13 Contract-Year Players to Watch in 2025

Jun 16, 2025

Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK

An old fantasy football theory is that players perform better when they are heading into the last year of their contract. A couple of summers ago, the great Brandon Niles did an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon to assess if it held up — you can read it here. Today, I will be adding the information we know about the 2024-25 NFL season to that data in order to identify potential contract-year gems for this upcoming fantasy football season.

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Recap: Does the Contract-Year Bump Exist?

Here’s a TLDR on what Brandon took away from looking at contract year data from 2015 to 2022:

Quarterbacks: Younger quarterbacks heading into contract years tend to see a jump in production, while older contract-year quarterbacks do not as they are typically journeymen or close to the end of their career.
Running backs: Certain running backs have excelled in contract years, but situation and volume tend to be far better indicators of success than contract status.
Wide receivers: Receivers experienced the biggest jumps in production during their contract years. Most successful contract-year receivers were in stable situations (safe depth chart position, continuity in the offense, etc.)
Tight ends: There is a smaller sample size for tight ends compared to the other positions, but contract-year tight ends’ success is more closely tied to opportunity than anything else.
Overall, contract-year status isn’t a stand-alone indicator of whether a player will be productive in fantasy or not. It is best used as a tiebreaker when deciding between two players to draft.