The new NFL season lies just around the corner, meaning the fantasy football news cycle cranks up and hype trains begin to leave the station.
2024 felt like a miserable season for the Cleveland Browns as the team went just 3-14 while dealing with inconsistent play from a rotating cast of quarterbacks, the trade of their top wideout and the regression of a formerly-elite defense. After bottoming out, the Browns emerged from the offseason with a couple of talented young players as well as a new offensive coordinator, but Cleveland still has plenty of questions to answer heading into the 2025 season.
Will Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett or even Shedeur Sanders start under center? Can anyone on this offense deliver a fantasy-worthy season? Find all the answers below!
How will a new offensive coordinator impact the Browns?
The Browns find themselves in quite the predicament moving forward. Last season saw incumbent starting quarterback Deshaun Watson continue his fall from grace with poor on-field play before suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon near the midseason mark. Jameis Winston took over under center but was eventually replaced by Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Bailey Zappe for a three-game stretch as well, so Cleveland never really saw consistently-good performances at the game’s most important position. To top it off, the team lacked high-end talent at most skill positions after Amari Cooper was traded away to the Buffalo Bills, Cedric Tillman spent much of the season injured and Nick Chubb didn’t return to form once he returned from a serious leg injury.
With all of those factors at play, it’s pretty easy to see exactly why the Browns suffered through such a grueling campaign. The band of misfits plus Jerry Jeudy and David Njoku had their work cut out for them if they were to succeed on the offensive side of the ball, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that they finished 28th in yardage and dead-last in scoring production. Something had to change, so offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey was fired in January along with his offensive line coach Andy Dickerson.
To replace the vacancy at offensive coordinator, Cleveland promoted tight ends coach and pass game specialist Tommy Rees. The hire received some criticism as Rees actually had just one year of NFL coaching experience prior to last season, which was spent on the San Diego Chargers’ staff as an offensive assistant in 2016. Rees spent the bulk of his career on the staff at Notre Dame where he worked for six seasons, serving as the offensive coordinator for three years — including the program’s 2020 run to the College Football Playoff. He then spent 2023 at Alabama as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach as the team won the SEC Championship with now-drafted Jalen Milroe under center.
Rees doesn’t bring pro extensive experience with him, but he surely understands the offense Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski wants to run. As usual, zone run concepts should take priority as well as using the ground game to set up play-action passing opportunities. The Browns will likely continue to lean on the run as the primary gear in this offense as they typically have during Stefanski’s tenure, but the biggest concern is that a lack of talent may lead to falling behind on the scoreboard often, which in turn forces more passing volume. While Cleveland spent high-value capital on a halfback during this year’s NFL Draft, the young talent himself sees plenty of uncertainty moving forward (more on that later). If the Browns don’t have reliable players in the backfield, they may lean on the pass more than anticipated anyways.
Admittedly, that does feel like a somewhat scary notion. The quarterback situation remains in flux and this offense often feels like one where fantasy stars go to die — aside from Nick Chubb and some inconsistent seasons from Amari Cooper, who’s produced a great fantasy campaign here in recent years? Somehow, David Njoku looks like the best fantasy football player to come out of Cleveland in some time, and the Browns are limited in difference-making talent on the virtual gridiron to begin with.
Regardless, there are a couple of names who do stand out among the rest. For those managers brave enough to enter fantasy football’s no-man’s land, here are a handful of players to keep an eye on in the Dawg Pound for the 2025 season.
Fantasy star fallout
Quarterback
Joe Flacco
As of right now, most reports from training camp indicate that veteran quarterback Joe Flacco spends more time than anyone else under center. On one hand, he’s produced some memorable moments over his long NFL career and did show out for five games when called upon for the Browns during his first stint with the team in 2023. During that sample, he completed 60.3% of his passes for 1,616 yards and 13 touchdowns, but he also threw eight interceptions as well. Flacco did average 20.2 FPPG at the time, but was hardly a startable asset when starting last season for the Indianapolis Colts with 14.17 FPPG over the seven full contests he played.
