Every year, there are a handful of wide receivers and fantasy drafts who go a few rounds too late.

And it's not because they aren't talented or they haven't produced. It's just because the markets are overlooking them and not paying attention. And the markets are your league mates, your friends. And in this video, I'll be breaking down five wide receivers who, based on where they're going right now, could absolutely break fantasy football in 2025. And we're going to start with the

Eagles number one wide receiver, an alpha wide receiver in the NFL the past few seasons, and that is A.J. Brown. He's been one of the most efficient receivers in the NFL since becoming an eagle these past three seasons. You might be saying, oh, Sal, why of course a first round wide receiver is going to break fantasy. But hold on right there. Because believe it or not, he's not going in the first round. He's not even going in the early second round. We'll get into it in a second, but let's break down what just happened last year and why people are overlooking AJ Brown. A.J. Brown last year finished as a top 12 wide receiver for the third straight season, a wide receiver won now for three straight years, basically averaging 17 fantasy points per game every single year since joining the eagles really nothing

for a j brown himself changed despite missing four to five games last year due to injure and in his

12 full games he averaged 17.6 fantasy points which would have made him once again a top eight

receiver so again let me show you this again the wide receiver eight the wide receiver eight his first

two years with philly last year wide receiver 12 but when you just look at his 12 full games, the one that he left early,

you take that out, he was once again, the wide receiver eight. So everything stayed the same. And

last year, A.J. Brown was a top 10 pick in fantasy drafts. But this year, he's not. Even though he

ranked second in the NFL in Target chair, one of the most elite roles in the NFL. Second in air yard chair in terms of downfield targets, he was absolutely fantastic there. The problem was that overall, the offense for Philadelphia, and you can see here is deep targets just 39th, red zone target's just 44th. Of course, a piece of that is because this team, or A.J. Brown himself was injured. And the other piece was because Philadelphia was one of the most run-heavy offenses,

not just last year.

They were number one last year, but in NFL history. Which obviously is an outlier when you're talking about being one of the most efficient running games in NFL history with a 2,000-yard rusher in Sequin Barcliffe. So that was going against A.J. Brown last year, but he still finished as a top 10 wide receiver in the games that he actually finished. and let's look at this tweet from PFF. Since 2022 for AJ Brown, since becoming an eagle, including the playoffs, he's number one in PFF grades, number one in receptions against single coverage, first in yards against single coverage, touchdowns, explosive receptions of 10 plus yards. This dude dominates single coverage. He's also very good against zone defenses. We don't really see. People like to believe that wide receivers get double coverage these days because Prime Calvin Johnson and Prime Julio Jones had a couple of double coverages. But really the NFL doesn't do it these days. The wide receiver 2s and 3s and tight ends on teams are too good to be able to do that. But overall, the picture I'm trying to paint for you is that last year, AJ Brown was dominant. He just got hurt for a couple of games, and his offense was running the ball nonstop. And this stats pretty crazy. Like, this is one for the bars, like you can bring to your friends. AJ Brown only had 97 targets last year, not even 100. Again, because of the injuries in rush heavy offense, he still went over a thousand total yards. Insane. And I think this year, assuming that it's not going to be the most historic rushing offense, once again, they're probably going to throw at least a little bit more, not ranked dead last in passing attempts, even if they bump up to 25th, right? Still bottom half or bottom third of the league. It's only going to help the passing attack in AJ Brown's targets. And that should bump up all the targets, not just his targets in general general but it's going to bump up those explosive plays those cheap code targets when we're talking

about 20 plus tar 20 plus yard targets downfield and the big one the red zone targets the red zone targets

the red zone targets are what basically separates the number one overall wide receiver and fantasy

from like the wide receiver 15 jammar Chase last year getting a bunch of red zone

targets. Drake London down the stretch, right? You can see how much that improves their overall point per game finishes because the touchdowns matter. You look at the competition and they're basically running back the same team. I mean, you won a Super Bowl last year. Why not just run back the same team when it comes to the running backs? When it comes to the quarterback, of course, When it comes to the target competition, it's still Devonthe Smith.

It's still Jahan Dotson.

It's still Johnny Wilson, right?

