Fantasy Football QB 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 rings true at quarterback. A number of factors could contribute towards them not performing up to snuff and could cause you to begin looking at your QB2 or even QB3 earlier than anticipated.

Below, I’ll give you three top quarterbacks 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” QB for this exercise as someone currently falling in the 1-12 range of ADP (average draft position) according to FantasyPros. We’ll use PPR rankings for further clarity. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Mahomes is still Mahomes and he will have the Kansas City Chiefs in a position to once again capture the AFC crown barring any unforeseen circumstances. Like last year, however, fantasy managers may just be slightly underwhelmed. The three-time Super Bowl MVP is coming off a 2024 campaign where he finished 11th fantasy points among QB’s, throwing for *only* 3,928 yards with 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions through the air, adding 307 yards and two scores on the ground. Accumulating 292.9 fantasy points, it marked the first time in his seven years as a starter where he finished outside of the top 10 in fantasy.

This dip in production for the two-time MVP could be attributed to multiple factors, a major one being on the offensive line. Mahomes took a career-high 36 sacks in 2024 and was eviscerated by the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX despite Philly not dialing up a single blitz. The unit will look different this season and the star QB will have to rely on rookie tackle Josh Simmons and either Kingsley Suamataia or Mike Caliendo to hold down the fort on the left side. On top of that, he didn’t have a single 1,000-yard pass catcher for a second straight year as an aging Travis Kelce continued to show signs of decline. The team’s receiver room will mostly look the same as it did last year and with a Rashee Rice suspension decree looming, a huge burden will be placed on the shoulders of second-year wideout Xavier Worthy.

This may end up being another year where instead of putting up astronomical numbers like he has in the past, Mahomes’ main focus will be picking and choosing spots to make key plays like he did last season. He’ll certainly end up being one of the better fantasy QB’s in the league, but may not play up to his ADP of hovering around the top five.

Mayfield has rejuvenated his career in his two seasons with the Bucs, going from a former No. 1 overall pick wandering the wilderness as a journeyman to the fiery leader of a consistent playoff team. 2024 proved to be a career-year for the 2017 Heisman Trophy winner, as he threw for approximately 4,500 yards on the dot with 41 touchdowns. Even with a league-high 16 interceptions and 13 fumbles (more on this later), he still finished as the fourth-best fantasy QB with 22.5 points per game and 381.5 points total.

Naturally, one would flock to a quarterback coming off an explosive season like Mayfield just had and that bears out with where he is being taken in ADP at the moment. However, there are a handful of warning signs suggesting that he’ll come back down to earth this season. As experts like Pro Football Network’s Drew Laing have pointed out, quarterbacks that experience a peak season this late into their career don’t usually replicate that production and the now 30-year-old Tampa QB could very well regress back to the mean. Former Bucs offensive coordinator Liam Coen is now the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars and even with passing-game coordinator Josh Grizzard being promoted as his replacement, there’s a big question mark of whether or not they can maintain the explosiveness of Coen’s offense.

And while the Bucs on paper have one of the more loaded offenses in the entire league, they could be missing some key pieces for the first half of the season. All-Pro left tackle Tristan Wirfs could possibly start the year on the PUP list with a knee injury while Pro Bowl wideout Chris Godwin may need additional time to recover from a dislocated ankle. Even with a potentially dynamic duo in Mike Evans and rookie Emeka Egbuka to lean on, the QB will be without another option with Jalen McMillan sustaining a neck injury in the preseason. The team ran into similar injury problems last season, causing Mayfield to press and get reckless at times. That bore out with him having five different games of throwing multiple interceptions.

Given the talent and continuity within the Bucs offense, Mayfield should prove to have a good enough season to be a quality fantasy option once again. But managers who take him high expecting last year’s numbers are setting themselves up for disappointment.

Last year marked the first time that Murray played a full season since 2020 and he ended up finishing the year as a top-10 fantasy QB with 308.4 fantasy points total. He ended up posting 3,851 yards and 21 touchdowns through the air, but it was his running ability with 572 yards and five scores on the ground that made him a viable fantasy threat. The presence of second-year wideout Marvin Harrison Jr. and tight end Trey McBride could make for an exciting offense in 2025, explaining why fantasy managers are already tabbing the former No. 1 overall pick as a top-10 QB in their drafts.

And yet, I’m having a hard time trusting that he will maintain as one of the elite fantasy QB’s in the NFL. While he led an efficient Cards offense, he wasn’t necessarily explosive through the air as he finished right at the league average with just 7.1 yards per attempt. Things would also get dicey for Murray in the red zone as he completed just 61% of his passes in that territory. He averaged only 5.0 fantasy points per game when inside of the 20, ranking 14th among starters with at least 50 passing attempts in that area. The Cards QB was also a bit turnover prone at times, throwing 11 interceptions with eight fumbles throughout the campaign.

His aforementioned skills as a runner boosts his fantasy value, but keep in mind that he is just a few years removed from an ACL tear that took him a full year to recover from. Taking off out of the pocket always puts him an increased risk for injury and while he was fortunate to start all 17 games in 2024, there’s always the looming possibility of him getting dinged up at some point this season. I’d give some sleeper options some consideration before pulling the trigger on Murray as your QB1.