There were plenty of individual winners and losers out of the 2025 NFL Combine last weekend. Lots of unexpectedly good combine performances from unexpected players. Sure, some players are now going higher, and a few may go lower. But the real winner of the NFL Combine is us, the fantasy community.
Chicken Dinner
Up until the Combine, this class seemed to be a pure smorgasbord of the “unsexy” fantasy football positions. The running back class is loaded with talented guys, and they only got stronger as a whole during Combine Weekend. The tight end also feels deeper this year than the past few draft classes, and it has two absolute studs at the top in Warren and Loveland.
But now, what just a week ago felt like a weak, directionless wide receiver group now feels much, much deeper. There is a huge crop of true athletic freaks in this class, which is something no one was really expecting. Seemingly, all of the consensus WR4-10 in this class basically tested as athletic freaks with Relative Athletic Scores (RAS) of 9 or better (10 being the maximum score possible).
What does this mean? This means that we now have a second tier of wide receivers who are worth drafting in dynasty, redraft, and best ball. What was once thought of as a pure crap shoot of players that were basically all draft capital and landing spot dependent, is now a group of uber-athletes with a chance of being impactful on the field no matter what team they go to.
For rebuilding dynasty teams, second-round picks are now valuable again for 2025. It’s no longer RB or bust in the second. You now will have the chance to draft the likes of Jayden Higgins, Elic Ayomanor, Jaylin Noel, Jack Bech, and Tre Harris. And for rebuilders, that gives you the opportunity to help accelerate the rebuild if you are able to hit on these guys as fantasy producers at the next level.
Contenders should also rejoice. Not only are there now wide receivers to choose from at the back of the first, but it also ripens the field of prospects, meaning high-end running backs and receivers are more likely to be available, even as you get deeper into the second round and beyond of rookie drafts.
Tight ends also offer intrigue for fantasy managers this off-season. While many of us wish the top-rated prospects at the position had tested at the Combine, it also means that they are still somewhat of an enigma at this point. Tyler Warren and Colston Loveland both project to be NFL rookie first-round picks. But there’s a decent chance they could be dynasty rookie second-round picks, depending on league size and scoring format.
So What’s the Catch?
This is a terrible, terrible time to need a quarterback in SuperFlex Leagues. Like, truly awful. There is one, if we’re lucky, good QB prospect in this draft class. Cam Ward is a bit of a project, even as highly drafted QBs go. He has a big arm and good athleticism, but he didn’t really utilize that athleticism in college. It’s hard to project him to start doing so in the NFL, though it’s not impossible.
Meanwhile, Shadeur Sanders more or less sat out of the Combine entirely, and reports have come out that a lot of teams didn’t really connect with Sanders in a meaningful way the way that you would want for your possible future franchise QB. It seems more like Sanders is now in a competition with Jaxson Dart for QB2, not with Ward for QB1 like we previously thought.
Outside of those 3 QBs, the only other one even slightly on the radar for fantasy is Jalen Milroe, who apparently now has magic hands that grow like the Grinch’s heart at Christmas. But Milroe is a major project, and there’s a good chance that he never even gets his shot as a starter in the NFL.
For SuperFlex leagues, this QB class is more or less a full avoid, regardless of whether your roster needs a QB or not. Even if we like Ward, taking Ward also means possibly passing on the likes of Ashton Jeanty, Tet McMillan, and Travis Hunter.
If you have the number one overall pick in rookie drafts, you are in an especially tough spot. Jeanty is pretty much unequivocally the consensus first pick in all league formats. But if you have the first pick, you are more than likely in a rebuild. And the last thing you need is a running back scoring lots of points with a weak roster around him.
You’re almost forced to trade out of the pick at that point, and doing so leaves a lot of value on the table when the rest of the league knows that you really have no business having Ashton Jeanty on your roster. A lot of bad fantasy teams will have to navigate that landscape this off-season.
