When preparing for your fantasy football drafts, knowing which players to target and others to avoid is important. The amount of information available can be overwhelming, so a great way to condense the data and determine players to draft and others to leave for your leaguemates is to use our expert consensus fantasy football rankings compared to fantasy football average draft position (ADP). In this way, you can identify players the experts are willing to reach for at ADP and others they are not drafting until much later than average.
You can also see which players create the most debate among experts by checking out the standard deviation in their rankings. The higher the standard deviation, the more disagreement there is among experts as to where a player should be ranked. These players can be the ones who make or break your fantasy football drafts. Getting these picks right can lay the foundation for a fantasy football championship. Let’s dive into a few notable fantasy football players who could make or break your draft.
Fantasy Football Advice: Make or Break Draft Picks
Here are players in our ECR top 60 fantasy football draft rankings that are causing the most disagreement among experts based on where they are going in drafts.
It’s worrisome that Saquon Barkley had 482 touches last season, playoffs included. Maybe he’s at greater risk of injury this year after handling such a massive workload, but it’s hard to quantify the risk. What we can judge with a greater degree of certainty is that Barkley is a phenomenal running back and has a near-perfect ecosystem, playing with a great offensive line in a run-heavy offense. Barkley might not be able to top a 2024 regular season in which he had 2,283 yards from scrimmage and 15 touchdowns, but if he stays healthy, he’s a good bet to finish as a top-five fantasy RB.
– Pat Fitzmaurice
Christian McCaffrey’s 2024 season was derailed by bilateral Achilles tendonitis. Yes, I know it crushed many fantasy teams. Yes, I know that if you drafted him last year, you’re probably saying, “hell no…I won’t be walking down that road again.” I’ll get this out of the way quickly. I’m back in. George Kittle had similar issues with his Achilles, but after he received stem cell infusions, it hasn’t remained a problem. McCaffrey had a similar treatment last year and enters this season fully healthy from all reports. In the small sample we got from McCaffrey last year, his numbers remained strong. In the three full games he played, he averaged 18.6 touches and 93.7 total yards, all while playing 81-94% of the snaps. McCaffrey’s 22% missed tackle forced rate and his 1.80 yards per route run were strong (per Fantasy Points Data). Among those two statistical categories, McCaffrey ranked eighth-best (70 qualifying backs) and sixth-best (53 qualifying backs). McCaffrey has at least one more big season left. I’ll be investing heavily in him for 2025.
– Derek Brown
I have some concerns about James Cook heading into the 2025 season. His touchdown totals for the last three seasons: 3, 6, 18. Which number looks like the outlier to you? Cook is being selected as a high-end RB2 in early drafts, which doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable. But TD regression is inevitable, Cook probably isn’t going to get a huge rushing load because he weighs less than 200 pounds, and while he’s a good pass catcher, Cook might not be a huge needle-mover in that area simply because Josh Allen doesn’t check down to his RBs very often. It’s also possible the Bills give more work to second-year RB Ray Davis, who had 152 yards from scrimmage against the Jets in the one game Cook missed last season. But the Bills gave Cook a new deal in mid-August, and he should remain the leader of the Buffalo backfield.
– Pat Fitzmaurice
Omarion Hampton piled up 3,164 rushing yards and 30 TD runs over his last two seasons at North Carolina and had 67 receptions over that span. The 220-pound Hampton is a powerful downhill runner who’s a nightmare to bring down when he has a full head of steam. He’s terrific between the tackles, squeezing through tight spaces and powering through contact. The Chargers grabbed Hampton at No. 22 in the draft. With Najee Harris not yet recovered from the eye injury he sustained in a Fourth of July fireworks mishap, it’s possible Hampton could handle an enormous workload for the Chargers right away.
– Pat Fitzmaurice