Now 40 years old and over a full season removed from that miracle run in which the veteran led the Browns to an NFL Playoffs appearance, starting Flacco in fantasy football feels like a tough sell. He may have a couple of decent weeks, especially after how we saw Jameis Winston sling the rock on high passing volume and put up some spike weeks last season. However, touchdowns look like they’ll be hard to come by and Flacco brings nothing with his legs. With this group of pass catchers on a rebuilding roster, he’s probably not even worth grabbing in the late rounds of drafts unless you play superflex formats.
Of course, there are other competitors for the starting job. Flacco looks like the leader though, so we’ll cover the others a little bit later.
Running backs
Quinshon Judkins
When the Browns drafted Ohio State running back Quinshon Judkins in the early second-round this past April, the rookie’s fantasy stock exploded. Several months later, some major concerns linger over this backfield, and not for on-field reasons.
There’s no denying Judkins brings talent to the table. As a freshman at Ole Miss in 2022, he led the SEC with 1,567 rushing yards and 17 total touchdowns, then tallied 1,158 yards and an SEC-best 15 scores on the ground as a sophomore. He transferred to Ohio State in 2024 where he won a national title and racked up 1,060 yards and 14 touchdowns while operating in a committee with fellow draftee TreVeyon Henderson. He’s a built for a bell-cow role at 6-foot, 221 pounds and brings breakaway speed once he gets a clear runway.
However, Judkins remains unsigned as of August 4 as the only second-round pick without a contract. He was arrested in July and faces serious allegations of domestic violence, per ESPN reporting. His status not only for this season, but his entire NFL career, faces uncertainty before even taking a single snap.
Wide receivers
Jerry Jeudy
When Jerry Jeudy was traded to Cleveland from the Denver Broncos, did anyone anticipate he would put up a career-best year? Probably not, but that’s the way things played out for the former former first-round wideout.
Jeudy averaged 14.2 FPPG last season and finished as the overall WR12 and per-game WR25. That’s a fairly large disparity between those two rankings, but the 26-year-old played all 17 games while catching 90 of 145 targets for 1,229 yards and four touchdowns. Here’s the interesting part — most of his production came from Week 8 through the rest of the campaign when Jameis Winston took over as the primary starter. Over the final 10 games of the season, Jeudy averaged a whopping 18.53 FPPG, eclipsing double-digit targets in six of those contests.
Now, will he repeat that fantastic stretch and extrapolate it into a full season of work? The jury’s still out on that one, and while Flacco aired it out plenty during his last stint in Cleveland, recapturing his gunslinging magic may be tough (especially in comparison to Winston’s time as the starter). Jeudy doesn’t have a ton of competition for targets and should still work as the primary wideout, but it’s safer to set expectations as a low-end WR2 or a FLEX play since the Browns may run the ball more.
Tight end
David Njoku
If there’s any pass catcher on this team you should feel most confident starting, it’s David Njoku. The veteran tight end remains one of the most underrated players in all of fantasy football over the last couple of seasons and could put up another productive campaign in 2025.
Njoku may not strike you as a superstar name, but he quietly became one of fantasy football’s better tight end options in recent years. Over the last three seasons, he consistently improved with 10.1, 12.6 and 13.5 FPPG, finishing as the overall TE10, TE6 and TE11 despite missing 10 games over that span. While Njoku suited up for just 11 contests last season, he averaged the most targets per game of any Browns player with nearly nine per outing. He caught 64 balls for 505 yards and five touchdowns while healthy while scoring 14.6 points or more in five games.
The 29-year-old won’t be going anywhere this season and should keep his place as one of the top two targets in this offense. He did suffer a couple of injuries last season with a high ankle sprain and an unspecified knee strain, but he should be healthy and ready to soak up opportunities among a weak group of pass catchers. The only concerns are touchdown opportunities and the role of rookie Harold Fannin Jr., but target volume can make up for a lack of end-zone trips and the Browns do like to use sets with multiple tight ends. Njoku will still be lineup-worthy most weeks.
