Last year’s wide receiver rookie class was loaded, with Giants wideout Malik Nabers leading the way in terms of fantasy football production. Matt Harmon evaluates some of the top second-year WRs and how they’re performing in fantasy football.
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Rome Odunze, Bears – WR3 overall
I’ve seen enough; Rome Odunze is the breakout wide receiver of the 2025 NFL season.
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Odunze was much better on film than credited as a rookie last season. The per-route zealots were led astray by a lackluster statistical season but those results were depressed due to playing in a broken offense behind two established veteran receivers, just like Jaxon Smith-Njigba the year before. Now, he’s checking all the metric boxes you want.
Odunze is the most targeted Bears wide receiver by a good bit with a 28.4% share and has been efficient with his looks. He’s left some plays on the field with drops but has made up for it with crucial plays at all three levels of the field. I don’t expect any of this to change going forward.
Malik Nabers, Giants – WR9 overall
Malik Nabers is coming off a down game but was looking like a strong candidate to be the WR1 overall before that dud. He still has that within his range of outcomes, as the Giants’ transition to the Jaxson Dart offense will ensure he maintains a strong floor. Nabers being the first read on RPO concepts this team will install with Dart will give him an outrageous target floor.
Nabers has been targeted on 25.8% of his routes this season. That’s well south of where he finished in 2024 at a league-high 30.9%. I suspect we inch closer back to that here in short order. Nabers is still a slam dunk WR1 the rest of the way.
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Ricky Pearsall, 49ers – WR18 overall
Ricky Pearsall is in strong contention with Odunze for one of the best breakout bets in 2025, as he’s been the second-most productive wide receiver per route from this class so far.
What may have taken folks by surprise with Pearsall this season is what a downfield weapon he’s become in the 49ers offense. This was apparent right away as he showed off an extremely vertical route tree in Week 1.
Pearsall has an insane 16.6 air yards per target and 50.2% share of the 49ers’ air yards on the season. He was a vertical option back at Florida from the slot and was unleashed on downfield patterns vs. man coverage late in his rookie season once he got up to speed. This isn’t new.
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Pearsall won’t have 100-yard games every other week like he has so far, once guys like Jauan Jennings, George Kittle and maybe even Brandon Aiyuk get back up to speed. However, he’s a baller with a clearly defined high-upside role. I’m all the way bought-in.
Keon Coleman, Bills – WR28 overall
I want to make sure to give Keon Coleman proper credit for showing some growth as a timing route runner against man coverage. However, from a fantasy standpoint, this early-season glimpse has played out as I expected.
Coleman had a monster game in Week 1 with over 100 yards and a touchdown, with the vast majority of the production coming in the fourth quarter as Buffalo clawed back into the game. In the two games since, he’s drawn just seven targets and gone under 27 yards in each contest.
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Coleman is still only playing in the slot on fewer than 10% of his snaps. As long as he plays in that role, he will be a good downfield option for Buffalo but will just never command consistently high volume. Given his lack of separation skills, there’s just too much volatility in his game to feed him 8-10 targets per week. He’s a useful NFL player but is the classic “better in best ball” option for fantasy.
Troy Franklin, Broncos – WR31 overall
Troy Franklin was a hot waiver wire pickup in Week 2 after he caught eight passes for 89 yards and a score. He entered rare company in terms of route participation for the No. 2 receiver behind Courtland Sutton.
Franklin didn’t produce against a tough Chargers secondary in Week 3 and I bet people will overreact to that. The more important note is that Franklin did what none of those guys in the post above did; he followed that Week 2 game up with another week of full-time deployment. He ran a route on 93.8% of the Broncos’ Week 3 dropbacks. To me, that was more important than his production.
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Bo Nix needs to really kick this offense up a notch if someone beyond Sutton is going to be a weekly option in fantasy. However, Franklin does look like he’s trending to taking a quiet step forward in his second season.
