The 2024-25 NFL season was an odd one for fantasy football, with many established patterns reversing course and leaving dynasty owners scrambling. The league as a whole was more run-heavy than expected, older running backs who were left for dead by some in the community had a renaissance, and the top of the wide receiver position was decimated by injuries while most notable running backs enjoyed pristine bills of health.
While I can’t predict with any degree of certainty whether these macro trends will hold going forward, there were a few specific offenses that committed to extreme usage patterns, favoring some dynasty assets but leaving others out to dry.
In this article, we’ll look at how the Cleveland Browns, Philadelphia Eagles, and Green Bay Packers will revert from extreme offensive approaches towards a greater degree of normalcy, and the far-reaching effects this reversion will have on dynasty values.
Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns operated like an air raid offense last year, leading to their pass-catchers printing fantasy points down the stretch, especially during Jameis Winston’s glorious, wacky run at the helm of Kevin Stefanski's offense. This matches a pattern we observed the season prior, in which Joe Flacco took Amari Cooper and David Njoku on nuclear, league-winning runs.
Between these last two seasons, a clear pattern emerged. Any time the Browns weren’t saddled with Deshaun Watson’s desiccated husk, they were a fantasy-winning passing attack.
However, in 2025, the offense will be much more balanced, meaning the Browns’ receiving weapons won’t be must-start volume plays like in years past. They'll need at least some efficiency, and I think I speak for everyone when I say I have my doubts about that. Let’s break down a few reasons why the Browns will run the ball more in 2025.
Investments in the RB room
The Cleveland Browns essentially abandoned the run game ever since they lost Nick Chubb to a devastating knee injury in Week 2 of the 2023 NFL season. During Kevin Stefanski’s tenure as Browns’ head coach, Cleveland had a 53.2% pass rate before the Chubb injury, and has had a 62.0% pass rate after.
Granted, this isn’t entirely about Chubb. The Browns were also abjectly terrible in 2024 in a way they haven’t been during the rest of the Kevin Stefanski tenure, which contributed to negative game scripts. Additionally, the departure of offensive line coach Bill Callahan before the 2024 season may have contributed to the decreased efficacy of their run blocking and subsequent abandonment of the strategy.
In general, though, Nick Chubb is arguably the best pure runner of his generation, and the only way Jerome Ford doesn’t have the worst vision in the league is if Najee Harris starts playing with fireworks again. It’s not a stretch to imagine losing their best offensive player contributed to a change in approach.
Whatever the relative importance of these interconnected factors, the following two truths are undeniable. First, the Cleveland Browns have not been run heavy since Nick Chubb's ACL injury. Secondly, they invested heavily in the running back position during the 2025 NFL Draft.
It’s unclear at the moment how much of a wrench Quinshon Judkins’ arrest might have thrown into the Browns’ offensive gameplan, but drafting running backs with an early second round pick, and then double-dipping in the fourth round, is a really strong signal of their intent to turn the room around.
Moving on from Deshaun Watson
Even if Joe Flacco wins the Browns’ starting job for 2025, the Cleveland offense will still more closely resemble its iterations from before the Deshaun Watson era. In 2024, Kevin Stefanski made a last ditch effort to design the entire offense specifically to suit Watson, rather than having Watson run his system.
Gone was the run-heavy wide zone offense with 12-personnel and play action shots. In came Ken Dorsey and a pass-heavy approach meant to suit a mobile, improvisational quarterback. In a sense, Watson won a power struggle, showing that he was so incredibly incompetent at running a Kubiak-style offense that the Browns needed to full-send a more spread and RPO style system. Despite the last ditch effort to get the best out of Watson, it turned out he was incompetent in every type of offense, and the experiment failed.
Based on their hires and offseason moves, the Browns are telling us in no uncertain terms that this is Kevin Stefanski’s offense again. Gone are Ken Dorsey and offensive line coach Andy Dickerson, in comes internal hire Tommy Rees at OC and Mike Bloomgren as OL coach, to go along with two new running backs.
For what it’s worth, as somebody who is very plugged into Browns’ Twitter, the local beat writers have been extremely consistent on this drumbeat as well. This is going to be a Kubiak-style rushing attack again, a major depature from the air raid we witnessed the last two seasons.
Defensive Bounceback
If any facet of the Cleveland Browns is going to improve from last season and not be a complete dumpster fire, it’s much more likely to be the defense than the offense. One year removed from being one of the league’s premier defenses, the Browns found themselves out of games early and often in 2024.
The Browns won’t be winning many games this year either, but there is at least the potential for the defense to keep things close and therefore in less pass-heavy game scripts. This is still a roster with the same nucleus in place as the dominant 2023 iteration, except with potentially stronger defensive line play thanks to 5th overall pick Mason Graham and some recent hits on depth defensive linemen in days two and three of the draft.
The defense isn’t guaranteed to bounce back, but the possibility of a top ten unit is yet another path to the team staying out of game scripts that require them to throw the ball 70% of the time.
Takeaways
David Njoku remains a strong play in fantasy football, and he’s a key target for contending teams needing production at tight end. He’s run a gauntlet of terrible quarterbacks while remaining productive, and the less confidence Kevin Stefanski has in his quarterback room, the more he tends to dial up screen passes for Njoku.
Everybody else, though, is severely downgraded. The community, in general, does seem to be leary about Cleveland, since Jerry Jeudy and Cedric Tillman are relatively cheap, but it’s at least important for my readers to know that this won’t be the set and forget 40+ passing attempt offense of the 2023 Joe Flacco and 2024 Jameis Winston eras.
I still wouldn’t invest in the run game though, since this team will still lose a lot of football games and may not have a credible passing threat to keep linebackers honest. I’d avoid this team for dynasty other than Njoku.
