2025 Fantasy Football breakout rankings: Identifying the top 10 candidates to be this year's Malik Nabers

Malik Nabers came into the 2024 season as a rookie with high expectations, but the lack of a credible offense around him had Nabers getting drafted around 25th at his position when we put together our Fantasy football breakout rankings for 2024. The rankings aim to identify players taken in the first eight rounds of Fantasy football drafts and find the best candidates to finish at least twice as high at their positions as their ADP while establishing a new career best in per-game production. Nabers didn't crack our top 10, instead finishing as one of our next five, but he was arguably the biggest Fantasy breakout among those players taken in the top eight rounds last year.

We're back at it again, looking to identify sleepers, breakouts and busts in 2025 while using a specific set of criteria to project players who will earn those terms by the end of the season. For Nabers last year, he filled our new career-best rule by default as a rookie, so he just had to finish in the top 12 of all receivers to be deemed a successful sleeper, an aggressive target for someone drafted 25th at the position. By coming in seventh, he earned the title of 2024 Fantasy football breakout.

We won't be too hard on ourselves if the players we select exceed expectations but don't quite meet that level of overperformance, as they are all competing for the same aggressive territory near the top of Fantasy production. For example, we had James Cook as one of our top five breakouts last year, and while he finished eighth at his position, we needed him to get to No. 7 after being the RB14 in ADP. Below, you can find my top 10 breakouts for 2025 Fantasy football drafts. 

So who gets the top spot as the best Fantasy breakout of 2025? And which players taken in the first eight rounds have best chance to provide incredible value for their Fantasy teams? ... Join SportsLine here to see R.J. White's breakout rankings for 2025 Fantasy football leagues!