Fantasy Football RB Fades for 2025

The 2025 NFL preseason is wrapping up and that means fantasy football draft season is underway. We finally made it people.

There are plenty of top options in your draft will be that immediately taken off the board, but some of them will not live up to expectations. Those top picks not producing the way you thought they would could put your season in jeopardy early and that especially rings true at running back. A number of factors can contribute towards them not performing up to snuff and that could derail your championship hopes quickly.

Below, I’ll give you four top running backs for you to fade ahead of your respective drafts. Considering that the average fantasy football league consists of 10-12 teams, I’ll define a “top” RB for this exercise as someone currently falling in the 1-30 range of ADP (average draft position) according to FantasyPros. We’ll use PPR rankings for further clarity. Let’s dive in, shall we?

I mean, it’s really easy to see why McCaffrey is at the very top of this list. Coming off a fantastic campaign where he earned NFL Offensive Player of the Year honors, C-Mac’s follow-up in 2024 was derailed by injuries and set in motion a disappointing 6-11 season for the 49ers. Bilateral Achilles tendinitis kept him out for the first eight games of the regular season and he had to see a specialist in Germany for treatment. His return was short lived as after just four games of action, a non-contact PCL injury he sustained in the snow against the Buffalo Bills officially ended his season.

After an offseason of recovery, McCaffrey has been participating in San Fran’s training camp and the organization is optimistic that he can pick up from where he left off in 2023. But his injury history cannot be hand-waived off. Last year marked the third season of his career where he suited up for less than eight games and he has tons of mileage on him as a 29-year-old tailback. Even if he does manage to stay healthy, one would imagine head coach Kyle Shanahan and staff wanting to preserve the All-Pro by giving more reps to backups like Isaac Guerendo and Jordan James.

Drafting McCaffrey right out the gate in the first round is an extremely risky proposition and at this juncture of his career with his injury history, I’d look elsewhere.

Williams has finished as a top-10 running back in fantasy over the last two seasons and has certainly established himself as one of the focal points of the Rams’ offense. His 1,299 yards and 14 touchdowns last season yielded fantasy managers 17.0 points per game last season and it’s easy to see why he’s floating around top 10 of ADP as draft season unfolds. However, parse through those numbers more closely and the signs of a possible dip this season are right there.

As Derek Brown of FantasyPros pointed out, Williams’ big numbers in 2024 came out of sheer volume as he led all running backs in total snaps with 888 while registering 316 carries on the year. The former Notre Dame standout wasn’t very efficient with that heavy workload either, averaging just 4.1 yards per carry with a rushing EPA of -0.07 and an explosive run rate of just 6.96%. And even with his high volume of snaps, he wasn’t much of a factor as a pass-catcher, hauling in just 34 receptions for 182 yards and two receiving touchdowns through 16 games.

While Williams will still get a bulk of touches for the Rams this season, his production is threatened by the presence of backups Blake Corum and Jarquez Hunter, who have both looked impressive in training camp and are poised to get plenty of run this year. If those two cut into a percentage of Williams’ snaps, then the workhorse back’s value may take a noticeable hit this year.

An early-season oblique injury and a late-season ankle injury limited Walker to just 12 games in 2024, but he still had a productive campaign for the Seahawks. In his third season, the former Wake Forest/Michigan State star produced 541 rushing yards, 271 receiving yards, and eight total touchdowns. He was averaging 16.5 fantasy points per game in PPR leagues when he got shut down for the year in December.

However, there are multiple factors that could potentially threaten Walker’s status as a top fantasy tailback heading into the 2025 season, namely a foot injury that kept him out of practice through the first few weeks of training camp. That has opened the door for backup Zach Charbonnet to possibly cut into Walker’s workload this year, even if the starter is healthy. The third-year backup ran for 569 yards and punched in eight touchdowns last year and is making a case for potentially emerging as the RB1 in Seattle.

Availability is the best ability in Walker’s case this year and if nagging injuries continue to be an issue, there’s a strong chance that he could lose his starting job and put fantasy managers in a bind.

Mixon has been a top-15 fantasy running back for each of the past four seasons and the Texans got an immediate return on their investment when they traded for him last March. He cracked 1,000 yards for the fifth time in his career and provided 11 touchdowns on the ground to earn his second-career Pro Bowl nod. Unfortunately for the team and interested fantasy managers alike, he has been dealing with a lingering foot-ankle injury all summer and has been held out of training camp.

As the regular season draws near, it becomes increasingly likely that he will miss the team’s Week 1 opener against the Los Angeles Rams and could possibly miss even more time depending on his recovery. Foot/ankle injuries have nagged Mixon at various points of his career, derailing his 2020 campaign with the Cincinnati Bengals after just six games and sidelining him for three weeks early last year.

Similar to the aforementioned McCaffrey, Mixon just turned 29 and all of that mileage with nagging foot ailments is a bad combination. His current ADP suggests that fantasy managers are still optimistic about his RB2 potential upon his return, but there’s a good chance that his best days are already behind him and we’ve already seen the peak of his powers.