Every offseason, I spend an inordinate amount of time researching and tweaking my process, focusing on the data points that best predict future success. This process also includes knowing which data to ignore or not overfactor. 

The journey begins with a 30,000-foot overview of what I got right and wrong in the previous season. However, the key to this activity is thinking about the why. Is there something actionable we can use to improve or questions we should further investigate in the offseason?

We want a process that helps us get things right more often than not over time—always knowing that variance and luck (which we must also leverage and embrace) play a massive role in any one game, week, or season.

After breaking down what I got right last week, today, we will focus on what I got wrong based on the players I touted and drafted the most in 2024.

Anthony Richardson | QB | Colts

Jayden Daniels was my top quarterback target, saving me from massive exposure to Richardson. However, this decision was more about his less-expensive price tag rather than knowing he would be a better fantasy performer than Richardson. Still, I touted the second-year signal caller as a primary name to target in my quarterback draft strategy, which was wrong.

My reasoning was straightforward: even if Richardson didn't improve as a passer, he was too good as a rusher to fail in fantasy football. Despite averaging just 212 yards passing in two healthy games as a rookie, he averaged 25.3 fantasy points thanks to 48 rushing yards and one rushing TD per game. He handled 26% of the team's designed attempts with an 8% scramble rate in those two games.

Since 2011, quarterbacks who handled 20% or more of their team's rushing attempts averaged 21.9 fantasy points with an average finish of QB5 overall. If you distilled that list down to guys who also threw for fewer than 210 yards per game, they still averaged 22.1 points.

When you add all that up, Richardson profiled as a near lock for 20-plus points per game. However, he finished the season averaging 16.9 in 10 healthy games. He hit rock bottom as a passer, completing only 48% of his attempts, averaging 174 yards and 0.8 touchdowns. Yikes!

Despite Richardson busting in 2024, we can't overreact. Ultimately, history remains on the side of dual-threat options—especially young players without a long track record of underperformance as a passer. If we were to follow that logic, we would have missed out on two massive breakout performers over the last five seasons.

  • Jalen Hurts: In 2020, Hurts posted a 52% completion rate, averaging 230 yards over the last four games as the new starter for the Eagles. The following year, he upped his completion percentage to 65% and notched a QB6 finish with 21.3 points per game.
     
  • Josh Allen: Allen completed only 57% of his passes as a rookie and followed that up with a 59% mark in his second season. Over those two seasons, he averaged 202 yards and 1.3 touchdowns through the air. Had you allowed his early-career struggles as a passer to push you off of him in fantasy, you would have missed out on his 2020 breakout campaign, where he averaged 25.6 points. Allen threw for 284 yards per game with a  73% completion rate.

Hurts and Allen are outlier turnarounds as passers. We shouldn't assume that every passer can make the leap—most won't. However, dual-threat quarterbacks remain the archetype we shouldn't give up on too soon because when we are right, the rewards are extreme.

Lesson for 2025: Avoid making a knee-jerk conclusion regarding the future trajectory of dual-threat quarterbacks after one lousy season—they remain high upside bets worth making. We can approach Richardson with more pessimism in 2025 thanks to such an outlier/alarming completion rate in Year 2, but he still offers a 20-plus-point upside in most runouts and his ADP will fall. Continue leveraging average draft position (ADP) to target cost-effective dual-threat quarterbacks with unknowns as passers (e.g., Daniels over Richardson in 2024).

Jaylen Warren | RB | Steelers

Warren was a Round 8 to 9 selection, so he didn't kill your fantasy season by targeting him. However, I wanted to use him because a) I touted his name often, and b) there are multiple things we should consider as we think about similar profile backs in the future.

Warren was a highly-coveted target for two reasons in 2024:

  1. Warren flashed big-play ability and prowess as a target earner over his first two seasons, with a 15% explosive rush rate (carries of 10-plus yards) and 24% targets per route run rate (TPRR). Those numbers align with high-end RB performers.
     
  2. Najee Harris didn't perform well over the two previous seasons. Harris' 8% explosive rush rate was two percentage points below the league average of 10%, and his 17% TPRR was in RB4 to RB4 territory.

Theoretically, Warren offered a lot of outs. He had an opportunity to outperform his ADP in a part-time role, push Harris for the starting job, and provide massive contingency upside if Harris suffered an injury. Warren was the equivalent of playing 5-6 suited in poker—not the strongest starting hand, but he could rapidly gain strength on various flops and turns.

Of course, none of those things played out, with Warren averaging 8.3 points per game with a 5.1 Utilization Score.

 

Warren missed the flop, turn, and river, leaving fantasy managers with nothing more than a bench stash. While I still believe we should target backs with profiles like Warren's, it is important to acknowledge they have multiple factors working against them.

Historical attempts and route participation are the second- and third-highest predictors of future fantasy points behind fantasy points.

  1. Efficiency stats like missed tackles forced, average yards after contact, and explosive rush rate have solid year-over-year correlations, but they don't strongly correlate with future fantasy success.
     
  2. Prior-season efficiency doesn't correlate strongly with increased or decreased next-season utilization.

So, on one hand, it is true that Warren entered the season with the type of underlying profile that could make him a fantasy smash with a more robust workload. On the other hand, it isn't uncommon for these types of players to not pan out.

Lesson for 2025: When betting on players like Warren, it is essential to acknowledge the strong possibility they won't hit. That means a few things. First, we should be sticklers regarding the sticker price—we don't want to overpay. Second, if someone like Warren is our second RB drafted, we must keep firing in the draft and approach the waiver wire aggressively. Third, if you are a high-volume drafter, we shouldn't drastically overweight a player like Warren (this was my big mistake). Chase Brown, Tyjae Spears, and Bucky Irving were similar bets—two of which hit big.

Rome Odunze | WR | Bears

Like Warren, Odunze didn't sink your fantasy draft thanks to a Round 8 to 10 price tag on ESPN and Yahoo this summer. However, he didn't help win leagues. While I touted Brian Thomas and Ladd McConkey in my wide receiver draft strategy, Odunze was the name I pumped much more often throughout the preseason, which was a bad call.

On the one hand, Odunze went ~75 picks after Marvin Harrison, which made him appealing, considering their talent graded out more closely in the Rookie Super Model. Historically, high-end first-round NFL Draft picks have been cheat codes in fantasy football. On the other hand, Odunze's path to victory was fraught with concerns.

  1. Odunze faced massive target competition from DJ Moore and Keenan Allen—both players collected 27% target shares, besting the rookie (19%) by a large margin. We saw a similar scenario in Seattle in 2023 with Jaxon Smith-Njigba versus DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett.


     
  2. We also had questions about the new offensive coordinator, Shane Waldron. Waldron was the Seahawks' play-caller during the JSN dud rookie season.
     
  3. Despite all the hype surrounding Caleb Williams as the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, he was still a rookie. Since 2011, rookie quarterbacks taken in the top three picks have averaged 220 yards and 1.1 touchdowns per game passing—hardly enough to support multiple high-end fantasy options.

While the data suggests we shouldn't overrate any of the concerns above, I underestimated their cumulative impact. Interestingly, receivers with the same three issues in the future won't be off of my draft radar. Still, I will be much more vigilant about diversifying across other rookies going in a similar range of fantasy drafts (e.g., Brian Thomas and Ladd McConkey).

Lesson for 2025: We want to continue to attack rookie wide receivers in our fantasy drafts, but we shouldn't become hyper-focused on one name like Odunze when there are so many red flags. The right move is to diversify and closely consider similar options at a lower cost.

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