We have fewer than 50 days until the NFL regular season kicks off. The news cycle is starting to pick back up, training camps will be in full swing soon, and preseason will be here before we know it. Most fantasy leagues will begin drafting about a month from now, which means the next four to five weeks are crucial for identifying player targets, evaluating ADP, and strategizing for your drafts.

One of the easiest traps to fall into is assuming that what happened last season is the baseline for a player. In reality, production ebbs and flows from season to season as circumstances change. Most fantasy leagues, and therefore ADP, tend to overvalue what happened last season, which can lead to overreactions. This, in turn, creates opportunities that smart fantasy managers can exploit.

The goal of this article is to identify players who performed above or below a reasonable baseline expectation for their talent and situation last season. We know there will be outliers in 2025, like there are every season, but I like to think of the positive regression candidates as players with the wind at their back while the negative regression candidates face a headwind when it comes to repeating last season's performance.

Positive Regression Candidates at RB For 2025 Fantasy Football

Jaylen Warren | PIT

Last year was supposed to be a big opportunity for Jaylen Warren after he broke out during the 2023 season to the tune of 1,154 scrimmage yards. Warren was significantly more efficient than backfield-mate Najee Harris, which caused many analysts to project more of an even split in the backfield.

Unfortunately, Warren suffered a series of injuries early in the season that cost him time and may have impacted his efficiency throughout the season. Funny enough, he was still more efficient than Najee last year, but not by as much as in past seasons. If Warren is healthy in 2025, we should see the return of one of the NFL's more efficient and elusive rotational backs. The real question is how much of a workload Pittsburgh will ask him to handle.

Heading into 2025, Warren is sharing the Pittsburgh backfield with rookie Kaleb Johnson and has a new quarterback in Aaron Rodgers. While Johnson is a very promising prospect, he is still a rookie, and Rodgers signed to compete this year. If Johnson has any sort of rookie struggles, Warren will be the direct beneficiary. Additionally, if Rodgers continues to throw to RBs at a high rate like he did in 2024, that would also benefit Warren.

In all likelihood, last season was close to Warren's floor from both a volume and efficiency standpoint, but he is only being drafted slightly ahead of his RB41 finish. If we see either the volume or efficiency spike, he will outperform his draft cost.

Kenneth Walker | SEA

The 2024 campaign was a puzzling one for Kenneth Walker. His two most efficient games of the season were in Week 1 and Week 4, but he missed the two weeks in between them with an oblique injury. In those first two games, Walker accumulated nearly 32% of his rushing yards for the season and scored four of his seven rushing TDs.

After that, Walker really fell off. He topped 4.0 YPC in just one of his final nine games and only cracked 50 rushing yards in three of them. This resulted in a career-low YPC.

The weirdest thing about last season is that some of the underlying metrics were actually still really good. He posted the most missed tackles forced of his career (61), and his missed tackles forced per attempt was in truly elite territory, just shy of 0.4. 

It is still early in the offseason, but the reports out of Seattle have been very positive, and it doesn't seem like Zach Charbonnet's strong performance last year is going to threaten Walker's workload much when he is healthy.

Negative Regression Candidates at RB For 2025 Fantasy Football

James Cook | BUF

There were seven NFL RBs who scored 13+ rushing TDs last season. Of that group, the six not named James Cook averaged 307 rush attempts for the regular season. Meanwhile, Cook checked in at just 207 rush attempts, by far the lowest of that group. The only other back with fewer than 300 rush attempts was Jahmyr Gibbs, and he was still way ahead at 250.

Cook's 16 rushing scores were not only an outlier for his peer group, they were an outlier compared to his first two seasons in the league. He logged 326 regular-season carries in his first two pro campaigns and only scored four rushing TDs. To be fair, that output did make him a positive regression candidate heading into his third season, and that ended up hitting in a big way, but now we have to expect the pendulum to swing back the other direction.

Dwain McFarland has Cook projected for a much more reasonable 7.3 rushing TDs in 2025. His 187 half PPR fantasy points rank 15th-best among RB projections, but are more than 60 fantasy points lower than what he scored last season.

Buffalo should be among the highest scoring offenses in the NFL once again, so there is certainly opportunity for James Cook to run hot in the TD column once again, but fantasy managers need to be aware that it is just as likely he will see a significant decline. We never want to be in a position where we are paying for last year's production, so if he is being drafted as an RB1 in your league, I am comfortable fading that.

James Conner | ARI

I swear I don't have a grudge against RBs named James. Arizona's lead back is coming off the two most efficient seasons of his career in his age-28 and 29 seasons. He now enters his age-30 season with more than 1,600 career touches, including 518 over the past two years.

It is also worth noting that his efficiency did meaningfully decline from 2023 to 2024, even if he was still very good last year. It would have been difficult to repeat his incredible 2023 season, so I don't want to knock him too much for that, but Conner was still more efficient than his career averages last year. Can he keep that up now that he is on the wrong side of 30?

The other factor at play here is the potential emergence of second-year RB Trey Benson. The third-round pick was just as efficient as Conner last season and could see a major increase in usage if Conner shows any sign of slowing down.

I never want to lose sight of what an incredible story and career James Conner has had. I hope he continues to defy the odds and dominate the NFL for years to come. However, from a statistical perspective, I have to at least point out that there is a reasonable case for his production to decline from last season, which makes him a riskier RB2 pick than many fantasy managers will realize.

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