The Herd with Colin Cowherd - FantasyPros - Fantasy Football Podcast - Derek Brown’s Biggest Busts To Avoid in 2025 (Ep. 1644)

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

Join Chris Welsh and Derek Brown as they reveal D-Bro’s 3 biggest busts to avoid in your 2025 fantasy football drafts, while also providing some tips on how to bust-proof your draft! Timestamps: (May be off due to ads) Intro - 0:00:00 Kyren Williams - 0:00:31 Chuba Hubbard - 0:04:32 How to Bust-Proof Your Draft - 0:09:34 FantasyPros Draft Kit - 0:12:17 D-Bro’s Ultimate Bust - 0:13:04 Outro - 0:16:10 Helpful Links: Draft Assistant - Get live support during your fantasy football draft with the Draft Assistant. Connect the Draft Assistant to your draft and get real-time suggestions based on expert rankings, team needs, and positional scarcity. Get the most value out of every pick in your fantasy football draft with the Draft Assistant. Learn more at fantasypros.com/assistant or download our Fantasy Football Draft Wizard app on Google Play or App Store. Dynasty Rookie Draft Simulator – Our Dynasty Rookie Draft Simulator lets you complete a mock in minutes with no waiting between picks! Customize your league settings to match your league’s exact format. Premium subscribers can test trade scenarios by mocking with their traded draft picks. Prepare for rookie drafts AND dynasty startup drafts in one place! Use the Dynasty Rookie Draft Simulator to dominate your rookie draft today at fantasypros.com/simulator! Discord – Join our FantasyPros Discord Community! Chat with other fans and get access to exclusive AMAs that wind up on our podcast feed. Come get your questions answered and BE ON THE SHOW at fantasypros.com/chat Leave a Review – If you enjoy our show and find our insight to be valuable, we’d love to hear from you! Your reviews fuel our passion and help us tailor content specifically for YOU. Head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts and leave an honest review. Let’s make this show the ultimate destination for fantasy football enthusiasts like us. Thank you for watching and for showing your support – https://fantasypros.com/review/ BettingPros Podcast – For advice on the best picks and props across both the NFL and college football each and every week, check out the BettingPros Podcast at bettingpros.com/podcast, our BettingPros YouTube channel at youtube.com/bettingpros, or wherever you listen to podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas.

We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Welcome into fantasy pros on the fantasy football side. I'm Chris Welsh and today, who are some busts that we've got to avoid? Well, we've got Derek Brown here to tell us how and who to avoid. Now, of course, these guys might not be players that we like completely moving away from an undrafted list, but it's more about we really don't like the value and obviously the production based on the value is going to bust. So how and who to avoid? And the bus market. D-Bros got you covered. And D-Bro, let's just jump right into it. D-B-B-Rose bust number one for the season is who? Man, I know he just got paid and people are going to hate this.

This is Kiron Williams. He's RB12, 26 overall in the ECR. And I can't rank Kiron Williams that high. I can't draft Kiron Williams that high. And I know he was the RB10 last year, Welshie. I get it. And I know he was their guy. He was top two and Snapshare, Opportunity Share, red zone touches for the Rams last year. I get that he's a paid player now, and congrats for Kyron on getting the fat check. But the efficiency wasn't there last year. Welsh, I think Jarquez Hunter is going to factor into this backfield.

And if Kyron Williams doesn't return with those top five usage numbers in this offense, he doesn't have the efficiency and he doesn't have the past game utility to bail him out. The Rams have not been thrown to the running backs. The Kyron Williams as a receiving, that narrative died with him as a prospect in college. It hasn't happened in the NFL. They've been bottom five in target share to the running back position. And I don't see that changing in the year 2025. So if Kyron Williams is this volume dependent back that we're like, oh, he's getting everything,

that's really what fuels his upside. If he's not that guy, if the 95% snap shares drop to 70%, 65%, 65%, the Kairn Williams is an RB2, a volume-field RB2 for a player that last year ranked outside the top 35 run-in-backs Welsh per fantasy points data, an explosive run rate, mistackles forced per attempt, and yards of contact per attempt, this is not a player that I want to spend an RB1 or at least pay an RB1 price tag for in fantasy for 2025. I can't do it. Well, ifs and butts were candies and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas as we were told. And that, it wasn't planned this way, but I'm kind of on the opposite side of a lot of these

