Best Ball Draft Strategy 2025: 5 Wide Receiver Fades

This Best Ball Draft Strategy article will look at five wide receivers whose ADP is arguably too high in the best ball markets, in this case the ADP from Underdog.

Each of these players is still worth drafting to some extent — there are rarely Undraftable players in a game as chaotic and strategically complex as best ball — but for now at least the price for each player is higher than superior alternatives in the ADP.

To execute an optimal best ball strategy, resist these players at price and instead target them when they fall past ADP.

Check out our fantasy football ADP report for a comprehensive tool with live-updated ADP data for multiple league formats and sites.

Marvin Harrison, ARI (26.1)

Harrison is the real deal, and his struggles from 2024 were plainly not his fault. Harrison's struggles last year were predictable based on the deliberate structural design of the Arizona offense, and unfortunately the Cardinals did absolutely nothing to improve that structure in the offseason.

When best ball drafters were selecting Harrison in the first round of fantasy drafts last year they did so assuming the Cardinals would use Harrison as a featured target, like the Giants did Malik Nabers and the Jaguars did Brian Thomas, but instead what the Cardinals did was use Harrison as the de facto vertical decoy. In other words, instead of using Harrison like Nabers, the Cardinals used Harrison like Darius Slayton.

Slayton is a very good player, but he's a vertical setter and decoy, not a target hog. If the Cardinals keep deploying Harrison like Slayton then they'll keep getting Slayton-like results. Intentionally or not, the Cardinals seemed to use Trey McBride as their Nabers analog.

Harrison's ADOT in 2024 (13.1, 82nd percentile) was too high to create practical, easy targets like Nabers had to drive up the catch count. Harrison's target count (116 on 817 snaps) was actually quite high given how ambitious Harrison's target depths were, but too many of these (already difficult) throws were forced, resulting in an intolerably low catch rate of 53.4 percent.

It's simple: For Harrison's target and catch rates to rise to sufficient levels the Cardinals need to lower Harrison's ADOT by at least two yards, but it won't be easy for the Cardinals to do that with their current personnel.

The Cardinals stubbornly refused to add wideout speed at either of the other two wideout reps, and their decision to run a three-wide look of Harrison, Michael Wilson and Greg Dortch makes absolutely certain, every single play, that Harrison will be the vertical setter of the formation. That means if there's one safety high, that safety is on Harrison every time.

Wilson, Dortch and McBride respectively logged ADOTs of 11.2, 4.5 and 6.1. Harrison will never see single coverage in this offense. If the Cardinals had drafted a burner decoy like Chimere Dike, Dont'e Thornton or Arian Smith then Harrison would be locked in for 100 catches, but instead Arizona appears hellbent on making Harrison a distance runner like those rookie fourth-round picks.

Unless Kyler Murray throws 30-plus touchdowns this year I don't see how Harrison is supposed to match the fantasy utility of players like Garrett Wilson (27.3), Tyreek Hill (27.8), Davante Adams (30.1) or Mike Evans (35.5). Valuable as he is, Harrison's current spot in the ADP might not be warranted.

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Jameson Williams, DET (44.1)

Williams is one of the NFL's best big-play threats and absolutely has the ability to provide fantasy returns worth a price like this, but the details of the Detroit offense don't really budget in a way that gives Williams realistic opportunity to do so.

It's not just that Amon-Ra St. Brown is an immovable target hog or that Sam LaPorta could easily redeploy as a 100-catch tight end in the event that St. Brown were unavailable, though those two definitely are major obstacles to Williams' usage share.

The arguably bigger problem is that, even if St. Brown or/and LaPorta were out, Williams' game — the routes he runs best in various situations — don't really suit the throwing abilities of Jared Goff. More specifically, Williams is a singular downfield and open-field threat, but Goff is not a good downfield passer and prefers to make underneath throws that tend to hover around traffic.

St. Brown is so unstoppable with Goff in part because he's a perfect match for where Goff throws best — St. Brown's ability to recognize and adjust to zone coverages makes it easy for Goff to strike the defense with little cuts over and over, but Williams will never be a close-quarters zone killer. Williams needs space to express his abilities fully, but Goff wants to keep the field small.

Williams will have his big games and those lacking best ball shares will likely be envious those days, but in the meantime Williams is a good bet to have fewer receptions than any receiver in the top-90 ADP. Given the potential usage caps, it might not be wise best ball fantasy football strategy  to target Williams at his current price.

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Courtland Sutton, DEN (48.3)

Sutton is a good player and remains an indispensable presence to the Denver offense, so he's more or less a fine pick. The quibble is more that there are other players available for cheaper who project at least as well.

