7 Players Who Could Genuinely Break Fantasy Football in 2025
The Fantasy Football Club with Sal Vetri
Sal Vetri
5.0 • 784 Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
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Summary
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7 Players Who Could Genuinely Break Fantasy Football in 2025
(Data source credits: Player Profiler)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you want to dominate your fantasy draft this year, you're in the right place. |
| 0:03.3 | Because the seven players in this video have real paths to genuine league winning upside. These guys could legit break fantasy football this year and I'll walk you through exactly why. And if you're not familiar, I'm Salvatje. I've been helping people win their fantasy leagues for nearly eight years and I plan to do the same for you in this video. And let's start things off with the Denver Broncos second round rookie running back RJ Harvey because I mean this guy is in some rare company in terms of the production that he had in college football and it kind of goes a little bit unnoticed. Okay, for starters, let's look at this. In college, as you can see right here, back-to-back seasons of 1,500 rushing yards and at least 18 touchdowns. When you actually combine what he did last year as a |
| 0:37.8 | rusher with over 1,500 yards and a receiver with nearly 300 yards. This guy was putting up |
| 0:42.7 | 1,800 total yards last year and he did it on just like 250 carries. Extreme efficiency, |
| 0:48.5 | nearly 7 yards per carry, but that doesn't even get into the best parts of his game. Because this |
| 0:52.4 | dude is not only efficient, not only productive, again, back-to-back seasons of over 1,500 total yards, but he's so damn explosive. You guys, just look at this tweet right here by Dan Bruegler. In terms of carries of 10 plus yards, your explosive breakaway runs in college the last two years, R.J. Harvey ranked number 1 with 5 more than Ashton Genti, top 10 overall pick in this year's |
| 1:11.1 | draft class. Carries of 20 plus yards, he had the exact same amount of 20 plus yard explosive runs as Ashton Genti. The guy is, in terms of explosiveness, that's why Sean Payton drafted him and loved him. He has it. He checks the boxes. And then he go over to his athletic testing. Like, He shows up to the NFL draft, a little bit of an older prospect at 24 years old. |
| 1:10.1 | He went to a smaller school at UCF, so people are concerned. |
| 1:12.6 | But he checks in 205 pounds. Okay, that's fine. It's nothing crazy. It's ideally maybe a little bit bigger, but it's not small by any means. But his testing was massive for him. A 4-440 time is 91st percentile speed. The burst that we saw it based on those explosive plays in the rate of them in college. 88th percentile in terms of player profiler, this is nerd talk for just saying he's like a top 10 percent athlete for his size, 20 and five pounds, to attend the combine, which is massive because this is already a guy who like 20 percent of his runs went for an explosive gain of 10 plus yards in college and now he's also an athlete. |
| 2:01.1 | This is when the buzz starts for RJ Harvey in the draft process as though. Maybe this guy isn't like a fifth round pick. Instead, maybe he's a third round pick, but he ended up landing in the second round with Sean Peyton and the Broncos. They took him 60th overall. He gets into the Sean Payton offense and it's pretty clear that at least by the time that they drafted him, he was going to be the RB one on this team, right? |
| 1:58.5 | Jervante Williams was gone, as you can see right here. |
| 2:00.9 | Obviously, they end up adding later in free agency jk daubbins which complicates some things but with giovante williams gone that's a hundred and ninety one touch is gone javante by the way was top five in running back targets and receptions last year so that's gone the competition at least to start to start, was only Audrakes-Ele McLaughlin, guys with basically none or very little draft capital behind them. But as I mentioned, of course, then they added J.K. Dobbins, who is a legitimate veteran running back, right? This is a guy who started last year with the Chargers very hot. He dealt with injuries down the stretch. He became less efficient down the stretch. But those first two to four weeks of the season, highly efficient, highly explosive of a runner. So we can't just wipe J.K. Dobbins off as like a guy who won't be involved here. J.K. Dobbins, I think, is a nice option in fantasy drafts, especially if he can get him in like round 12 where he normally goes. We like R.J. Harvey here, but that doesn't mean we can't like both of these guys if the value is right. But with all that said, they didn't spend a second round pick on RJ Harvey and they just kind of waited until the later |