bus, specifically, this one is tough. I actually wanted to bus Kyron Williams coming into this season. But all the same things you just talked about with Hunter are the same things we said last year about Corum. And the year before. I didn't say those things. I'm not saying you, I'm saying the narrative, the public narrative of Kyra Williams every season is that they will stop using him. They will use this other great back that's there. And they don't. From weeks 10 on, he didn't play in week 18 from weeks 10 through 17. He was the 10th scoring running back in half PPR. Double digit points scored every single week from week 12 on. Week 10 on, he was inside the top 10. They just, we haven't seen the McVeigh offense that has decided to use some committee approach.

And they just paid Kyron Williams. I get where you're going. going because it doesn't feel great, especially in a past receiving R.B. world where you just saw Devon A. Chan go and, you know, you see Jemir Gibbs and you even look at like Bucky Irving, who's a pounder, but he can catch the ball of the backfield. And then you look at Kyron Williams and you go, oh, I don't know if I can do it, but he does do it in that offense. He does it year after year. This, I mean, again, the entire second half of the season, he's a top 10 running back. They just paid him. And it seems like played over narratives. This is a tough one. I think I'm a little bit closer at cost than outside of a bust here, but I get where you're

going with it. I get it. This feels like all the reasons that everybody wanted to draft Rashad White, outside of the contract. This feels like all the reasons that everybody wanted to draft Rashad White, and Rashad White was the guy until inter super talented rookie explosive running back, Bucky Irving last year. And I think that that's what's going to happen to Kyron Williams. Quest Hunter is going to factor into this backfield. And Kyron can still be the lead guy. Bet an RB1 price tag? Bus number two is another running back.

And I can tell you as a little tease here in just a tiny bit, Debrose got his biggest bust of the 2025 season coming up. And that is saved for the end. But we've got one more running back that we're going to hit here. And this is another one. I feel like you're picking on me. Picking on another guy that I like. And I'm actually going to just jump in here before you bust him out.

And it's Chuba Hubbard. Chuba Hubbard is going to be one of your biggest bus. As far as 80P goes, he's a top 20 RB in there. Rico Dadao was outed, which I think, or was brought in, which I think potentially has some people concern. I would say before you start to bust him, I want to hear where your narrative goes with it, because Chuba from weeks 10 through 16, he didn't play in 17 and 18, so I'm not going to add that. So I'm obviously making a little bit of case for myself here. But in half PPR, he was the 11th scoring running.

back. He was a top 12 running back in fantasy, essentially through the second half of the season that he played. We also saw some big volume. We saw the offense pick itself back up. Is Rico Dowdowell coming into town enough to not make him at least even like a solid floor R-B? I think based on what we know what his upside is, which we saw last year, it being a top 12 running back to where he's being drafted, I kind of see him as a value. But what's say you? And why is he a bus for you? So I think we cannot be expecting last year to repeat. And I think this is a perfect scenario for Chuba Hubbard. Last year was a perfect runout.

If you look at what happened for Chuba Hubbard, so Miles Sanders left week 10 and he was out weeks 10 through 17. If you look at the beginning usage for Chuba Hubbard of the season, I think that's closer to what this team wants for Chuba Hubbard or what they want for this backfield. So weeks one through three before, I think, Carolina figured out, okay, Miles Sanders really didn't have the juice anymore. Okay, Rico Dowdell, Trevor E.T.N. Do have the juice. Before they realized that Sanders just didn't have it anymore,

you had Chuba Hubbard playing 54 to 58% of the snaps. The red zone rushing opportunities, Hubbard had three and Miles Sanders had two. And I understand this is a really small sample size. But even if you look at, okay, the first nine weeks of the season when Miles Sanders there, Chuba Hubbard wasn't playing this bell cow role. He only ran a route on 48.6% of drop. And He had a 9.7% target share, and he's not receiving has not been his calling card. So again, a player we are putting everything on Hubbard, he needs to own the backfield and the early downs. And after a season where they asked Chuba Hubbard and he answered it and go out and

