Last Season’s Top-15 Fantasy Football League Winners from Yahoo

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  • By Jon Mosales

    Last Updated on June 16, 2025 11:07 am by Jon Mosales | Published: June 16, 2025

    Fantasy Football is more art than science, but it feels like if we drill down enough, we can predict what we can and leave the rest up to the football Gods.  Depending on which adage you prefer about using the past to predict the future, I am a big fan examining what just worked in order to stay ahead of the curve.  Below is the Yahoo data of the players that were on the highest % of winning rosters.  Some of them are predictable like Saquon Barkley and some were completely unpredictable at the onset of the season.  This is a mix of black magic as you want to right early with your important picks, but also hitting with your late-round picks can be just as important.  Closer to the season, I will write an article making a prediction of the top-20 players for the end of this season, but that will be under lock-and-key.

    1. Jalen McMillan, on 23.18% of championship rosters

    McMillian looked great and was going to be on a short-list of must-have players this season before the Buccs went out and drafted Emeka Egbuka in the first round.  McMillian has to fight for catches beyond the rookie, Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, but maybe he is the best of the bunch.  Last season, he only had 10 receptions total be the Week 10 bye week, but when Evans and Godwin both got hurt, opportunity knocked and he was a top-20 WR from Week 14 on.  This success story is about pouncing when the wire is hot as he was certainly available in 12-team leagues until the two studs WRs went down.  The rookie only had one top-10 finish all season, but when you get a WR2 for nothing, it catapults your fantasy team into another stratosphere.

    2. Tee Higgins, 23.08%

    Higgins was a core part of the perfect fantasy situation.  The Bengals were under drafted because Joe Burrow looked unhealthy, but that proved to be a overblown, but what wasn’t was how inept the CIN defense was all season.  Higgins outperformed all WRs no named Ja’Marr Chase or Justin Jefferson on FPPG basis and if your team made the finals, his Week 17 WR1 finish almost certainly sealed the deal.  CIN has become the new model for fantasy GMs to target, but finding the next CIN is harder than it looks.

    3. Saquon Barkley, 22.75%

    This was the most obvious after the fact pick in recent memory.  Going from a bottom-five o-line to a top-one was sure to be an upgrade, but instead we got one of the best RB seasons of all time.  Barkley was reminiscent of CMC the season before, where if he was on your team, you were probably close to first place all season and didn’t slow down during the fantasy playoffs.  There isn’t much we can learn here, but if your drafted Barkley, you were the perfect cocktail of lucky and good.  

    4. Jonathan Taylor, 22.57%


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    June 16, 2025, 11:07 am