| 3:11.1 | parts of free agency to get J.K. Dobbins. Like if they really like J.K. Dobbins and saw him as a true workhorse, they probably would have got him back in March before the draft and gave him a decent contract. They didn't do that. They spent the second round draft capital on RJ Harvey, and this is |
| 3:06.9 | just a reminder that Sean Payton, this is Ryan Heath on Twitter here. Sean Payton has only drafted |
| 3:10.6 | four running backs before day three as a head coach. Reggie Bush second overall, Mark Ingram, right, 28th over on the first round, Alvin Kamara's 67th overall in the second round, and R.J. Harvey. What are these guys have in common? Alvin Kamara, top 10 fantasy seasons left and right. Mark Ingram, multiple, We're talking two to three to four top 10 fantasy seasons. Or Reggie Bush had multiple top 10 fantasy seasons. The average running back finish for a starting running back under Sean Payton is a top 12 fantasy back. That's what RJ Harvey is walking into this year. I know yeah. It also helps that like he maybe has the best offensive line in football. I would give that to the Eagles, but this is like a top three to five, no doubt about it, offensive line in Denver. Now, we did talk about J.K. Dobbins, of course, he is somebody that again, in like round 10, 11, 12, really closer to round 11 and 12 that I am thinking is appealing this year. This is a guy who has only played though. Like we have to get this straight, right? You look at in terms of last year he played 13 games. That was his healthiest season in like the last three to four years, and he still missed four games last year. He's only played in 37 out of a possible 85 games in his career, so I don't really see J.K. Dobbins going out there and being the 250 to 300 touch running back that's really going to squeeze RJ Harvey for touches. And you can check out this tweet from Neil Orfrid right here on Twitter. |
| 4:32.6 | Again, it's a nice follow. |
| 4:33.6 | You can check them out. J.K. Dobbins in 2024. So the first two weeks of the season, this is what we talking about earlier. For the charges, he came out, nice matchups against the Raiders. He looked awesome. He was second in the NFL, an explosive run rate to start the season. but from week three on, his explosive run rate went from second in the NFL to just 43rd. |
| 4:31.8 | Again, this was a guy coming off of an Achilles injury. rate to start the season, but from week three on, his explosive run rate went from second in the |
| 4:47.8 | NFL to just 43rd. Again, this was a guy coming off of an Achilles injury. The idea there is that you're going to be fresher to start the year, the more wear and tear you put on that Achilles, the less explosive you become. That's what we saw last year out of Dobbins. The good thing is that we've actually gotten to see both of these guys play in a preseason game. The first preseason game for the Broncos where their starters played and this is what happened. |
| 4:46.1 | RJ Harvey ended up starting the game with the first team offense ahead of J.K. Dobbins and he played 63% of the starter snaps. He saw nine opportunities to just one for Dobbins. Now I've seen some people out there like Benjamin All right have reported that, oh, JK Dobbins was supposed to start but he couldn't find his helmet. I don't know if that was a joke. I don't know if that was real. But even if he couldn't find his helmet, he found it shortly after. |
| 5:18.8 | And despite that, Harvey still saw nine opportunities to just one for Dobbins with the first team offense. I think J.K. Dobbins is going to be the better pass protector. I think he'll come in on pass protection downs. Any other downs where they're trying to run the ball or actually get the running back involved in the passing game, probably RJ Harvey. |
| 5:22.6 | So when I see as of this recording, RJ Harvey going as the 55th overall player in the fifth round, I think that's actually pretty fair. Like if you told me he was a fourth round pick, I would say that that's also pretty fair, but it starts to get a little bit pricey. But as a fifth round pick right now, going next to guys like David Montgomery, Patrick Mahomes across different positions, Joe Mixon, who still has some injuries banged up, the Andre Swift in a backfield that could be anybody's in Chicago. |
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