be the bell cow. He's a substander receiving back. They go out and they add Rico Dowdo, who is coming off a surprising thousand yard season of his own. Trevor E.TN is as good, if not a better receiving back than both of those guys. So you look at the small sample before they realized Sanders just was cooked. This was a split backfield. After Sanders was out is really where we saw Hubbard truly take off because before that,

he wasn't getting a ton of routes, at least, I mean, he wasn't running 50% of routes on dropbacks. His past game utility wasn't great. He wasn't good as a receiver for the entirety of the year. So Hubbard, I think this was a perfect storm. scenario for him last year. And after that type of season, what did Carolina do? The, the clearest picture we have to look at what teams think about players and how they want to build the roster is through the draft and through free agency. And in both of those outlets, Carolina said, we need more running backs. And yes, a lot of people say that for Jonathan Brooks and say, well, that's because he's not

going to play. We also need to understand this could be an indictment upon who choose. of Hubbard is as a player and what his role could be in 2025 with Rico Dowdell eating into the early down rolls, maybe the Red Zone and Trevor ETN eating into the past game utility. And if all that comes to fruition, Hubbard maybe is just a low end RB2 or a high end RB3 if this backfield doesn't just get shifted up or split up into two different pieces, but maybe three. If you believe ETN is going to like take a bite out of this. I suppose I could see where you're going. And that the positive is he's already being drafted as kind of a low RB2.

And just a couple things to just add in here, just in my argument of him, that weeks one through nine of if I know I guess you were saying more of weeks one through three, but weeks one through nine, because I gave you my side of 10 through 16. Guess what? Weeks one through nine, he was a better running back. He was a seventh scoring running back and half PPR during that time. And on the receiving side, he had four catches. or more in five of the first six weeks,

and he had four catches in three straight games to end out the year. So they get in the ball in his hands in multiple spots. They did bring in some others. And that leads us to, I think, an interesting discussion, how to bust proof your teams, because we are solely talking on how to avoid busts in this. You gave us two players that you think are a bus. You actually said the first scenario here,

D-Bro is going to give three tips to bust-proof your team, and I'm going to just set you up into the first one, because I just want you to rattle all three off D, bro. You said don't expect last year's stats to repeat or results to repeat when you were talking about Chuba Hubbard. And that is your number one in the first of the top three on how to bust proof your team. Yeah. And this comes down to we see so many people, whether this is the RB1 overall in ranks, the wide receiver one or how you want to look at all this,

that people expect, and they could say that they don't, but the rankings and the narratives and the consensus, the generalized consensus out there says otherwise. where people are expecting last year's results to repeat to a certain extent. You're going to find plus EV and better EV, and you're going to avoid some of these busts if you already understand that, yes, we say this every year, Welsh, we get to week seven and we say, wow, things are so wildly different than what we thought coming into the year.

But that's not how we approach drafts. That's not how a lot of people approach rankings. They say, oh, well, seen that happen. That's what's going to happen in the next season, except it doesn't. So I'm not telling people to do that at every juncture of their draft. But the points of the draft where you're expecting, okay, well, the RB one overall last year, probably isn't going to be the RB one overall of this year. Or the RB or the wide receiver one overall.

Or some of these players that were stretch run heroes that don't reprise those roles in the next season. So do not expect last year's results to repeat. Also, you should not be following blindly. Whatever site you're drafting on, you don't need to be following these rankings and ADP sets blindly. You need to lean into content creators that you trust, your own process, and the homework that you're doing,

whether that's on fantasy pros, using the draft wizard, using cheat sheets, following sharp people and that are creating content and stuff, or your own process. You need to follow that over following these blind rankings and ADP sets that are on these sites, which are just a collection,

of the aggregate, and that's follow me in my third tip here. Follow your own process, follow people you trust, and fade the echo chamber. So many people get in so much trouble with saying, yeah, but, oh, that email right after the draft's going to come

out, and I'm going to get laughed out of the room, I'm going to get a D plus, and it's not going to be good, and follow your own process and follow voices and content creators you trust. Don't follow all this stuff blindly. And if you're looking for the biggest bust, not just in D-Bros, but the rest, if you're looking for the biggest targets, you're looking for the best strategy, you're looking for all the ranks to put into your process, not just blindly following.