Sutton faces potential regression in at least two ways: (1) Bo Nix's 29 touchdown passes could regress slightly given that his best box score occurred against the Chiefs backups in Week 18, and (2) Evan Engram will draw a bigger target share than the previous slot reps logged by Lil'Jordan Humphrey.

Humphrey drew 45 targets on 519 snaps last year. Engram should take upwards of 90 percent of those reps, and on those reps draw targets at a significantly faster rate than Humphrey did. Unless Nix throws more passes to offset this, such a development with Engram would probably occur slightly at the expense of Sutton's target share.

If Sutton can repeat last year's target share of 24.6 percent then his fantasy investors will probably be fine, but it will be difficult to do that and meanwhile Sutton would otherwise be potentially maxed out on last year's numbers.

Perhaps some of the cheaper alternatives lack Sutton's exact floor, but Jordan Addison (63.6), Chris Godwin (65.0) and Chris Olave (65.1) can all give you much higher ceilings than Sutton, and in best ball their legal (Addison) or durability (Godwin/Olave) concerns mean much less.

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Jauan Jennings, SF (61.5)

Jennings was an unbelievable smash value at ADP last year, and with that breakout effort Jennings catapulted himself from the backup ranks of the NFL to a new perch where he's recognized as a legitimate starter. Sometimes this major rebrandings stick, some other times the high point splits the difference with the prior lows.

If Jennings maintains his 2024 production rates then he will be a smash value again, even at this new price in nearly the fifth round of best ball drafts. The question is whether Jennings actually can maintain last year's gains, and if not, will the regression still be manageable at price?

Given that he drew 113 targets on just 653 snaps last year, Jennings can clearly afford some regression and still pay off at this new ADP. Crucially, Jennings accumulated that usage even with Deebo Samuel still around. The better Samuel turns out to be in Washington, the better it would bode for Jennings holding off Ricky Pearsall and the eventual return of Brandon Aiyuk (ACL).

Nonetheless, I'm concerned that Jennings' numbers might regress harshly across the board. Jennings' yardage per route run nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024 (1.29 to 2.43), and in the prior two years Jennings hovered right around 1.5 yards per route. Jennings' 2024 catch rate was 5.9 points higher than his previous career high, and he drew one target per 5.8 snaps last year after previously drawing a target no more often than 8.3 snaps in 2022.

Jennings was a skilled and productive player at Tennessee in college, but he fell to the seventh round of the 2020 draft after running a 4.72-second 40 and logging a 29-inch vertical. Looking through Mockdraftable's records, Jennings' athletic metrics are much worse than any success cases aside from Anquan Boldin and Keenan Allen, both of whom ran their 40s on bad knees. Kendrick Bourne (4.68) and Mohamed Sanu (4.67) are probably your best applicable cases.

Jennings' production from his first three seasons — 1,164 total snaps — was befitting a receiver with 4.72 speed. His production from 2024 — 653 snaps — plainly is not. There will generally be more first times for everything, but if Jennings keeps up last year's production over a broader sample it will very much be the first outcome of its sort.

How do these player stack up against the rest of the NFL? Visit our fantasy football half-PPR rankings for a list of the top players for the remainder of the season.

Jack Bech, LV (146.7)

Bech will be worth drafting if his price falls a little farther than this — maybe something around the 15th round or so — and in dynasty formats he's a fine, durable long-term asset.

In 2025, though, the Raiders offense simply does not have much usage budgeted for Bech when everyone else on the depth chart is healthy. Jakobi Meyers in particular has Bech trumped across the board at wide receiver, and that's before you account for the atypical target share claimed by Brock Bowers at tight end.

The Raiders might also be inclined to give a hefty snap count to Michael Mayer as the second tight end, which if it occurs would leave the Raiders with precious few slot snaps — about as few as any offense in the NFL. The slot is where Bech projects most reliably.

The long-term vision for Bech in Las Vegas is likely one where he starts in the role currently held by Meyers. Meyers might be at his best in the slot, but he can also thrive as an underneath and horizontally oriented flanker.

With Bowers, Meyers and Mayer on the field so much and with so many of their routes occurring in the slot or/and underneath, the Raiders badly need a downfield threat with their remaining rep to offset the gravity of the shallow routes. That's why the remaining rep will go to Tre Tucker and Dont'e Thornton rather than Bech, even though Bech is the much more valued asset by the Raiders.

Meyers has one year left on his contract. The Raiders are paying him a little less than $15 million. Meyers will get the work in 2025, Bech will get the work afterward.

Look forward to our next NFL best ball strategy article next week.

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