One of my adult strategies has been to cultivate a life lived off-peak. Let’s get to the grocery store when it’s not overly crowded. Let’s have a late lunch or an early dinner. Let’s be smart about traffic, avoid gridlock. Better flow, happier life.
Fantasy managers understand these goals. Every season, we’re trying to find offenses that employ narrow usage trees — the teams that don’t spread the ball around too much. Let’s lean on just a few players. It’s nice to be confident in secure knowledge of who commands the ball.
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Today’s assignment is to identify a few narrow-usage teams for 2025. You can consider them yourself and season them to taste. Maybe there’s another 2014 Chicago Bears, waiting to be uncovered.
Cincinnati Bengals
We love the Cincinnati setup for the carnival potential — the Bengals have an elite passing game and a suspect defense, which leads to a high-scoring pinball game more often than not. But the narrowness of the usage here also makes fantasy managers happy.
Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins will command high target shares and Chase Brown is one of those backs who never seems to come off the field. Andrei Iosivas stole six touchdowns last year, but that was mostly a function of Higgins missing time — I doubt Iosivas is close to that number if this season has a normal runout. Burrow threw three-quarters of his touchdown passes to Chase, Higgins or Brown last year. I’m going to draft Cincinnati players aggressively all summer.
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Miami Dolphins
The Miami offense comes with obvious caveats. Can Tua Tagovailoa stay healthy? Can Mike McDaniel scheme up big plays again? Will Tyreek Hill be happy all year? But the Dolphins were a concentrated offense last year, and now target-gobbling tight end Jonnu Smith is gone. Hill, Jaylen Waddle and De’Von Achane should get all the volume they can handle. When Tagovailoa is your quarterback, there really isn’t any floor. But there’s still plausible upside here, and a concentrated offense for touches.
Los Angeles Chargers
This one might sneak up on you, because fantasy managers are focused on how the backfield might play out between Omarion Hampton and Najee Harris. But last year, the Chargers only had two receivers get past two touchdowns — Ladd McConkey scored seven times, and Quentin Johnston spiked on eight occasions. It took McConkey some time to figure out the pro game, but he was cooking down the stretch — he posted a 45-657-3 line over his final seven games (that’s 109 catches and about 1,600 yards in a full season) and then had a 9-197-1 smash in the playoff loss to Houston.
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Even if the narrowness of the LAC tree only brings you to McConkey and Hampton (the latter’s case is helped by Harris currently being unavailable), I’ve done my job here.
Dallas Cowboys
Maybe I’m wishcasting this one a bit but we’ll shoehorn the Cowboys into this room. We know new OC Brian Schottenheimer generally wants to establish the run, but do the Cowboys have the right personnel to do that effectively? Meanwhile, the passing game is controlled by two overlord targets — CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens. Dak Prescott is good enough to run a carnival offense if it comes to it (I don’t trust the Dallas defense, either), and Jake Ferguson is a useful tight end. Here’s hoping Schottenheimer works talent-to-scheme, not the other way around.
Tennessee Titans
The Titans won just three games last year and were 27th in scoring, so it wasn’t a fantasy bonanza. But we have to acknowledge that Calvin Ridley was the only player on the club to surpass 500 receiving yards, while Tony Pollard was ninth in the league in touches.
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Head coach Brian Callahan likes to feature his best skill players, and Ridley and Pollard have a better chance at success if rookie QB Cam Ward is the real deal. I recognize we try to be realistic with what we expect from rookie quarterbacks (Caleb Williams and Bryce Young wave hello), but it’s also notable how C.J. Stroud and Jayden Daniels outkicked expectations in their first seasons. It’s not likely that Ward is that level of an immediate smash, but perhaps he’s more NFL-ready than the market recognizes. Ridley and Pollard both look like solid ADP values.
Arizona Cardinals
I’m still reconciling how I feel about this offense because I don’t have complete faith in QB Kyler Murray. His substandard height leads to problems at times — the Cardinals couldn’t get Marvin Harrison Jr. going in the short areas of the field last year, and Trey McBride has never been much of a touchdown scorer since turning pro (this is a Murray tweet). But you can’t blame the Cardinals for trying to utilize their best players — about 60% of Arizona’s completions last year went to Harrison, McBride or James Conner. If Murray’s play takes a step forward — and part of this is on the play-calling, of course — we know who will primarily benefit.