We've got so much for you to help create and better your process with the Fantasy Pros draft kit. Go and check it out today, Fantasyprose.com slash kit. You can check out our premium content on there as well for free by claiming your three-day trial of Fantasy Pros premium at Fantasy. Pro's.com slash premium. And heck, if you guys want, you could save that free trial right up until your draft day. If you've only got one draft, you can use it. Check out the premium articles, the premium content. But don't be afraid to go over there, fantasy pros.com slash kit, because there's lots of great

stuff in there. Go and check it out today. This leads us to the final in the bus tips. D Bros. Ultimate bust of 2025. And I hate it. I hate it. so say it get out of here with this bust

Xavier worthy man it's got to be Xavier worthy he is going as a top 24 wide receiver in a lot of different spots right now in ECR wide receiver 20 or ADP wide receiver 26 I I can't draft him at that spot I know Rishie Rice is going to miss a little bit of time to suspension and that's still up in the air

but worthy I think he's going to as long as Rice is on the field whenever he's out there I think he's going to reprise the same role that he had last year and that's as a field stretcher in this offense because the only time we saw him really hit the ground running is back into the season when he was in the reshive rice roll weeks one through 12 this dude was the wide receiver 51 in fantasy points per game he only drew a 13.9 percent target share he had a 12.1 a 8 odd and his design target rate was at 13.2 percent he wasn't getting open welsh amongst 12 24 qualifying wide receivers in that

stretch. That's 12 weeks of the season, dude. 12 weeks. 12 weeks. 1224 wide receivers. He was 96th in separation and 11th in route win rate per fantasy points data. Those numbers are terrible, dude. And it's not until they put him in that high end of the role that he really kind of caught his caught fire towards the end of the year. And that's the Rishi Rice role. So when Rice is back, Worthy is not playing this role. Worthy can play the Rice role. Rice cannot play the Worthy role. and Worthy is going to be used to stretch the field. So when weeks 13 through 17, yeah, sure. He was the wide receiver 21 and fantasy points per game.

His Add dropped to 6.3 and his design target rate went up to 25.6. I can't draft a guy where I'm like, okay, if he's in that role, but Rice is coming back. He's going to be good in that role. Okay, but when Rice comes back, he's back into what? Field stretching role. And Mahomes has been quietly one of the worst deep ball passers in the NFL over the last two years. I just can't pay that type of price. If you were telling me Xavier Worthy was going as a mid wide receiver three, low end wide receiver three and stuff, sure, I'm willing to dive in on that.

But too many people are drafting him as a top 24 wide receiver right now or a top 30 wide receiver. And because of the archetype of wide receiver he is, because he hasn't been getting open, and because of even if you look at the size of Worthy, unless they're feeding him gadget touches, is he a guy you're going to expect to spike 10 to 12 touchdowns? than that save his fantasy season? Probably not. He's a guy that's going to max out in that six to seven or eight range, even in the best of circumstances, because he doesn't have the size to be a red zone guy. So no,

I cannot draft Xavier Worthy where he's going because Rishie Rice is the number one, the clear number one in this offense, and it's not worthy. But when will he be there? Based on the Jordan Addison suspension, I do not hold out hopes that Rishie Rice is going to get a nice little small suspension,

but we'll have to see. That could play a big role in it. Xavier Worthy, D-Bro's biggest bus. What do you guys think? Do you think that's the biggest bust of the season? Drop a comment below and drop your biggest bus. Plus, if you got any great tips for people, how to avoid busts on your team. These guys that are going to ruin it.

Again, not saying that there are players that you're completely avoiding, but based on value and the players that you're passing on, real high opportunity to ruin your team. You guys drop comments below on what you think. For D-Bro, I'm Chris Welsh. guys for hanging out with us. Good luck avoiding all of those busts in your drafts this coming season. We'll talk to you next time right here on Fantasy Pros. Thanks for listening to the Fantasy Pros' Fantasy Football Podcast. If you love the show, the best free way to support us is by leaving a positive review on Apple Podcasts at Fantasyprose.com slash review or on Spotify. Follow us on

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We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We get to ask other people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it.

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