Philadelphia Eagles
The Eagles’ pass-catchers were extremely efficient last year, it just didn’t pay off fantasy owners because in the second halves of games they were more likely to be blocking than running routes. Last year was a perfect storm for low passing volume in Philadelphia. They were up multiple scores early in games, their run game was unstoppable, and Saquon Barkley ended drives early with long touchdown runs.
This year, the Eagles will still have an elite defense, they’ll still win lots of games, and Saquon Barkley will still be good at football. So why should we expect more passing volume? Simply put, the Eagles were unsustainably extreme last year. Even if all the aforementioned trends from 2024 will still exist directionally in 2025, it’s almost impossible for this perfect storm of factors to remain this incredibly lopsided for yet another season.
JJ Zachariason has already done a lot of legwork on why it’s unlikely for the Eagles to give Saquon Barkley the same workload as last year, even if he stays healthy. Since Saquon’s 400 touches have been discussed to death, I won’t rehash this discussion here. Instead, I’ll talk about game script.
In his podcast, The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, Zachariason points out the Eagles had the second-lowest pass rate overall since 2011, and that of all offenses with a sub-45% pass rate, on average, those teams increased their pass rate by 7% the following year.
The NFL is a league dominated by parity. Most games are close and decided late. I fully expect the Eagles to be one of the best two teams in the entire league again, I just have trouble imagining they can sustain a run of never needing their passing game in the fourth quarter.
In 2024, the Eagles had a 51% pass rate in the first halves of games, compared to an astonishingly low 37.5% in the second halves of games. That number is simply not sustainable. Consider that the Baltimore Ravens, a team that was nearly as dominant as the Eagles, but that does not have nearly the pass-catching weapons that the Eagles do, clocked in at a 42.3% pass rate in second halves of games.
Just for fun, here is every team's pass rate in the first halves of all their games vs the second half. As you can see, the Eagles first half pass rate also has way more room to go up than down. I would stake my credibility on the Eagles’ pass rate increasing in 2025, and for A.J. Brown to occasionally score a fantasy point in the fourth quarter.
Takeaways
A.J. Brown has never been more acquirable and is coming off a season that frankly screwed his dynasty owners. Contending teams should be looking to tier up for him in exchange for a lesser, younger player and a pick.
Likewise, DeVonta Smith fell short of his career highs by 27 receptions and 363 receiving yards, and could be a solid addition for many types of rosters. You’ll have to feel out how your league mate feels about him.
Jalen Hurts continues to be expensive, so I don’t necessarily think there is a buy opportunity here, but his owners will take comfort in him being in better game scripts for fantasy next year.
Green Bay Packers
Between the 2023 and the 2024 seasons, the Packers pass rate dropped from 57.7% to 49.9%. Had the Packers simply passed the ball at an equal rate as 2023, there would have been a whopping 84 additional pass attempts for their pass-catchers to go around.
So should being the third run-heaviest team in the league, behind only the Eagles and Ravens, be the new normal? While nobody except Matt LaFleur can be sure, I believe most of this run-heavy approach can be attributed to Jordan Love getting injured in Week 1 and then not looking like himself when he came back.
The influence of Josh Jacobs should pull up the expected rushing play rate of the Packers' offense to some extent, but I would argue that the biggest change from last year was simply that Jordan Love got the keys taken away from him, and he never seemed right after coming back from injury.
A spree of drops from the pass catchers may also have contributed to LaFleur losing confidence in his passing attack, but that should normalize to a moderate degree in 2025. Drops tend not to be a stable metric, and having multiple receivers leading the league in drop rate cannot be sustainable.
With a healthy (knock on wood) Jordan Love season incoming, new investments in the pass-catching unit, and a bounce back from at least one or two of the veteran receivers, I expect the Packers to be neutral or above average in pass rate this year.
Takeaways
I won’t go so far as to tell you to sell Josh Jacobs, who is still arguably the best player in a good offense. However, Jayden Reed is approaching a make or break season, and I would like to acquire him at cost. At this point, he likely costs you a 2nd+.
Whenever Jayden Reed is on the field, he’s an extremely efficient fantasy asset. The issue is that between his slot-only usage, and the Packers’ run-heavy approach, Reed earned a strong share of a tiny pie.
We should be prepared to accept that Reed may not develop into the low-end WR1 we were cautiously hoping for, but I expect him to bounce back in a big way next year after an offseason where the vibes couldn’t be much worse. As a little bonus, there is some smoke that Reed might see the field in two receiver sets. I don’t fully buy it’ll translate during the regular season, but it’s an upside case you could expose yourself to.
Conclusion
Some of the biggest changes in players’ dynasty values over the 2024 season were due to extreme offensive approaches that will be difficult to repeat going into 2025. Between the Browns doing their best impression of a 2017 Big 12 rivalry game, and the Eagles and Packers using Cold War era tactics, many dynasty owners were left floundering.
If your league mates tend to value players through a lens of recency bias, you might run into some trading opportunities. If not, I might at least prevent you from selling low on great players or from investing in the Cleveland Browns (disclaimer: The Browns are unfortunately my team. I get to say this).
A.J. Brown is a truly elite alpha WR1, who, in the second halves of games, spent more time browsing on Etsy than playing football.
He also recently turned 28 years old, and still has at least three years of great production ahead of him. If his owner in your league is anything short of a contender, he might very well be looking to tier down from him. This feels like a win-win waiting to happen.
Meanwhile, Jayden Reed has gone from a hyped breakout player to an afterthought, despite remaining extremely efficient throughout his young career. There are better days ahead for him, even if we do need to adjust our expectations due to his concerning slot-only usage.
Even beyond simple trading advice, knowing how and why these offenses veered off course from expectations can help you avoid recency bias and keep your eyes on the big picture.