Fantasy Football 2025 Ranking Sleepers, Busts and Safest Players This Year

While fantasy football managers are all attempting to maximize the value of their roster, there are different ways to go about that at the draft.

Sleepers can be the biggest profit producers, since the whole idea behind them is their ability to outperform their draft costs. Busts, meanwhile, have the highest odds of posting numbers that are nowhere near the price to get them on your roster. Safe players might be the least exciting of the bunch, but they're also the likeliest to return the value of your investment.

So, a well-crafted fantasy roster should feature a blend of sleepers and safe players and as few busts as possible. To help you construct that kind of team, we're ranking our top five players from each category for the 2025 NFL season.

Sleepers

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Top 5

1. Ricky Pearsall, WR, SF
2. Dak Prescott, QB, DAL
3. TreVeyon Henderson, RB, NE
4. Emeka Egbuka, WR, TB
5. Braelon Allen, RB, NYJ

Pearsall keeps looking likelier to serve as the top receiver in a high-scoring 49ers offense. Deebo Samuel is gone, Brandon Aiyuk and Jauan Jennings are hurt and Demarcus Robinson is suspended for the first three games. Pearsall's opportunities could be elite, plus the 2024 first-round pick closed his rookie year on a tear and has shown improved chemistry with Brock Purdy so far.

Prescott, meanwhile, is getting pushed down draft boards (ADP: 103, 12th among quarterbacks) for his injury-impacted 2024 effort. It's as if fantasy managers all forgot how he responded to previous injury problems, like when he threw for 4,449 yards and 37 scores in 2021 and then 4,516 and 36, respectively, in 2023. Those feel like manageable numbers if Prescott stays healthy, particularly with George Pickens now lining up alongside CeeDee Lamb.

Henderson, a second-round rookie out of Ohio State, already looks like the most electric player in New England. Just about anytime he's mentioned anymore, a Jahymr Gibbs comparison is part of the conversation. The Patriots will find ways to utilize Henderson's burst, and it's not like veteran starter Rhamondre Stevenson would be the trickiest roadblock for Henderson to slip past.

Egbuka, another Buckeyes rookie, consistently flashed NFL-ready hands and route-running abilities in college. He'll have a chance to hit the ground running in Tampa Bay, where the Buccaneers are missing both Chris Godwin (ankle) and Jalen McMillan (neck).

Allen has been the talk of Jets' training camp, to the point that a second-year breakout seems fully within reach. Breece Hall is obviously still around, but the Jets could employ multiple running backs like the Detroit Lions—the previous employer of both head coach Aaron Glenn and offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand—have with Allen slotting into the David Montgomery/Jamaal Williams role.

Busts

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Top 5

1. Joe Mixon, RB, HOU
2. Breece Hall, RB, NYJ
3. Jared Goff, QB, DET
4. Zay Flowers, WR, BAL
5. Saquon Barkley, RB, PHI

Mixon's mysterious foot-ankle injury predated the Texans' offseason program and still remains without a timetable for return. Flags don't get much redder than this. Whenever he gets back on the field—and who knows when that will be—he'll need time to ramp up, while adjusting to a new playcaller, a reshuffled running back room and a reconfigured offensive line. No thanks.

With the Jets' planning on playing three different running backs, Hall's volume might be among the worst of any RB1. It gets worse, too, since this Justin Fields-led offense figures to be one of the league's lowest-scoring. Oh, and Fields himself will factor into this ground game, too.

Goff was great last season (QB6 in fantasy), but he felt unsustainably good. His age-30 campaign wasn't simply the best of his career, it trounced above his previous personal-highs. Nearly seven percent of his passes went for scores, compared to just 4.8 percent for his career. Regression alone threatens to bring his numbers back to reality, but he's also dealing with the loss of playcaller Ben Johnson and interior offensive linemen Frank Ragnow and Kevin Zeitler, all while facing a much tougher schedule than last season.

Flowers has tons of talent, but his situation isn't what you'd call fantasy-friendly. The Ravens don't air it out a ton, and they've won enough with a run-heavy approach to make it impossible to imagine they'd shift that strategy. Flowers' volume is a worry in general, but it's an even greater concern in the red zone, where he's likely third on the pass-catching pecking order behind DeAndre Hopkins and Mark Andrews.

Speaking of talent, Barkley has about as much of it as anyone in the NFL. This is not at all a knock on that. Rather, it's simply a reflection of the worries that come along with players following up a workload like the one he just handled: 378 touches for 2,283 scrimmage yards in the regular season, plus another 104 for 574 in the playoffs. He's also had a personal tendency to backtrack after his busiest seasons.

Safest Players

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Top 5

1. Josh Allen, QB, BUF
2. Derrick Henry, RB, BAL
3. Ja'Marr Chase, WR, CIN
4. Bijan Robinson, RB, ATL
5. Brock Bowers, TE, LV

In terms of safety, Allen is as reliable as it gets. While many fantasy analysts will advise waiting on quarterbacks, those who take Allen anyway at least have the assurance that they're basically guaranteed a fantasy elite. You have to go back to 2019 to find the last time he wasn't a top-two fantasy scorer overall (he was seventh that season and sixth among quarterbacks).

Henry can make a similar longevity case, which feels almost impossible for a running back in today's NFL. Then again, most running backs aren't built like the 6'2", 252-pounder, who has delivered double-digit touchdowns in seven straight seasons—including 2021, when he somehow packed 1,091 scrimmage yards and 10 scores into just eight outings.

Chase's resume doesn't stretch back quite as long, but everything on it is jaw-droppingly great. Before the season even starts, you can basically pencil him in for roughly 1,000 receiving yards and 10ish scores. And he obviously can race past those marks, as he did during the 2024 campaign when he finished with 127 catches, 1,708 receiving yards and 17 touchdown catches (all league-best marks).

With Robinson, the Falcons were frustratingly slow to unleash him as a rookie, but there should be no turning back now that he's forced their hand on that front. Even with the (relatively) slow start, his two-year tally sits at 3,350 scrimmage yards and 23 scores in 34 games.

Bowers is the least proven of the five, but does anyone have questions about the sophomore tight end? He essentially made up the entire Raiders' passing attack last season (112 catches on 153 targets for 1,194 yards and five touchdowns), and he'll now be catching passes from Geno Smith instead of Gardner Minshew and Aidan O'Connell.