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Last season, many drafters saw their hopes dashed by a disastrous first-round selection. Christian McCaffrey and Tyreek Hill were both routinely selected inside the first round of fantasy drafts. Hill’s production and usage cratered, while McCaffrey’s season was even worse—he played in only four games. Unless your league had points-per-trip to see medical specialists in Germany, it was hard to even make your league playoffs after a CMC first-round pick.
But in fantasy football, last season’s source of frustration can turn into this season’s league winner. Everyone loves a comeback story, and our Brain Trust will attempt to unpack one in this article.
This Week’s Topic: Who is Fantasy Football’s bounceback player of the year?
ADP Data from FFPC Big Gorilla $350 entry redraft leagues. All ADP Data courtesy of FantasyMojo.com, supporting every FFPC Format including Dynasty, Redraft, and Best Ball.
Fantasy Points Brain Trust: Bounceback Player of the Year
Christian McCaffrey, RB, San Francisco 49ers
ADP: 9th Overall in FFPC
2024 was a lost season for Christian McCaffrey fantasy managers. Coming off an overall RB1 finish in 2023 — and an RB2 finish in 2022 — drafters made CMC the RB1 in ADP and the most common 1.01 pick in all formats. Then, disaster struck. McCaffrey missed the first eight games of the season, including a trip to Germany to consult with a specialist. When he finally returned, it was a short-lived reunion. Instead of leading teams to fantasy playoff glory, he suffered a PCL injury in Week 13 that ended his season.
Now 29 years old and fully healthy, McCaffrey looks ready to return to form. There’s no reason to believe he doesn’t have one more massive season left in him. The 49ers fell to a very un-Shanahan-like 6–11 record last year and are pushing for an immediate turnaround. Expect as much CMC as possible. The departure of Deebo Samuel to Washington frees up additional rushing attempts and manufactured touches near the line of scrimmage.
Even if the 49ers mix in some touches for rookie Isaac Guerendo, McCaffrey should still thrive thanks to his elite pass-catching ability and dominance around the goal line. San Francisco is likely to feature McCaffrey in creative, high-volume ways, and another 20+ PPG fantasy season could be in the cards. 2025 could become the Christian McCaffrey revenge tour.
- Theo Gremminger
Tyreek Hill, WR, Miami Dolphins
ADP: 27th overall in FFPC
Hill averaged just 56.4 receiving YPG and failed to reach 1000+ yards for the first time since 2019. He injured his wrist last August and gutted through the injury, and he underwent right wrist surgery this off-season. Hill cleared 1700+ yards in each of his first two seasons in Miami and averaged 106.3 receiving YPG in 2022-23. Hill appears locked in at the start of the summer. He said this spring that he’s hoping “I can prove myself and prove to my teammates that I’m still one of them ones, man, who’s chasing 2K [receiving yards].” He even ran the 100-meter dash in a personal-best 10.15 seconds in preparation for a since-cancelled race with Olympic 100-meter champion Noah Lyles.
Hill ranks behind only Justin Jefferson in 100-yard receiving games since 2022 with 20, and Miami’s defense could have the Dolphins playing in more shootouts, especially if they trade Jalen Ramsey. He’s plummeted by two rounds since last summer, and he could go down as a league-winning pick since few players carry the weekly upside he’s displayed for most of the previous eight seasons. Let’s take advantage of the discount we’re receiving because Hill put up sub-par numbers while gutting through a wrist injury all of last season.
- Tom Brolley
Breece Hall, RB, New York Jets
ADP: 31st overall in FFPC
The only reason Hall has yet to break fantasy leagues in his career is because of bad injury luck. Over his first two seasons, he averaged a staggering 21.9 FPG in games above a 50% snap share. He averaged 6.1 targets per game over this sample, which would have led all RBs (including Alvin Kamara, Christian McCaffrey, etc.) since 2022. But Hall’s rookie season was over by Week 7 (due to the aforementioned ACL tear), and he averaged just a 46.2% snap share over the first six weeks of 2023 while returning from that same injury.
Even in 2024, I believe injuries were to blame for Hall’s disappointment at his top-3 ADP. Hall sustained an undisclosed injury in late May 2024 that kept him from participating in team drills through at least early June. No details were ever made public aside from HC Robert Saleh telling reporters a week later that it was to Hall’s “lower half” but that it was nothing to be concerned about. If Saleh was lying and this mystery injury affected Hall all season, then maybe that’s why all of our film charters told me he looked like he’d lost a step out of the gate in 2024, why his backfield rushing shares seemed to oscillate from 80%+ to below 55% from week to week, and why the previous regime insisted on giving some red zone touches to Braelon Allen, the NFL’s least explosive RB in 2024. This is to say nothing of Hall’s “pretty serious” knee injury in Week 11, until which he’d averaged 16.8 FPG (RB11).
At his now significantly reduced cost, all Hall needs is to stay healthy and for Jets HC Aaron Glenn to be hyperbolizing when talking up his three running backs in quotes like this one (“I don’t know if there are three backs in this league that has the potential like these three”). In contrast, OC Tanner Engstrand has told Hall he’s “going to do everything.” If we take the word of the coach who will be calling the offense, Hall looks like a serious value and high-upside bounce-back candidate.
- Ryan Heath
Mark Andrews, TE, Baltimore Ravens
ADP: 86th overall in FFPC
Fantasy managers who spent a top-5 pick on a tight end in 2024 (outside of Trey McBride) hit that first bye in Week 5 feeling queasy. Top-25 pick Sam LaPorta ended up as the TE9 in FFPC formats. Dalton Kincaid finished as the TE28 — nine spots behind the best TE named Dalton (Schultz). And Mark Andrews finished… wait, Mark Andrews finished as the TE6?!
A slow start to his 2024 campaign — following an August 14 car accident — combined with some unparalleled coachspeak on fourth-year running mate Isaiah Likely, has pushed "Mandrews" down to TE9 on FFPC. He now sits behind volatile but intriguing options like Evan Engram and David Njoku. And while a top-6 finish doesn’t scream “bounceback candidate,” the better question might be: What does his ceiling look like?
It’s been nearly a presidential term since Andrews’ 2021 nuke of a season (107 receptions, 1,361 yards, 9 touchdowns), but there’s still reason to believe a top-3 finish is within reach. Per Fantasy Points Data, from Week 12 on, Andrews ranked:
3rd in fantasy points per game among TEs (min. 5 games played)
1st in fantasy points per route run (0.77)
Excluding the first month of recovery post-accident, Andrews averaged 13.6 FPG — a pace that would have solidified him as the TE4 over the full season. From Week 6 onward, Andrews outscored Isaiah Likely in all 11 games where both were active.
Likely will continue to cap the overall TE1 upside Andrews showed in 2021. But with a featured red zone role and long-standing rapport with franchise QB Lamar Jackson, Andrews remains one of the most bankable bets in fantasy. If Likely were to miss time, Andrews would instantly vault into elite territory, right alongside McBride and Brock Bowers.
