Way-Too-Early Fantasy Football Rankings For 2025: Freedman's Top 50

We're into the Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs, which means that it's time for the true degenerates—those of us who live that fantasy life 365 days a year—to start looking ahead to the 2025 season.

No. Days. Off.

With that in mind, I'd like to present to you my way-too-early 2025 top 50 fantasy football rankings, which I hope will prove useful in your preliminary best ball, redraft, and Guillotine Leagues endeavors.

As we move throughout the postseason and then eventually free agency, NFL draft, training camp, and finally preseason, I will update and flesh out my rankings, which you'll be able to find in our Fantasy Life Rankings Hub.

For now, here are my early rankings for the all-important top 50, accompanied by some strategy thoughts.

Top-50 Fantasy Football Rankings For 2025

2025 Fantasy Football Strategy for Top 50

To paraphrase something Matthew Berry (our fearless leader) often articulates: You can't win your drafts in the early rounds, but you can lose them.

Inside the top 50 (Rounds 1-5 in leagues with 10-12 teams), I desire to take players who have elevated median and floor projections within their ranges of outcomes.

Because of the significant draft capital required to select any player in the top 50, there are few league winners in Rounds 1-5—and I tend to think that they're difficult to predict in advance.

So for the most part I don't spend an abundance of energy trying to identify the few guys in the top 50 who will drastically outperform their already high expectations.

Instead, I try to find (and then avoid) the potential league losers—the guys in the top 50 who have a greater-than-expected chance of markedly underperforming expectations.

Maybe it's because I'm a bit of a human wet blanket, but I find it easier to imagine and identify downside risk than upside reward—at least in high-value assets.

Here's a way of thinking about this. Let's say you're walking from one side of a wide-open field to the other. There are lots of paths you can take as you meander your way across. But here's the thing: There are landmines buried in the field.

Which is more valuable?

• Knowing all the various paths you might theoretically take across the field
• Knowing where the landmines are so you can avoid those areas

In Rounds 1-5, I think the primary goal is not to get blown up, and so I believe it's more important to focus on red flags than green flags.

As a result, there's a chance I might have more "This guy is in my top 50, but I'm probably not drafting him" analysis than you'd expect.

Then again, it's January, and you're already reading a fantasy article on 2025 fantasy rankings. There's a chance you know what to expect from a Freedman article.

Positional Breakdown of My Way-Too-Early 2025 Fantasy Football Rankings

Here are the positional allocations within my top 50.

• Quarterbacks: 5
• Running Backs: 15
• Wide Receivers: 27
• Tight Ends: 3

Quarterback Strategy

Even though I have five QBs (Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, Jayden Daniels, and Joe Burrow) in my top 50, I don't plan to have much exposure to them in my leagues.

To be clear: There's nothing wrong with any of these players. I like them all.

But I tend to prefer a late-round strategy for QB.

In 2024, I liked Daniels a lot. I wanted as much exposure to him as possible because I felt that he could provide me with QB1-caliber production at a fraction of the cost.

But now that Daniels is valued in the market as a top-five QB, I don't want to invest in him. Rather, I want to find in 2025 a late-round QB who has a shot to give me the kind of return that Daniels provided in 2024.

So I have five QBs in my top 50. And I like them. They're all solid. They have high floors, medians, and ceilings.

But I probably won't roster them in many leagues.

Running Back Strategy

I have 15 RBs in my top 50.

That might seem light … but I want to invest my premium picks in rock-solid assets, and few RBs seem like super-safe investments, given that the position tends to be more impacted than others by injury, surrounding talent, and playcalling.

So I don't want to put a lot of capital into RBs … but I do like a lot of the players I have ranked outside the top eight at the position.

And my favorite might be rookie Ashton Jeanty. In the early rounds, I tend not to focus too much on league-winning upside—but I think there's a good chance that the market will be too low (at least at first) on Jeanty.

As excellent as WRs Travis Hunter and Tetairoa McMillan and QBs Shedeur Sanders and Cameron Ward are, I believe that Jeanty (374-2,601-29 rushing, 23-138-1 receiving) was the best player in college football last year and the one with a skill set that most obviously translates to the NFL.

Regardless of where he lands, I can imagine Jeanty being drafted as the RB1 in 2026 fantasy drafts, and that's because I can envision him producing like the RB1 as a rookie in 2025.

And if I have a shot to draft the RB1 outside of the top five this year, I want to do it.

Wide Receiver Strategy

Given that I believe I can find good QB production later in the draft, and given that I believe RB production is somewhat at the mercy of injury, surrounding talent, and playcalling, that means that I want to invest a significant portion of my early draft capital in WRs.

Entering Round 4, I want to have at least two WRs on my team in most cases. And exiting Round 5, I probably want three WRs locked into my starting lineup.

Every draft is different, and I can imagine scenarios in which I have just two WRs entering Round 6. Let's say that a QB and two RBs I like fall down the board and I'm able to take them at a discount. Sure, in that instance, I'll have only two WRs.

We approach each draft on a case-by-case basis.

But most of the time, I'll want three WRs in the top 50.

Some guys who especially catch my eye.

• Tyreek Hill: Top-three draft pick last year, now outside Round 1.
   
• Mike Evans: WR1-caliber production always available at a WR2 price
   
• Marvin Harrison: WR1 selection last year, now attainable as a WR2/3
   
• Rashee Rice: Potential WR1 priced as a high-end WR3

But really there aren't many WRs in the top 50 whom I don't like.

Tight End Strategy

In the top 50, I have three TEs (Brock Bowers, Trey McBride, and George Kittle).

Of those guys, at cost, I prefer Bowers and McBride most. I view them as being in a tier together and above Kittle.

I want one of them on my fantasy team, because I believe that they can consistently provide me with WR-esque production at the TE position.

Kittle, though great, I fear will be less consistent because of all the other skill-position playmakers in the 49ers offense, and if my options are either to draft Kittle or to wait and select someone else later in the draft—someone like Sam LaPorta, Mark Andrews, David Njoku, T.J. Hockenson, or even Travis Kelce—then I'll probably take that second option.

And if I miss out on those guys, then I might even be fine near the end of the draft with taking rookie Tyler Warren or veteran Jake Ferguson.

I mean, I'm disgusting enough that I might even be able to talk myself into dabbling in Kyle Pitts for what feels like the 11th year in a row.

So in the top 50, I want Bowers and McBride. They're priorities. If I miss them … then I'm waiting on the position and will opportunistically address it when a guy falls too far down the board and offers value.

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