The Aaron Rodgers era is over in New York, but Allen Lazard remains with the Jets. At age 29, Lazard is entering the final year of his contract and will be looking to set himself up for another healthy payday. Plenty went wrong for the Jets last season, but the seven-year veteran mostly held up his end of the bargain. He finished last year with 37 receptions for 530 yards and six touchdowns across the 12 games he suited up for. Plenty has changed in New York with a new coaching staff, a new quarterback, and some newfound positivity in the organization. But is Allen Lazard in a spot where he could return to greater fantasy football relevance?
Allen Lazard’s 2025 fantasy football outlook:
Lazard missed five games last season due to a chest injury, which interrupted a strong output. But even still, he averaged 10.8 fantasy points per game based on DraftKings scoring. This ranked 47th among wide receivers last season. Lazard had his best performance in Week 6, in which he pulled in six receptions for 114 yards and a touchdown. This was good for 26.4 fantasy points on DraftKings. The veteran pulled in five touchdowns across his first six weeks before the chest injury put a pause in his production, and the Jets’ season fully went off the rails.
This was a significant increase from the 4.3 fantasy points per game he averaged in 2023 in his first season with the Jets. The combination of Zach Wilson, Tim Boyle, and Trevor Siemian throwing him the football is a fair excuse for this. But there is still plenty of uncertainty moving forward with Justin Fields as the expected starter. Lazard had his best season during his final year with the Packers in 2022. He tallied 60 receptions for 788 yards and six touchdowns, or 11.9 fantasy points per game based on DraftKings scoring. This ranked 36th among wide receivers across the 2022 season. He has only averaged double-digit fantasy points in one other season, back in 2020 in Green Bay.
Lazard is currently not cracking the top 100 wide receivers in terms of ADP and, unfortunately, rightfully so. There are too many question marks surrounding his output to have much belief. There is a place in the NFL for Allen Lazard, but he falls in the category of a player much more valuable to his NFL team than any sort of fantasy football output.
Justin Fields should be in play from a fantasy football perspective, and is the inverse of this. His ability with his legs will keep a high fantasy football floor. But Fields has started just 44 games across his four-year career and has not thrown for more than 2,562 yards or 17 touchdowns in a season. Even if you are optimistic about Fields’ outlook passing the ball, Garrett Wilson will be the surefire top receiving option and has been paid to produce as such. New York also brought over Josh Reynolds in free agency and spent a fourth-round pick on Arian Smith after he tallied 817 receiving yards and four touchdowns last year at Georgia. New Head Coach Aaron Glenn also seems more intent on building a hard-nosed running game, with Fields’ legs surely a part of the equation.
The bottom line of this is that there are too many question marks to realistically invest in Allen Lazard from a fantasy football perspective. There will be plenty of motivation on Lazard’s side to create another notable payday, but his level of opportunity likely will not be enough to matter. In deeper leagues, there are worse names to take a late-round flyer. But expectations should be kept low for Lazard from a fantasy football perspective in the 2025 season.
