As football follows baseball down the path of advanced analytics, knowing which to use (and how) is equally as important as finding them in the first place. Anytime new metrics get introduced to a space, Andrew Lang’s famous quote immediately comes to mind—how most people “use statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts; for support rather than illumination.”

I have one clear goal with this piece: Help you not be that stumbling drunk, only using stats to support prior claims rather than to gain new, deeper understandings.

Stats That Matter For Fantasy Football 2025

QB—Passer Rating And Rushing Points Scored

Before diving into any quarterback-related stats, it’s of critical importance to first call out the pink elephant in the room. Fantasy football disproportionately weighs running, almost to the point of necessitating an adjustment. Therefore, before investigating a single aerial stat, check QB rushing metrics first. For reference, only four shotcallers in the NFL ran for 4-plus yards per game in 2024 (Lamar Jackson, Jayden Daniels, Anthony Richardson, and Jalen Hurts), and all but A-Rich occupied a top-seven spot in terms of fantasy points per game.

Contrary to popular belief, quarterbacks do score fantasy points by throwing the ball. If forced to choose a single stat to grade a quarterback’s throwing ability, it’s passer rating. Outside of actual volume-based production stats like total dropbacks and passing yards, nothing correlated more strongly (R=0.80) to fantasy points scored in 2024. 

The formula’s a little too complex to dissect entirely here, but for our purposes, it’s an amalgamation considering four key components: completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdowns per attempt, and interceptions per attempt. Just six QBs with 250-plus dropbacks posted a 102 passer rating or higher last season:

2024 Passer Rating

Combine the position’s most productive runners listed below with the highest available passer rating, and your draft list is all set!

Rushing Points

RB—Total Rush Attempts

In a game of disparate ball distribution where the lone commodity of utilization is king, that fact is never more apparent anywhere in fantasy than the running back position. As intuitively boring on its face as possible, one look at last year’s carry leaderboard almost perfectly reflects next year’s positional ranks by ADP. 

The only six tailbacks to total 300 rushes represented five of the top seven overall scorers, with every one landing in the top 10 in fantasy points/game.

Total Rush Attempts

That said, I’ve never shied away from due diligence. So, starting with all my favorite new nerdy and hard-to-gather rush-related stats, I ran correlations to fantasy scoring across the spreadsheet—and not a single one came within an order of magnitude of total rushes (R=0.94).

• Explosive Rush Rate: R=0.37
• Rush Yards Over Expectation: R=0.36
• Yards After Contact Per Rush: R=0.35
• Expected Points Added (EPA) Per Rush: R=0.24
• Yards Before Contact Per Rush: R=0.21
• RB Success Rate: R=-0.03

Similar to QB scoring, RBs aren’t without a hangup. We’ve all seen our guy Ian Hartitz’s popular tweets—“just a couple dudes scoring 1.0 PPR points”—where one back works his tail off juking defenders and breaking tackles to gain 10 extremely hard-earned yards, while another catches a lobbed screen for no gain. Yes, life’s unfair, and sometimes that goes doubly for fantasy football. 

What did the only three RBs to finish in the top eight in fantasy points/game have in common? If you guessed that Jahmyr Gibbs, Alvin Kamara, and De'Von Achane all had 50-plus receptions in 2024, that is correct! Simply put, prioritize backfield workload with one eye peeled for pass-catching ability. Put them together and what do you get? Bippity boppity boo, the answers to the test.

WR—Team Target Share and Yards Per Route Run

On to pass catchers, where the majority of fantasy points get scored. However, since dependence on another player’s performance creates third-party risk, a two-pronged approach may be in order. I tend to look at projectable production in two simple bins—quantity and quality.

Regarding quantity, it’s become widely accepted over the years: target earning is a skill, and that bears out pretty clearly in the numbers. Unlike Team Target Share’s extremely high correlation to fantasy output among WRs with 50+ targets (R=0.82), other pure volume-based stats pale in comparison (even the very popular Targets/Route Run).

• Offensive Snap Percentage: R=0.58   
• Total Routes Run: R=0.68
• Route Per Dropback Rate: R=0.65
• Routes Run Per Game: R=0.58
• Target Per Route Run: R=0.48

Last year’s team target share leaders not only makes for a great start in ranking WRs for 2025, but the sore thumb sticking out is a great segue into the quality aspect of my argument. 

Just 10 wideouts earned more than 25.5% of all targets.

Target Share

Seven of 10 qualified players earned WR1 fantasy finishes in 2024, and two more (Davante Adams and DJ Moore) finished as WR2s. Amari Cooper, however, finished as the WR95—a testament to the risk of playing early on with some of the worst QB play in recorded history.

In recent years (thanks in part to our very own resident expert, Dwain McFarland), gauging WRs by yards per route is gaining prominence, as it should. Last season, 10 wideouts posted a yard per route run over 2.35, and it’s essentially the who’s who of fantasy football …

Yards Per Route Run

Testing out very well against total fantasy points last season (R=0.74), it leaves other quality-focused, fancy rate stats in its dust. Find the best combo of quantity plus quality, and there’s only one thing left to do—make room on the mantle for another trophy.

• Team Air Yard Share: R=0.57
• Air Yards Per Game: R=0.57
• Catch Rate: R=0.42
• Deep Targets: R=0.37
• Separation Score: R=0.19
• Explosive Reception Rate: R=0.14
• First Down Reception Rate: R=0.11
• Yards Per Reception: R=0.10

TE—“Out Of Position” Routes

Had to carve out just a little space for my fellow big men—I’ll keep it simple. The only thing more important than sheer playing time for tight ends is where it’s happening. In an age of expanding playbooks and versatile talent, prioritize TEs who spend the most time running routes out of position (in the slot or lined up out wide). Nine tight ends ran 340 or more routes while not in-line and comprise the vast majority of my positional targets in 2025.

Out of Position Routes