Week 3 of the 2025 NFL season is in the books. These are the 10 storylines shaping the fantasy football landscape with Week 4 on the horizon.
1) Year-three breakouts
We’re three weeks into the season and all three of the league leaders in yards per route run are third-year wideouts from the 2023 class. Puka Nacua is your fantasy WR1. Jaxon Smith-Njigba is the WR5. In spite of a quiet Monday night game, Zay Flowers sits at WR13. Even two of the more unsustainable breakouts of 2025—Quentin Johnston and Tre Tucker—are year three wideouts who improved from their first to their second seasons. In fact, every one of these receivers improved from year one to year two in both yards per game and yards per route run, save for Tucker. The YPRR increases were drastic across the board and have been so again in 2025. The third-year breakout remains underrated.
2) Second-round busts
There’s a lot of football left to be played, but the second round is shaping up to be a minefield this year, with wide receivers leading the way in casualties.
Not a single second-round wideout is scoring within 25 spots of their positional ADP right now. Brock Bowers is also falling behind, while the running backs are more of a mixed bag. Three of the backs are putting up RB1 numbers with Josh Jacobs at least giving fantasy managers usable RB2 scores. The big differentiator between he haves and the have-nots here has been receiving work. Two of the three RB1s—De’Von Achane and Bucky Irving—rank top-five in running back receptions. The two worst picks of the lot—Ashton Jeanty and Chase Brown—have combined for fewer receptions than either Irving or Achane.
3) Fumbling issues in New England
The Patriots have given second-round rookie TreVeyon Henderson frustratingly few opportunities through three weeks. While Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniels don’t want fantasy managers to have any fun, they may have no choice after the disaster that was Week 3. Rhamondre Stevenson coughed up two fumbles, the second of which was at the goal line. They didn’t turn to their rookie after that. Instead, they looked to Antonio Gibson, who fumbled three plays later. McDaniels finally gave up on his veterans after the third giveaway. This is what the backfield looked like on the Pats’ final three drives.
The fumbling issues aren’t new for either back. Among active running backs with 500 carries, Stevenson ranks first and Gibson ranks second in fumbles per carry. I doubt Henderson continues to dominate snaps like he did at the end of Week 3, but this is the opening he needed to earn more work.
4) Elite quarterbacks reign supreme
Josh Allen was drafted as the QB1 in Underdog drafts in 2024. He finished as the QB1 and those who drafted Allen advanced 18.7 percent of their teams to the Best Ball playoffs. The expected advance rate for any pick is 2/12, or 16.7 percent. To be fair to fantasy drafters, he was the cheapest QB1 of the past five years. When he went inside the top 30 picks in 2023 and 2022, Allen had advance rates of…27.1 percent and 25.5 percent. This is to say that fantasy managers have yet to push Allen’s ADP up to a point where he becomes a bad pick. Allen is currently the QB2 with another positive advance rate likely on the way. Lamar Jackson (QB1) and Jalen Hurts (QB5) have also beaten the expected advance rate in each of the past four seasons. Arguably the most impressive aspect of this is that Jackson missed five games in two separate seasons. He managed slightly positive advance rates in both.
5) Punt TE wins again
I wrote about how useful completely punting on the tight end position was in the summer. I wish I had listened to myself a little more instead of taking Brock Bowers in every draft.
Only one of the top six fantasy tight ends was drafted as a TE1. That is Tucker Kraft, who went as the TE10 overall. The current No. 2 tight end wasn’t even taken in every Best Ball draft and was almost never selected in redraft leagues. This isn’t to say McBride can’t surge ahead or Bowers won’t recover from his slow start. It does, however, give even more credence to the idea that the tight end position is fluky beyond comprehension. Spending nothing on it is a perfectly viable strategy.
6) Quinshon Judkins leads all rookie RBs in rushing yards
The header says it all here. Judkins missed all of training camp and Week 1. He played just 20 snaps in Week 2. Despite the limited workload, Judkins is already blowing by his classmates with 155 rushing yards on the back of an 18/94/1 rushing line in Week 3. Judkins’ mark of 5.1 yards after contact per attempt is the second-best in the league, trailing only RJ Harvey. Of note, Harvey has fewer than half as many carries as Judkins.
7) James Conner injury fallout
James Conner is expected to miss the remainder of the season with an ankle injury. Trey Benson was already mixing in as a change-of-pace option before Conner went down. Benson had a 39 percent route rate through two weeks and 27 percent of the team’s carries. Those numbers were at 10 and 20 percent in his rookie season. Benson looked electric in this newfound role. He currently sits at third in rush yards over expected per carry and seventh in yards after contact per carry. The next step for Benson will be picking up the ugly yards. He has the fourth-lowest success rate in the league. Benson has a habit of looking for a home run instead of grinding out a few hard-fought yards. He has found the home run fairly often this year, but might need to plunge into the trenches slightly more often.
James Conner is expected to miss the remainder of the 2025 season with an ankle injury, putting Trey Benson in line for an RB1 workload. Fantasy managers should be doing everything they can to land him off waivers.
8) Drops drops drops
There’s no worse feeling than watching your star wide receiver drop an easy pass. The nerds will tell you drops are random. They might be right. Does that make the list—which is the most yards lost via drops—feel any worse?
- CeeDee Lamb – 98 (on five drops)
- Ja’Tavion Sanders – 52 (three)
- Jake Ferguson – 49 (three)
- Pat Freiermuth – 46 (one)
- Tyreek Hill – 45 (one)
I don’t think it does. The yardage lost on drops was calculated based on the target depth of each drop, which doesn’t account for the potential for YAC either.
Trevor Lawrence leads the league with 13 dropped passes, trailed closely by Dak Prescott at 10. Those two and Bo Nix are the only quarterbacks credited with dropped targets in the end zone.
9) At least he’s trying
Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs have given us some wretched football over the past two seasons, abandoning explosive passing plays in favor of grinding out high success rate check-downs. Mahomes ranked outside of the top 40 passers in target depth in 2023 and 2024. His 9.1 aDOT through three weeks ranks ninth among qualified passers. Has that worked well for him? Not really. Mahomes has completed 4-of-15 deep attempts this year. He ranks outside the top 20 passers in completion rate and YPA on these throws. The fact that he’s trying to hit the big play again despite his top receiver being Tyquan Thornton is at least encouraging. The eventually returns of Xavier Worthy and Rashee Rice could finally turn things around for this struggling team that has only won two Super Bowls in the past three years.
10) Tory Horton keeps flashing
This is the list of drafted wide receivers with a return touchdown and multiple receiving touchdowns as a rookie since 2015:
- Tyreek Hill
- Tyler Lockett
- Diontae Johnson
- Will Fuller
- CeeDee Lamb
- JuJu Smith-Schuster
- Mecole Hardman
- Rashad Greene
It took Tory Horton three games to join that list. Is it a tortured list? Incredibly so. I will pay for my crimes one day. Is it also wildly encouraging that Horton is flashing the ability to change a game with one play every week? Of course it is. And players who have done that in the past have often gone on to be fantasy stars.