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January 21, 2025, 11:19 am
What a wild year of fantasy football it was. We saw one of the better rookie classes in recent memory make its mark on the league and a resurgent group of veteran running backs defy conventional wisdom and provide a ton of value to teams that held onto them.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the dynasty landscape and recap what transpired in 2024, while discussing what all that means for the offseason into 2025. This week, we’ll start with five risers and five fallers from the 2024 season.
Note: All season-long numbers used in this article are half-PPR numbers through Week 17, the end of the fantasy season, and all dynasty rankings are from KeepTradeCut’s crowdsourced superflex rankings.
Five Dynasty Risers
- Seahawks WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba (WR8 in 2024, WR11 on KTC): JSN emerged as a true WR1 in 2024 after facing significant questions about whether he’d reach that ceiling heading into the season. In hindsight, his 9th-round redraft ADP was patently absurd, but there were real concerns that he was the highest-drafted WR in a weak class coming into the season. After a rocky Week 1, Smith-Njigba bottomed out at WR34 on KTC. He basically nailed the script for the conventional year-two breakout we’re accustomed to for the top WRs. He’s now the clear WR1 in Seattle, and that offense has a matchup nightmare in DK Metcalf to soak up coverage and a high-volume passer in Geno Smith. With a much weaker WR draft class in 2025, there’s almost zero chance Smith-Njigba falls significantly before the 2025 season.
- Eagles RB Saquon Barkley (RB1 in 2024, RB3 on KTC): A running back with a history of injury issues switching teams right before he hits the traditional age-cliff can be a frightening prospect. But very few running backs have the talent and sheer athletic ability of Barkley. He was one of several veteran running backs, including Derrick Henry, Joe Mixon, and another runner I’ll discuss in a moment, who defied conventional wisdom about older runners in dynasty this year. Barkley spent most of the offseason in the RB8-10 range on KTC, but currently sits behind only Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs after his 200o-yard season, even though he turns 28 next month. It goes to show that despite how dynasty players view age and situation changes, sometimes elite talent can completely erase any other factors.
- Bucs QB Baker Mayfield (QB5 in 2024, QB14 on KTC): Mayfield revived his career in Tampa last season, but lost his QB whisperer OC, so there was pessimism about him entering his age-29 season in 2024. Mayfield instead took another step FORWARD in 2024, as new OC Liam Coen added even more to his arsenal. He finished as the QB5 despite multi-week injuries for all three of his primary pass catchers and significant regression from his receiving-oriented RB1. Mayfield fell as low as QB45 during his rocky 2022 with Carolina and Los Angeles, but he’s now a great bet to return QB1 seasons throughout his early 30s.
- Packers RB Josh Jacobs (RB5 in 2024, RB10 on KTC): Speaking of veteran runners who changed teams and improved, Jacobs took like a fish to water in Green Bay’s ground-and-pound offense. His age 24, 25 and 26 seasons have been complicated to value from a dynasty perspective, but it’s now clear that the arc of those three seasons, the first elite, the second marred by situational strife, and the third elite again in a better situation, bends toward a running back who will excel on his second contract. Entering the season, the Packers offense was viewed as great, but with a lot of mouths to feed. In the end, the only mouth that got consistently fed was Jacobs. Without any of the other Packers weapons making leaps into the elite tiers at their positions (although shoutout to Tucker Kraft for a TE1 season), it’s obvious that this offense runs through Jacobs, now and moving forward.
- Panthers RB Chuba Hubbard (RB12 in 2024, RB15 on KTC): Hubbard’s RB1 season in 2024 has to be one of the least likely in recent fantasy football memory. Even more unlikely, he seems to have locked down the bellcow role in Carolina for years to come. Hubbard’s ascent is borderline shocking, since the Panthers invested draft capital in the only running back who consistently was taken in the first round of rookie drafts in 2024. He sat in the mid-40s at running back on KTC in August, before three significant things broke right for him: he produced well above expectation on the field, he received a substantial contract extension, and Jonathan Brooks’ knee injury took longer than anticipated to heal and almost immediately reoccured. Hubbard is a good bet to be the leading fantasy producer in an improving Panthers offense in 2025.
Five Dynasty Fallers
- Jets RB Breece Hall (RB18 in 2024, RB5 on KTC): Hall has been the RB1, RB2 or RB3 on KTC for most of his time in the NFL. In September, his value on KTC’s 10,000-point scale was at its absolute peak, in the 8,300 range in superflex formats. And then the meat of the Jets’ season happened. Hall, who is now down to almost 6,000 on KTC’s value scale, struggled mightily with the Jets of it all, battling through injuries and a disastrous offense. While he’s still top 5 at the position (although he’ll almost certainly be unseated soon by Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty), it’s a fall for a player once considered a top dynasty cornerstone. He’s still just 23, but he’s a free agent after the 2025 season, and the Jets have the youngest fantasy-relevant player in the league (Braelon Allen) behind him on the depth chart. There’s suddenly tons of uncertainty.
- Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill (WR20 in 2024, WR34 on KTC): Hill’s late-career dynasty stock was always going to be volatile the second he stopped producing at an elite level. Similar to Antonio Brown (who Hill changed his social media avatar to on Monday, ironically), Hill’s personality was never going to mix well with a decline in production, and he’s now seemingly trying to navigate a trade out of Miami. Hill was WR8 on KTC in September and has plummeted, losing basically half of his value on the 10,000 point scale over the course of his age-30 season. If you held him to compete in 2024, you got about as bad an outcome as could be expected, and you’ll likely struggle to trade him now. Good luck with this situation.
- Texans QB C.J. Stroud (QB18 in 2024, QB9 on KTC): The top dynasty asset on KTC is always worth 9,999 on the 10,000 point scale. Stroud was worth 9,994 in January 2024, shortly after he smoked the Browns in his first-career playoff game. To have already fallen to QB9 (down to 6,686 on the scale) is pretty remarkable for a player who the dynasty community was so high on, but probably accurately characterizes what Stroud’s sophomore season was like. Stroud played every game and finished comfortably outside QB1 territory. His offensive line got a lot worse in 2024, but it was still a sophomore slump for perhaps the most impressive rookie QB we’ve ever seen. He’s firmly a hold going into 2025 since he’s still 23, but his long-term ceiling might be a lot lower than most thought a year ago.
- Texans WR Tank Dell (WR48 in 2024, WR42 on KTC): Part of Stroud’s struggles in 2024 could be explained by injuries to his receivers, but Dell wasn’t having a particularly good sophomore season even before he suffered a horrific injury. Dell’s rise from a 23-year-old undersized third-round pick to top-12 dynasty WR was a dizzying ascent, but he’s now outside the top 100 in KTC’s rankings after suffering a knee injury that will likely see him miss the entire 2025 season. His close relationship with Stroud seemed to portend future success, but his tiny frame has now succumbed to multiple serious injuries in his two-year career, and he’ll likely play his next game shortly before his 27th birthday. There’s a chance he’s never a fantasy-relevant player ever again.
- Bills TE Dalton Kincaid (TE26 in 2024, TE6 on KTC): Kincaid was one of the most surprising fantasy disappointments of the 2024 season, for me, as he was my most frequently drafted TE. Sure, he missed time due to injury, but he never stood out as special in a pass-catching group that’s extremely ordinary. While his QB is putting up MVP-type numbers, Kincaid just isn’t elevating at anywhere close to a similar level, which is concerning for a player who was as high as the TE2 on KTC at several points in 2024. He doesn’t look like a difference maker at a position that’s quite top heavy.