Marvin Harrison Jr., Cardinals – WR43 overall
Look, I’ve said on the Yahoo Fantasy Forecast that I am taking a one-week hiatus from my Marvin Harrison Jr. apologist role after the Cardinals receiver put brutal drop on film and lost another contested catch in the end zone on a gorgeous throw from Kyler Murray. It’s just tough to go out and cape up for Harrison when he’s not making the most of his already too limited opportunities, especially since the misplays at the catch point are coming from technical attack flaws that should have been worked out of his game by now.
Yet, if you’re into context, it’s worth noting that we’ve gotten the Harrison route reallocation we wanted to see after his rookie season. That doesn’t fix everything because his quarterback still doesn’t rip those throws at a high enough rate.
So here we are once again, right where we left off in 2024. Harrison is a good starting NFL X-receiver but has his own flaws. He’s also not an ideal stylistic fit with Kyler Murray, like DeAndre Hopkins was in years past or Trey McBride right now.
We’re not entirely writing off a second-year jump from Harrison just yet. However, the early signs and signals suggest that not much has changed from his rookie season. If that holds, he’ll be a boom/bust WR3 type for your fantasy football team. I still have hope based on what I think of his game that we’ll get more big weeks than we did last season. But I’m not feeling as up to the task of defense this week as I usually am.
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Ladd McConkey, Chargers – WR49 overall
It’s been a frustrating start to the season for the presumptive Chargers’ No. 1 wide receiver, who is currently behind Keenan Allen and Quentin Johnston in targets this year.
The good news is that the Chargers are the No. 1 team in neutral pass rate so far this season and have Justin Herbert playing at an MVP level. McConkey leads the team in route participation at 94.4% and slot rate at 55.6%. You can tell when watching this team that he’s being set up to be the downfield read in many high-low concepts with Allen underneath. He’s just garnered the shaded coverage to this point.
There’s nothing in the data that says “his time will come,” but he’s such a talented player who was excellent as a rookie. There’s just no chance the fantasy scoring — where he’s this low while both Allen and Johnston are top 10 at the position — will hold all season. The ball will spread toward him, at some point soon, and he’ll have some monster games. That doesn’t mean he will return as the top-24 overall value over the course of the season, because the other two wideouts are performing and deserve work. However, even if he’s a small-loss player from summer ADP, he can still be a good buy-low target. There appears to be way too much certainty that he’s the WR3 on this team right now.
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Brian Thomas Jr., Jaguars – WR51 overall
When something is going this wrong, there are multiple people to blame. Anyone pretending that this failure to start 2025 doesn’t have multiple fathers is lying to you.
Yes, Trevor Lawrence needs to be a more accurate quarterback. Some of the young players are still getting comfortable with Liam Coen’s complex offense, which I think already passes the test of looking well-designed. However, Thomas also just straight-up needs to play better. He’s shied away from contact over the middle, had issues settling vs. zone (which was a problem for him as a rookie along with too many dropped passes). However, those are areas where he can grow; he just needs to work at it over the course of the season.
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The good news is that Thomas has a 37.7% share of the Jaguars’ air yards and a 23.1% target share. That’s not going to change. This team isn’t going to go away from him. He may fall below the sky-high expectations most had for him going into the season but if one or two of these factors improve over the next month, I won’t be shocked if he bounces back in the second half of the season.
Xavier Legette, Panthers – WR129 overall
It’s been an absolutely terrible start to the season for Xavier Legette, who was just as bad on film as the stats assert. And the metrics are brutal. Legette has yet to gain a first down this season and is somehow averaging -0.5 yards after the catch per reception despite having an air yards per target north of 6.0.
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Legette also missed Week 3 with an injury. If the Panthers actually operate off merit, fellow second-year receiver Jalen Coker, who outplayed Legette as rookies in 2024, would play over him.
Xavier Worthy, Chiefs – Has run one route
Obviously, there is nothing to go on for Xavier Worthy this season as he got injured running a mesh concept amid a collision with Travis Kelce. Worthy doesn’t have a clear timeline for return but wasn’t placed on IR. What’s clear is that the Chiefs badly need him based on how most of their wideouts have played this season. I’m excited to see how he’s deployed upon his return and who dominates the layup looks between him and Rashee Rice when he gets off suspension.