Fringe names to watch
There are a smattering of other players to keep an eye on here.
The quarterback battle
For starters, we have the other quarterbacks — Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders. The first two seem like they could potentially push Flacco for starting reps, though the veteran probably remains the QB1 for the time being. Pickett was uninspiring for the Pittsburgh Steelers during his time as the starter but averaged just 11.5 FPPG in his best season, so he’s not an option fantasy players should truly consider.
Gabriel could become an interesting bet since he saw extensive experience under center over his six-year college career which may help him adjust to the NFL level. He threw for over 3,300 yards and 30 touchdowns in three seasons while never tossing more than six interceptions. As a fifth-round rookie with a 5-foot-11 frame, the odds aren’t in his favor to take over, but the staff will likely see what they have in the 24-year-old at some point this year.
Finally, Sanders became one of the highest-profile draft slides of the decade and certainly did produce in college with a revitalized Colorado program, however, he hasn’t seen much work throughout training camp and may need to earn the staff’s trust if he wants to get on the field.
Backup halfbacks
Judkins’ uncertain legal situation means there may be opportunities for the other halfbacks here. Incumbent starter Jerome Ford averaged 12.4 FPPG in 2023 but fell to just 9.6 FPPG last season while battling some injury issues. Still, he knows the team’s scheme for the most part and did average 5.4 yards per attempt while hauling in 37 passes last year, so he’ll have a role regardless of whether Judkins plays. If the rookie either doesn’t sign a contract or faces suspension, Ford could slot in as an RB2 this year as the starter.
The other guy to watch at running back is Dylan Sampson. A fourth-round selection from Tennessee, it’s interesting that Cleveland used another selection on a low-value position they’d taken earlier in the draft with Judkins. While Sampson’s just 5-foot-8, he weighs in at 200 pounds and paced the SEC with 258 carries for 1,491 yards and 22 touchdowns as a junior before declaring early for the draft. He’s absolutely worth a late-round stash.
Pass catchers
A couple of wide receivers could emerge as FLEX options if the passing volume can support a third weapon aside from Jeudy and Njoku. Cedric Tillman enters his third season after averaging 7.3 FPPG in 11 games last year and he showed some high upside with significant target share by scoring 18.1, 28.9 and 19.5 points across Weeks 7-9. However, he suffered an injury shortly after and didn’t do much in the couple of weeks he did return for. At 6-foot-3, he’s built to work on the outside but again, there may not be enough targets to go around.
There’s also Diontae Johnson, who landed with his fifth different team in the last calendar year after signing in Cleveland. He once finished with 17.1 FPPG and posted another campaign with 14.8 FPPG, though he didn’t reach those same highs again after 2021. Last season, a trade sent him from the Pittsburgh Steelers to the Carolina Panthers, then to the Baltimore Ravens before he signed with the Houston Texans for just one game. Johnson can’t seem to stick on a team and averaged just 7.4 FPPG last year, though he posted at least 19.8 points three times in a four-week span as a Panther. If he can earn slot snaps, the veteran can potentially draw looks with his route-running ability. However, attitude issues are a supposed problem, so he may not even see the field much.
Finally, Harold Fannin Jr. takes over as the Browns’ second tight end behind Njoku. Taken with the third pick of the third round, the rookie is undersized for the position at 6-foot-3 but earned an All-American nod along with MAC Player of the Year honors. He showcased incredible upside in the receiving game and led the entire NCAA with 117 receptions and 1,555 yards through the air along with 10 touchdowns. Fannin Jr. was a game-changing talent at Bowling Green and could do the same in the NFL, though he likely won’t take over as the starting option this year due to Njoku’s skill and his own need to develop his blocking prowess. Still, there’s depth appeal here since the Browns do like to utilize two-TE sets and camp reports say Fannin stands out.
