2025 Fantasy Football Busts 2.0: Why Jahmyr Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, or Sam LaPorta may not meet lofty ADPs

One of the things I fight the most this time of year is that I say a player is not going to live up to expectations, Fantasy managers think I hate that player. Of course, that is not how it works; almost everything we say about players in the Fantasy Football world is relative to their cost. I have listed Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen as busts, and they were awesome, but still didn't live up to ADP. I have listed Derrick Henry and Saquon Barkley as busts and, well, that just looked dumb. The point being, good, even great players, can be busts if they are being drafted too high. Is the same thing true for great offenses?

The Detroit Lions are testing the theory. Yes, the Lions, who scored 68 offensive touchdowns last year. Let's start with their ADP in early CBS drafts:

RB2 Jahmyr Gibbs, 4th overallWR5 Amon-Ra St. Brown, 8th overallTE4 Sam LaPorta, 57th overallWR29 Jameson Williams, 63rd overallRB25 David Montgomery, 66th overallQB19 Jared Goff, 127th overall

Let's start with the obvious: Jared Goff is not a bust. Goff is somehow being drafted to finish 13 spots lower at QB than he did last year, while still running an offense that produces five top 66 players in Fantasy Football. I do not understand. I am ranking Goff at QB12, six spots worse than his 2024 finish, and he is the best value on Draft Day at the position.

I think the argument against Goff is that he just had a career year that he is unlikely to match, he lost Ben Johnson, the offensive coordinator responsible for the best offense in football over the last two years, and he lost Frank Ragnow, an All-Pro center. I believe those are valid concerns. I would also add that specifically, Goff's 6.9% TD rate from last year is likely to regress; his prior career high was 5.9% and his career mark even after last year is still just 4.8%. But those arguments apply to pretty much everyone in this offense.

Gibbs scored on 6.6% of his touches last year, compared to 4.7% in 2023.St. Brown scored on 8.5% of his targets last year, compared to 4.9% the first three years of his career.Williams has the same TD regression concerns and is coming off 11.8 yards per target, an efficiency metric no WR has ever been able to maintain.LaPorta has scored at an insane rate two years in a row, but last year his targets fell so hard that the touchdowns were the only reason he ranked inside the top 12 at the worst position in Fantasy.

To put it another way, those top four options combined for 3,507 receiving yards and 30 receiving touchdowns in 2024. If they are going to match (or exceed, in some cases, according to ADP) those numbers again in 2025, how in the world is Jared Goff going to finish QB19? For me, the answer is a two-part answer. One, Goff is not going to finish QB19; that's why he was in my sleeper article. Two, at least two of those guys are likely to take a significant step back in 2025.

I want to end this where I started it. I still have the Lions projected to score 52 touchdowns last year, the second-highest total in my projection. I still expect them to be one of the best offenses in the NFL, while also scoring 16 fewer touchdowns than they did in 2024. That puts me lower on Gibbs, St. Brown, and LaPorta than ADP. I have Williams in a very similar place and actually think Montgomery is a value if he stays healthy. You don't have to agree with me on all these guys. But I would suggest you figure out which two Lions aren't going to justify their ADP this year. If you can't find two, then you should probably just draft Jared Goff in Round 10 of every draft you do.

Here are eight more busts for Fantasy Football in 2025: