The 2024 season was ultimately a successful one for me, but it felt like I was a couple tweaks away from absolutely crushing it last year. Here, I’m going to delve into some of my pre-season takes from last year and break down some of my best ball ownership with the biggest beats from each position. Hopefully, we can look and see where I was right and where I should’ve paid better attention to some red flags to look for when planning for the 2025 season.

One of my first off-season pieces from last season was a July piece detailing an attempt to find the formula for ADP-smashing wide receivers, looking at 2023 data and applying it to the way draft boards were shaping up mid-way through the summer. Ultimately, this piece had little good to offer, in hindsight, but of that little there was the inclusion of rookie WR Ladd McConkey. That one was hard to miss, given all the vacated targets that left the Chargers’ receiving room last off-season by way of Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, which I noted in that initial piece. Hopefully, my research is a bit more polished by this stage of the off-season in preparation for 2025 and fares better than some of these takes from last season.

Shortly thereafter, I moved onto covering some running backs I thought were being overpriced a bit last off-season, and while I wasn’t the best at sifting through the top-end backs, I nailed a couple later backs to avoid on the list. I wasn’t hip to James Cook seeing a 180 in red zone usage, and wasn’t expecting Josh Jacobs to fulfill his price tag, let alone soar up to the RB5 overall on the season. As for the good from this research, I was rightfully out on running backs Zamir White and Trey Benson. White jumped out as overpriced last season, as I keyed in on the lack of sample size and commitment from the team. Citing talking points from local coverage of the team, the Raiders brought in Alexander Mattison specifically for his fit in the scheme, and the team was still in the market for more RB help beyond that. Ultimately, White was drafted as the RB24 and 80th overall last off-season, but went on to rack up 2.8 YPC on 65 carries in eight appearances in 2024, while a carousel of backs, headlined by Mattison, took turns leading the Raiders’ backfield. Meanwhile, Benson’s fade was mostly riding the coach speak that Cardinals starting RB James Conner was getting around the time he got his two-year contract extension last summer. Benson was among the most highly anticipated rookie RBs from the 2024 draft class, but found himself drafted to a team without much of a role to carve out in Arizona behind Conner. At the time of the article, Benson was going as a ninth-round fantasy pick, and had three games with more than five touches all season, while Conner started 16-of-17 games. 

While it unfortunately never wound up in writing for me last season, I was a huge fan of Chase Brown ahead of last season, and thought his 2024 breakout was a sure thing as a dual-threat RB in a high-paced Cincinnati offense. Last year, Brown was the RB37 off of draft boards according to half-PPR redraft ADP, and was being taken as the RB30 in best ball by the end of the off-season. Meanwhile, Zack Moss was taken as the RB29 in redraft, but RB32 in Best Ball. I found myself taking Brown early and often, even oftentimes reaching, while also soft-fading the projected primary back in Moss, but not completely removing him from my draft boards. Being right about Brown likely helped save my 2024 best ball portfolio from a surefire negative return, thanks to a 16.2% ownership share across 200+ drafts last off-season, the highest of any player at any position. Typically, average ownership on any given player that is always drafted will hover around 10-11%, and Brown was my only RB north of a 12% ownership. Brown ended up the RB12 overall on the season, and finished as a top-10 weekly RB in six of his last eight performances. He was top-five in FPPG among RBs across the back half of the season, with 18.3 per game.

The primary piece that came to mind when deciding to look back at last year’s takes was one joining forces with the great Jon Mosales for some bold predictions in the 2024 season. There, I dish out 10 items, which fared a lot better than I initially anticipated. I used two points in this article to detail my take on the tight end position last season: avoid paying up for an elite tight end because almost a dozen of them had top-three potential at the position. Sam LaPorta, Travis Kelce, Dalton Kincaid, Mark Andrews and Kyle Pitts were all drafted as five of the top six at the position last season, all 61st overall or sooner in mid-summer drafts, though none of them averaged more than 10 half-PPR FPPG in 2024. Brock Bowers (TE11 last season), George Kittle (TE7), Trey McBride (TE3) and Jonnu Smith (TE23) all finished atop the position last year, averaging at least 10.5 FPPG apiece. I also spoke in favor of the aging wideouts that were available in the early rounds, namely Mike Evans and Cooper Kupp, who were being taken as the WR15 and WR17 overall respectively. Evans finished as the WR9 overall after appearing in 14 games, while Kupp finished as the WR40 overall after missing some time and falling off a cliff late in the season. Through the first 14 weeks of the season, though, Kupp was the WR5 in FPPG in nine appearances through that stage of the season. I also had a couple of QB takes which saw split results themselves. The bad first, I believed Trevor Lawrence to be a dark horse candidate to join the elite at the position in 2024, though that dream may not be dead in seasons beyond with new coach Liam Coen pulling the strings of the offense and future of the team. Now, the good lies with a call that Bo Nix would be drafted as a top-12 QB in 2025, despite being taken as the QB25 overall ahead of his rookie season with the Broncos. As we know, Nix rocked the fantasy world in his debut NFL season, finishing as the QB7 overall despite a slow start to the year. From Week 5 to the end of the season, Nix was the QB5 overall, averaging 21.8 FPPG in that span. As of today, he’s currently taken off of the earliest 2025 best ball draft boards in round 8 as the QB7 overall.

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In that same list, I also went on to highlight running backs Jerome Ford and Chuba Hubbard as ‘playoff ticket-punchers’, as they potentially operated as lead backs for a majority of the season while a talented RB healed up and joined them later in the year. As we know, both returning backs would have a much delayed return and made a minimal impact upon their arrival, which should have meant even more value returned for both Ford and Hubbard. Ford was taken as the RB35 last season, while Hubbard was the RB43. Ford narrowly returned value as the RB34 in 2024, but Hubbard was a smash hit, running away with the starting job and making the most of the opportunities and winding up the RB15 overall on the season. Cleveland was actually led by RB D’Onta Foreman out for the backfield for some of the early going, but Hubbard was the unquestioned starter by the end of Week 2. Staying on the topic of RBs, I found some value in Ravens RB Justice Hill, buying into some coach speak from John Harbaugh, labelling him a starter amid the hype from Derrick Henry entering the fold in Baltimore last off-season. I claimed that Hill would be a top-40 fantasy RB at the end of the season, despite being drafted as the RB68 in best ball drafts, virtually undrafted in every format. Hill was the RB39 on the season and submitted four performances of at least 12.3 fantasy points as the team’s primary pass-catcher out of the backfield. The list was peppered with RB takes, and a couple didn’t fare as well as those prior. I spoke in support of Jaleel McLaughlin as the running back to draft from the Broncos’ muddied RB room, though the correct answer was ‘nobody’. I also thought that rookie RB Braelon Allen was the best handcuff in the league, as he was my favorite rookie RB prospect and got wedged behind a workload-intense role manned by Breece Hall. Unfortunately, even with some extended looks last season, Allen was just the RB51 and averaged 3.6 YPC on 92 attempts in his rookie campaign.

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