Hogs Haven
Welcome back for another round of fantasy football ramblings. In today’s edition: Pre-Draft Round Up. This article will use Fantasy Pros data for its discussion of “consensus” rankings and ESPN live draft trends for estimations of actual draft price. Don’t confuse it for a comprehensive guide, but this should be sufficient to at least show up to draft day not completely out of the loop.
As always, a format note upfront: while that is good enough as a proxy for discussion of general trends in 2025 drafts, you should be savvy about reviewing whatever data is available for whatever site you are using, because you can exploit the differences between hosts. By way of example, if you’re drafting on ESPN, Kyler Murray is the 9th QB taken on average and Justin Fields is the 14th QB taken – but on Yahoo!, Fields is being selected BEFORE Murray on average. Put another way, if you think those are comparable players (I don’t, but I digress), you don’t want to overpay for Murray in an ESPN league or Fields in a Yahoo! league. Wherever you play, it’s always worth a quick glance at how the default rankings there compare with drafts happening elsewhere.
That said, let’s dig in.
At the quarterback position, there is a well-defined Top 5 tier, and then another 13-15 or so guys that you’ll find at least some argument could finish toward the back end of viable QB1 starters.
The top tier (Allen, Jackson, Daniels, Hurts, Burrow) is of more interest to Washington fans, because of the debate about Jayden Daniels’ sophomore season prospects – and is the reason this section of this preview will be much longer than the other positions. We’ll touch on this at greater length below, but there is a viable argument for Daniels as the #1 quarterback in fantasy this season that doesn’t require blind homerism to make.
Overall, how to best approach the position this season is in part dependent on which players in the second grouping of QBs one sees the most upside in. Because there is a squishy “middle” of quarterbacks after the top tier, there is a decent chance you can wait deep into your draft (or won’t need to save much of your money in an auction format) and still get one that you like cheaply.
Justin Herbert, Jared Goff, C.J. Stroud, and Jordan Love are all examples of players who are not within the consensus Top 12 quarterbacks but could easily provide low-QB1 production. Pairing one or two of those players with greater investments at running back and receiver could yield a balanced roster poised for success.
But conversely, if you are high on Baker Mayfield, Bo Nix, Kyler Murray, or Brock Purdy (and I’ll note here, I kind of like Nix and Murray, myself), it still may make more sense to splurge on one of the Top 5 QBs – not because that group could not also succeed, but because you’re chasing one of...
