Ian Hartitz examines a group of veteran players who have had their fantasy football value increase after their teams did not draft or sign competition.

The NFL Draft is all about, you know, the players who are getting drafted to the NFL. Thus, fans and fantasy sickos alike tend to focus most of their attention on incoming rookies during the dog days between February and April.

Of course, rookies do NOT tend to produce big-time numbers in fantasy land, and the ones who do are usually found inside the first three rounds of the draft. While late-rounders and undrafted free agents will certainly impact all 32 teams to varying degrees, it's probably a good sign to an incumbent NFL player if their team refrained from adding any sort of real high-end competition during the offseason.

Veteran Winners After the 2025 NFL Draft

This brings us to today's topic: Veterans who had an awfully clean runout during free agency and the draft, and accordingly why YOU, a scholar, should consider drafting them in fantasy at their potentially discounted average draft position (ADP).

I went ahead and focused only on players with an ADP outside of Underdog's top-100 overall picks to get #wild, so please don't yell at me about the lack of inclusion for more obvious winners like Chase Brown or Garrett Wilson. Cool? Cool.

As always: It's a great day to be great.

Cowboys TE Jake Ferguson

This Cowboys WR room is … something:

  • CeeDee Lamb is amazing and leads all WRs in PPR points per game over the past two seasons.
  • Jonathan Mingo is currently battling it out with Jalen Tolbert for No. 2 duties. What a sad, sad sentence to type out.
  • The actual second-best WR on the team—pint-sized All Pro returner KaVontae Turpin—is viewed as more of a gadget and has surpassed 50% of the team's snaps on offense *one* time since entering the league in 2022.

This front office's only top-100 draft picks on the position since 2020 are Lamb and Tolbert. I honestly think even the Jets' sad excuse for a WR group is slightly better than this lot in terms of depth behind the top dawg.

Enter: Jake Ferguson, who is coming off a relatively disappointing 2024 campaign (59-494-0) following an impressive 2023 (71-761-5) in his first season as the full-time starter after Dalton Schultz took his talents to Houston in free agency. The initial campaign demonstrated some serious upside: A$AP Ferg's monstrous three-TD explosion against the Packers in the 2023 playoffs is good for the second-highest single-game fantasy boom (37.3 PPR points) during the last two seasons. The Seahawk slayer earned an impressive 102 targets in his last fully healthy season with Dak Prescott—the second most on the Cowboys behind only Lamb.

That latter health point is my best explanation for why the 26-year-old talent struggled to get much going in the boxscore last season: Ferguson suffered a Grade 2 MCL sprain in Week 1 and was later concussed in Week 11. This means we had only a six-game sample of Ferguson actually getting to play with Dak, a stretch in which he racked up the fifth-most targets among all TEs and (you guessed it) second most on the Cowboys, period.

I'm not gonna sit here and say Ferguson is poised to put up a top-3 season, but we are just 12 months removed from him sporting a preseason TE9 ADP mostly because he had just finished as the TE8 on a per-game basis (including playoffs). Prescott has tossed 30+ TDs in each of his last three seasons in which he started 16-plus games; Ferguson's name might as well be next to TD regression in the dictionary after racking up a league-high 86 targets without a score last season.

This is EXACTLY the sort of bet late-round TE diehards should be looking to make.

Bears RB D'Andre Swift

There exists this idea that new Bears head coach Ben Johnson was one of the decision-makers behind trading Swift to the Eagles prior to the 2023 season. Even if true, does it necessarily mean Johnson "hated" Swift if the girl he wound up calling instead was Jahmyr Gibbs?

Look, I'm not going to sit here and say Swift is a great RB. Anyone that's caught a few of his performances in recent years has seen more than a few examples of poor vision, and his advanced metrics last season were largely all among the league's bottom-10 backs.

That said …

  • Vision is one of those things where we don't have a great way of quantifying it, so people tend to HEAVILY weigh it against some backs while not really even considering it for others. It becomes this binary "you either have it or you don't" factor when in reality someone like Swift would be more like a 5 out of 10 if we actually were able to compare him to every back in the league. I maintain similar logic when it comes to the idea of a player being injury prone: Yes, some certainly are more than others, but it's not like perceived non-injury prone RBs simply have zero risk.
  • Swift's advanced metrics were not good … but he joined De'Von Achane in the league's bottom-7 rushers in rushing yards over expected per carry, Jonathan Taylor and Kyren Williams joined him in the bottom-10 backs in yards after contact per carry, and his tackles avoided per carry mark was only 0.1% worse than Joe Mixon. Those RBs all finished as top-10 producers in PPR points per game anyway (Swift was RB21) because high-end volume in a halfway decent offense tends to lead to bunches of fantasy points even if the efficiency isn't great. 

