than a full complement of routes, and his role became even more part-time as the season went on. In Weeks 1-9, Reed averaged a 16.8% target share on a 72% route participation rate. Following Green Bay’s Week 10 bye (playoffs included), those numbers fell to 13.7% and 64%. A 3% drop in target share and an 8% drop in route participation aren’t good for any player, but they are especially bad for a player who was already on the border of fantasy-relevant volume.
Heading into 2025, the Packers have only added more competition for Reed in the form of first-round receiver Matthew Golden. This came after an offseason in which Josh Jacobs publicly stated they needed a proven No. 1 WR. Even down at an average draft position (ADP) of WR44, I’m fading Reed. He is a talented player who will likely have a big game or two, but he’ll be very hard-pressed to break out as a truly reliable fantasy option if his usage remains where it was to finish 2024.
Mark Andrews Got Healthy
Mark Andrews had a lot going against him coming into 2024. His 2023 season had ended (aside from two catches on 18 snaps in the AFC Conference Championship) with a broken fibula that required tightrope surgery. Then, he was involved in a car accident just a few weeks before Week 1. Is it surprising he averaged 12.1 points per game in Weeks 10-18 compared to just 7.2 in Weeks 1-9?
Unfortunately, things aren’t quite that simple. A large part of that difference in scoring can be attributed to touchdowns, traditionally the largest source of variance in fantasy scoring (especially for tight ends). Andrews recorded just four scores in his first nine outings but scored a touchdown in seven of his final eight games. This discrepancy casts at least some doubt on the idea that we can simply throw out the veteran’s slow start to the season.
Just like with Reed, we have to dive deeper into Andrews’ usage to get the full story. In Weeks 1-9, Andrews averaged an 11% target share on a 55% route participation rate. Those are miserable numbers, on which very few players (and certainly not a 29-year-old tight end) would be able to provide consistent fantasy scoring. Thankfully, Andrews’ role expanded down the stretch. His route participation rate still wasn’t great at 66%, but his 18% target share was respectable. He didn’t stop there, either, posting an even higher 77% route participation rate and a 22% target share in the Ravens’ two postseason games.
Putting it all together, it’s easy to paint a narrative to explain Andrews’ mediocre 2024 season. Early in the year, while still recovering from his surgery and/or car crash, he played a reduced role. The Ravens were happy to lean on Isaiah Likely while the former All-Pro got back up to speed. By the end of the season and especially in the playoffs, Andrews returned closer to his elite usage from years past, and his fantasy scoring increased as a result.
With that said, Andrews will be 30 for the 2025 season, and it’s not like he was his old dominant self to finish last season. Even with this charitable interpretation of his 2024, we shouldn’t expect a true return to form in 2025. Thankfully, Andrews’ ADP is low enough that we don’t need one for him to be a good pick.
Even including his slow start, Andrews finished 2024 as the TE5 in half-PPR points (TE7 in points per game). His current ADP is the TE7, right behind another veteran tight end with fewer excuses for his washed-looking 2024 in Travis Kelce. Even if you don’t fully buy this list of excuses argument for viewing Andrews’ 2024 more positively, I hope it convinces you to take him before Kelce when faced with that choice.
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Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for FantasyPros.com. Find him on Twitter and Bluesky @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.