All these guys are the exact same it's still going to be dallas scuderd who's now another year older and seems to be sticking with the team so same target competition that a j brown has finished as a wide receiver three for three straight seasons a top eight wide receiver one healthy and despite that let's look at where he's currently going in drafts as of this recording, the 19th overall player, so the back half of the second round, as the wide receiver 10 in drafts right now. I would personally say, assuming no injury here, and we could basically say that across the board for all players when we're talking about analysis right now because AJ Brown's currently healthy, this is probably A.J., a late second round pick, which is why I believe he could break fantasy football. And I also believe, and I've totally switched my stance on this since this player was traded because it was that big of a trade. I'm talking George Pickens here. I think he could break fantasy football this year. And here's the thing. He's of course been frustrating for fantasy players over the past years. He's always been this sexy breakout target ever since he was a second round pick drafted by the Steelers coming out of Georgia with some injury concerns, but he was a phenom in his freshman year at Georgia. So he's had these high expectations, but now it might actually come true in 2025 because he's finally escaped the Mac Canada in past years Pittsburgh Steelers' offense, and in general, that's Steelers' offense. First, let's start with the metrics for Pickens because in the past, like even in this Pittsburgh offense, he still earned some very strong targets as their wide receiver one in past years. Deep targets, he ranked fourth overall. Red zone targets, 15th overall. So when we take these, his 29 deep targets, his 16 red zone targets, he was top 10 in what I like to call cheat code targets, the targets we talked about them earlier with AJ Brown that really pushed the needle forward for fantasy scoring. Downfield targets, your deep targets at 20 plus yards and your red zone targets because they lead to touchdown. And another stat to point out is that Pickens ranked third in explosive play rate in terms of generating plays of 10 plus yards. Now, despite all of these great numbers and the awesome target quality he was earning, he still just had 11.7 fantasy points per game last year. And a big piece of this is because of the offense that he was in. He only had three touchdowns, a career low, right? The offense for Pittsburgh in general wasn't scoring touchdowns. They weren't passing the ball all that much. Their quarterback situation wasn't that great. They had pickens for the most part just operating as a boundary receiver, not versatile. And you can go through these last couple of years in Pittsburgh with a Matt Canada offense. Last year, of course, he ends up getting fired, but this team still ranked bottom 10 in pass attempts per game and passing yards per game. And it actually gets worse if you keep going back the years before that. Basically, since Big Ben has left this team, this has been a bottom five offense the past three years and passing volume and passing yards. That's what George Pickens has been buried in. But now you literally flip the switch here, right? Flip the switch to Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys, an offense that when Dak Prescott has been healthy, almost every single year they rank top 10 in passing volume, whether you're looking at passing attempts, red zone passing when they get there, overall passing yardage. We can look back to Dak's last healthy season where he threw in 2023, 35 times per game, fourth most in the league. He threw 265 yards per game. Third most in the league.

Led the NFL in money throws. Those are big time throws. If you look at PFF, this is player profile right here. Led the NFL in Red Zone passing. Overall, that season was a massively productive year. It was the year that Ceddy Lamb put up the second best wide receiver season ever because DAC was throwing 590 times, 4,500 yards, was an MVP candidate. And now you're throwing George Pickens into this, who that's fine if CD Lamb is there.

We know he's the number one receiver. But we've seen Dak Prescott's support number two receivers as recent as a two years ago in 23 with Brandon Cooks and older Brandon Cooks. We've seen it in other years when C.D. Lam and Amari Cooper were there, when Michael Gallup early on was having his breakouts before injury. And now when we look at the Cowboys offseason, like Brandon Cooks has gone. If we look at what they did at the running back position, they lost Rico Dottle, a player who quietly put up like 1,400 yards for them last year. They draft Jaden Blune the fifth round, a seventh round rookie, a former quarterback in Phil Amafa, who's now a running back. They get Miles Sanders, Devante Williams, all these kind of like journeymen slash young running backs in free agency in the draft. Like, none of those guys are saying, we're going to run the ball a bunch this year. Instead, trading for a George Pickens, trading in the offseason as well for a Jonathan Mingo from the Panthers just kind of shows us like they're probably prioritizing the passing attack based on their offensive line moves as well more pass blockers than run blockers so assuming

dack stays healthy and he's going to throw another 550 to 600 times, yeah, the wide receiver 2 and George Pickens, who's in a contract year, is probably going to see a lot of target volume. We're talking 100 to 120 plus targets. He's not going to be the focal point of the defense. That will be CD Lamb instead. This instead. This is a good spot for Pickens. Who, as of right now, with C.D. Lamb soaking up the attention.

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