It's the latter point on volume that is the crux for supporting Swift in fantasy land at the moment: The Bears' only addition to the position this entire offseason was seventh-round Rutgers RB Kyle Monangai. Instead, they've added the NFL's offensive wunderkind as head coach while simultaneously pouring resources into PFF's reigning 24th-ranked offensive line. Johnson has said nice things about Swift since getting the job, and even the rumored addition of someone like Nick Chubb would seemingly be more of an impact to the early-down/David Montgomery component of this backfield and thus more of a negative impact to Roschon Johnson.

Again, Swift is not great, but he's also not some sort of "Kalen Ballage" level of terrible RB incapable of doing a single good thing on the football field! (Sorry for the stray, Kalen Ballage).

Swift has never finished worse than the RB24 in PPR points per game since entering the league in 2020. He was the RB16 during his only season with Johnson as OC. It's curious that Swift gets cut seemingly no slack for operating behind the same offensive line that apparently ruined Caleb Williams' rookie campaign. Still just 26 years old, Swift has the explosive pass-catcher profile we want in fantasy with real room for upside in an ascending offense—don't be too quick to hold Swift's poruous 2024 efficiency stats against him if you didn't do it for Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry, or Josh Jacobs prior to their bounceback campaigns last season.

Dolphins RB Jaylen Wright

Not much was expected from Wright in 2024 considering he was the clear No. 3 RB on a depth chart featuring Raheem Mostert (had just scored 21 TD) and De'Von Achane (997 yards and 11 TD in 11 games as a rookie). Sure, it was cool that Miami felt good enough about Wright to trade a 2025 third-rounder to trade up for him in the fourth round of the 2024 draft, but he was at least one injury away from becoming overly relevant in fantasy land.

Well, Achane wound up playing in 17 games, and Mostert 13, leaving Wright with double-digit touches on just one occasion all season. Small sample size be damned, Wright finished first among Dolphins RBs in yards after contact per carry (3.3), tackles avoided per carry (23.5%), and explosive-run rate alike.

Was it a bit disappointing to see Wright still not earn more work down the stretch despite flashing in spurts? Sure, but the team's curious decision to largely ignore the position this offseason suddenly cements him as the likely No. 2 option behind Achane, who isn't the sort of back that Miami probably wants to give 300-plus touches anyway.

Consider:

  • Miami released Mostert back in February and did not re-sign current free agent Jeff Wilson.
  • The only free agent addition was career backup Alexander Mattison on a tiny one-year, $2 million deal.
  • General Manager Chris Grier waited until pick 179 to select Oklahoma State RB Ollie Gordon in Round 6.

Now, Gordon is more interesting than your usual Day 3 pick due to his plus size (6-foot-1, 226 pounds) and huge 2023 campaign (2,062 total yards and 22 TD). But c'mon: The only competition the Dolphins have added against Wright this entire offseason is Alexander f*cking Mattison and a sixth-round rookie—that's a win!

Look, Wright's cool advanced rushing stats don't replace the reality that he averaged just 3.7 yards per carry. The Dolphins' 26th-ranked offensive line in rush yards before contact per carry certainly deserves some of the blame, but there is risk here that the second-year talent simply isn't the man to be the No. 2 behind Achane.

That said: We're talking about a Round 16 pick at the moment who sure seems to have a fantasy-friendly "FLEX with benefits" role waiting for him inside an offense just one season removed from ranking second in scoring. That's the sort of stuff late-round dart dreams are made of. Don't be afraid to invest in one of the freakier athletes at the position at a fraction of his previous cost now that an actual every-week role (and SKY-high handcuff upside) seems more firmly on the table than ever.

Browns WR Cedric Tillman

The Browns' hilariously sad excuse for a QB room has distracted from their curious decision to largely ignore their WRs this offseason. Sure, Jerry Jeudy deserves some love following his breakout 90-1,229-4 campaign, but the only offseason additions were perennial knucklehead Diontae Johnson and career backup DeAndre Carter. No draft picks were used on the position unless you consider Bowling Green TE Harold Fannin, who's more of a big slot (which is fair).

