Over the next month on the Fantasy Footballers Dynasty podcast, we will be discussing dynasty tiers comparing age, production, and future outlook based on the Footballers dynasty ranks.
After being in this profession for almost a decade, I have a love/hate relationship with rankings. Depending on the day of the week and what I’m working on, I might give you a different response.
It is both a blessing and a curse knowing that people love lists and rankings for discussion but also it brings up an innumerable amount of “can’t believe you hated on [player x]!” Dynasty invites a myriad of responses but the fact is ranking players over the course of multiple years is not an exact science.
We tier every single player for redraft in the Ultimate Draft Kit. It is a labor of love and the attention to detail from the Footballers is unparalleled as we update our projections as more off-season news and injury pop up. Statistical projections (“statting out” as we often call it) are NOT part of dynasty rankings since we are looking at multiple years at a time with a giant amount of unknowns in how the NFL can change. Tiering players is more an exercise of “where would I group these players” if I was in a startup draft but they are often based on arbitrary values (as I’ll explain).
On the podcast, I decided to work out my own WR tiers using the Ballers startup dynasty ranks and where I personally group them.
In this article, I will walk through each tier, explain the grouping, and share some of our dynasty outlook notes and statistics found only in the 2025 Dynasty Pass, part of the UDK+.
Dynasty Rankings: Lessons Learned
I wrote an article last year entitled “Dynasty Tiers: 5 Tips for Assessing Value” where I shared five tips I wish someone would’ve told me years ago about dynasty tiers. Here is the TLDR version for you sick, sick people who would never click a link.
- Tiers are arbitrary.
- You don’t know what you don’t know.
- Not all tiers are created equally.
- Anticipate “tier jumps” in trades.
- Compare & Contrast (after making your tiers).
Certain sites like KeepTradeCut (KTC) use crowd-sourced decisions to try and calculate perceived “value” of each players. We reference this site sometimes on the Fantasy Footballers Dynasty podcast and certainly find it as a valuable part of the dynasty discussion especially considering we’ve been doing a KeepTradeCut segment on the podcast since 2016. However, I do need to bring up the pros and cons of “dynasty value” sites. The values and figures (based on people voting on the site) eventually condense into one number. This value might feel like a true number and it is true to the site. However, it is an arbitrary value better used as a 3rd or 4th tie-breaker in evaluating trades rather than a set figure: “this is how much this player is worth!“.
You can value a player a certain way, trade for/away for a certain value, and receive certain value based on their actual fantasy production. Those are three different ways to see one player and we’re not even discussing future production or future value or their age curve, etc. The point isn’t to dive too deep into player takes but rather hold loosely the defining structure of dynasty tiers. These are my issue with rankings: Is there that big of a difference between certain players? Do we draft or trade based on linear rankings lists alone? Are any of these values stable year over year? Are we overcomplicating things? Do we take the time to zoom out and realize how wildly off we were projecting certain careers 3-5 years out?
The NFL changes so much more than we realize and yet dynasty rankings feel true to us in the moment as a “this is where this player goes”. Often, I find this is a mirroring mechanism for all of us (myself included) who have looked at rankings and tiers so long that it’s easy to get #TakeLock.
Check out this list of top-10 dynasty WRs since 2018. The darker the shade of red, the darker the plummet was the following year.
An average of 3.5 WRs dropped from top-10 each year. That sounds scary but consider how hard it is to maintain top-10 status. Young WRs are drafted every year that are the most valuable resource in dynasty. Also consider that only 13% of these top-10 WRs dropped outside WR20. They hold value. If you take out Calvin Ridley and THE Kenny Golladay… the average drop was to WR17 in dynasty ADP value. These WRs hold value & some will gain value. Looking ahead at 2026 WR class… definitely not as strong in early forecasts so I expect this 2025 group to remain fairly stable although McConkey could easily drop from this group.
Tier 1- The Untouchables
This group does not need a ton of commentary and we tried to go as quickly as possible on the podcast. Recognize that the four guys here are the premier assets in all of fantasy football. It does not matter what season your team is in (rebuilding, etc.), this is what dynasty is what made for. The bigger question: what are you trying to gain trading them?… I put Ja’Marr Chase in a tier of his own. He lapped the field (20.0 fppg) representing the largest gap between WR1 and WR2 since 2019. His +293 YAC over Expectation was the highest by any WR over the past 3 seasons. Will statistical regression potentially hit in 2025? Who cares! … Justin Jefferson is on a Hall-of-Fame trajectory and just now entering his prime at 26 years old. If you want to troll your leaguemates, just send them YouTube clips of Jefferson hitting the Griddy…
Justin Jefferson ranks #1 all-time in receiving yards per game (96.5) ahead of Calvin Johnson (86.1).
If next year JJetts somehow morphs into a 2024 variant of Ray-Ray McCloud (avg 40.4 rec ypg), he'd still be #1.
— Kyle Borgognoni (@kyle_borg) January 29, 2025
The lone worry I brought up was if Malik Nabers goes the “Garrett Wilson” route. In other words, what if he routinely sees 150+ targets in a bad New York offense that continually does not have an answer at the QB position? The talent is undeniable but if you end up with 5-6 TDs per season, 150+ targets, and the Giants are still trying to find a franchise QB in 2027, Nabers will have fallen short of the insane expectations. Once again, this is merely discussing the scenarios available for a stud WR not yet 22 years old. The sky is the limit but team-wide success does matter for ceiling outcomes: the Giants were tied or trailing on 90(!) percent of his routes!.. Like Chase and Jefferson, don’t overthink it with CeeDee Lamb. Hold onto him as he’s just now entering the prime of his career at 26 years old. When Dallas was blitzed, he was THE offense: 53% of Team’s Receiving Yards (#1 in the NFL) and 4.72 Yards per Route Run (2nd only to Puka). Our writer Marvin Elequin recently profiled Lamb in his “Players At Their Peak for 2025” article.
Tier 2A/B- WR1s: Locked & Loading…
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July 02, 2025
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