Reminder: Elijah Moore took his talents to Buffalo this week, meaning there's now an entire starting spot available in three-WR sets for Johnson and/or Fannin to help clear … and that still leaves Mr. Cedric Tillman as the clear-cut No. 2 starter on the outside alongside Jeudy.

For those unfamiliar with Tillman's game: The former third-round pick was thrust into the starting lineup in Week 7 following the decision to trade Amari Cooper to the Bills. While the newfound presence of DGAF gunslinger Jameis Winston certainly helped matters, Tillman proceeded to make the most out of his opportunities in his only four full games as a starter in 2024 before suffering a season-ending concussion in Week 12:

  • Week 7 vs. Bengals: 8 receptions: 81 yards-0 TD (12 targets), PPR WR15
  • Week 8 vs. Ravens: 7-99-2 (9), WR3
  • Week 9 vs. Chargers: 6-75-1 (11), WR11
  • Week 11 at Saints: 3-47-0 (8), WR50

We're talking about the WR8 in PPR points per game during this stretch! Certainly a small sample, but not too shabby of a ceiling when we could be looking at fellow DGAF gunslinger Joe Flacco under center ahead of 2025. Of course, it could also be Kenny Pickett (ew), Dillon Gabriel (yuck), or Shedeur Sanders (gross); just realize any starting WR with even a little bit of proven WR1 upside going outside of the position's top-70 players is a pretty decent late-round dart.

Bills RB Ray Davis

Davis looked good in his limited opportunities last season, displayed elite handcuff upside with 23 touches and 152 total yards in his lone game with James Cook sidelined, and now again profiles as the clear-cut lead backup after the Bills added only Darrynton Evans in free agency and refrained from drafting anyone at the position. Ty Johnson is good—he led all RBs in yards per touch last season!—but we have at least one game's worth of evidence that his scatback role doesn't really change regardless of if Cook is in or out of the lineup.

Yes, Davis' upside comes from Cook missing time, which we shouldn't wish on anyone, but in this case there's non-injury potential with the rising fourth-year back skipping voluntary workouts amid his desire for a new contract (allegedly) worth upwards of $15 million per year. Maybe the Bills simply find a way to extend their 18-TD incumbent starter, but that would be a first under GM Brandon Beane, and Buffalo currently has the second-fewest effective cap space in the league per Over The Cap.

The second-year talent is more or less a pure late-round handcuff pick, but the potential for Cook's contract situation to get wonky gives him an extra out compared to the more PURE handcuff options he's being priced around in fantasy land.

Cowboys RB Javonte Williams

Look, I feel gross even writing this, so I get the judgment you're throwing my way right now.

But hey, let's take a look at the admittedly disgusting idea of investing in Javonte Williams in the year 2025 together by taking a peak at Fantasy Life Director of Analytics Dwain "The Rock" McFarland's recent thoughts on the ex-Broncos' range of projections ahead of this season.

"If you are wondering what Williams' range of outcomes using the new floor/ceiling logic looks like, here ya go:

  • Floor Projection: 8.4 PPG
  • Median Projection: 10.9 PPG
  • Ceiling Projection: 16.8 PPG

Awwwww, we know better than to think Williams has any sort of ceiling like that. Actually, we don't, and that's the whole point of using the new ceiling-and-floor variance logic. Now, you could argue that my 47% baseline attempt share for Williams is too high; that is fair, but it seems reasonable considering the available bodies."

To parahrase Dwain's point: We largely don't know shit about f*ck in life and especially fantasy football. It's tough to blame Williams' previous offense for his struggles, but we are still looking at a formerly explosive 25-year-old back who caught 52 balls last season. Williams' $3 million contract easily clears that of Miles Sanders ($1.4 million), and the only additions in the draft were fifth-rounder Jaydon Blue and seventh-rounder Phil Mafah.

I like Blue's explosiveness and pass-catching ability as much as the next draft nerd, but it's objectively a win for Williams that the Cowboys refrained from taking their first RB until pick 149. This doesn't guarantee he'll be No. 1 on the depth chart come September; just realize the last time the Cowboys had a healthy Dak Prescott under center they led the league in scoring and enabled Tony Pollard to overall RB14 heights in fantasy despite his own inefficiency issues. I don't mind throwing some Round 12 darts at someone with even a decent chance to replicate that reality.