Kickoff Return Depth Chart and Players to Target in Fantasy Football

This article is for the real sickos out there. Those who earn points for kick return yards in their fantasy leagues. But everything here is a bit dependent on the scale of those points. We don’t have generally agreed-upon standards like we do for receptions.

As an example, I was in a league last year where you earned one fantasy point for every five return yards. So, a 30-yard kick return was the equivalent of a touchdown. Rashid Shaheed was an absolute menace in that league…until he tore his meniscus in Week 6. But all of this is to say, if you have questions about your specific scoring settings, feel free to reach out to me on Bluesky. With that context in mind, let’s first dig into what happened last year before looking at whom to target in return leagues in 2025.

What Happened Last Year and Changes This Season

Prior to last season, the NFL introduced new kickoff return rules with the hope of drastically increasing the number of returns. But that’s not exactly what happened. The NFL projected a 55.0% return rate, but did make it clear that it was very difficult to estimate. In reality, the return rate did increase from a record-low 21.8% in 2023, but only to 32.8%.

And the distribution of returns shown below did not change drastically either. It mostly just shifted to the right by about three yards. What happened in practice was that the average starting field position increased by about 4.3 yards. And that was mostly driven by touchbacks with two-thirds of all kickoffs starting at the 30-yard line in 2024 compared to the 25-yard line in 2023. Clearly, teams didn’t view the additional five-yard cost of a touchback quite as taxing as the NFL expected.

Which leads us to this coming season. The big change is that the NFL is increasing the cost of a touchback further, with the ball now starting at the 35-yard line. By widening the gap between a touchback (35-yard line) compared to the average return last season (about 28 yards), the hope is that we start seeing return rates like the NFL estimated prior to 2024. The NFL also approved a smaller change to how blockers on the return team are allowed to line up that might lead to longer returns.

Projected Returners by NFL Team

These situations are very much in flux this early in the preseason. But below are the projected returners by team from ESPN, along with who led each team in kickoff return yards last season. And I’ve highlighted in green the players that are fantasy-relevant, with a pretty broad definition of relevance.

Players to Target

Rashid Shaheed

Rashid Shaheed was the cover image for this article last year and remains that way this season. He is pretty easily the strongest bet to earn traditional receiving fantasy points plus a locked-in kick returner role. Playing only six games last season, he didn’t qualify for the Most Predictable Wide Receiver Stats article. But he continues to flash efficiency on smaller route numbers, hitting 1.9+ yards per route run (YPRR) and an above-average ESPN open score in three consecutive seasons.

Where Shaheed gets dinged is his massive 18.1-yard average target depth last season, to go along with a correspondingly low slot rate. The Saints have historically used him as a pure deep threat, and, because he’s just a talented football player, he’s thrived in that role. However, I do wonder if new head coach Kellen Moore will use Shaheed on more WR screens this season. He definitely fits that bill better than Chris Olave in my opinion, who had a low 3.7 yards after catch (YAC) per reception last season, along with zero recorded avoided tackles. Those manufactured touches could smooth out his boom/bust performances.

One other obvious concern for Shaheed is the quarterback play for the Saints. Jake Haener is still getting first-team reps in training camp. That is five-alarm fire bad. But we can also be very certain that Kellen Moore’s offense will at least play with pace. Moore sped up the Cowboys with Dak Prescott by two-to-six seconds per play. He led a fast Chargers offense in 2023 and even had the Eagles play quickly with lots of no-huddle despite their primeval run rate. Moore’s pace should at least offset some of the terrible efficiency with volume.

KaVontae Turpin

KaVontae Turpin outpaced the second-best kick returner by 100 yards last season. And it was over 300 yards compared to third place. Why I wanted to call Turpin out here was the training camp buzz he’s getting. If you’re single out there, my advice would be to find someone who talks about you like head coach Brian Schottenheimer talks about Turpin. Schottenheimer has seemingly taken every opportunity to talk about Turpin’s dynamism.

Just yesterday, we received the following quote: “We feel like we got a much better sense for how we’re using KaVontae. Late in practice, we kinda moved CeeDee outside and Turpin inside. Those guys are a little bit interchangeable. I think he’s gonna have a fabulous year, in every facet.” Excuse me? And Turpin continues to get carries out of the backfield in training camp.

It's that last point that has started to make me concerned about Jaydon Blue. Honestly, this dynamic, receiving back is the role that I thought Blue would lock down in order to return fantasy value. If Turpin is eating into those touches, that’s bad news for Blue but also for every RB in this backfield. But the potential for rush attempts, manufactured screens, and traditional routes as WR3 makes Turpin at least interesting, depending on how many points you earn for return yards.

Marvin Mims Jr.

From one manufactured touch artist to another, in Marvin Mims Jr.. Of Mims’ 54 targets last season, an absurd 30 (55.5%) came behind the line of scrimmage. That is how you only get a 0.8-yard difference between Mims’ yards per reception and YAC per reception. Because everything he did came after the catch.

Relatedly, Mims only ran about 12 routes per game last season. He was fantastic in his role, showing massive efficiency with a 14.6% touchdown rate, 2.37 YPRR, and earning the second-highest YAC score from ESPN Analytics. But it’s been a few years now where the fantasy community has asked for Mims to run more traditional WR routes. And this offseason, Sean Payton responded by drafting Pat Bryant and calling him Michael Thomas.

Ambiguous/Handcuff RBs

I’m lumping a lot of these guys together but I think handcuff RBs or RBs in ambiguous situations are especially good bets in kick return leagues. I mentioned Bucky Irving in this article last year but he ultimately didn’t get the kick returner role. But the reason he didn’t get it was because he became such a vital piece of the offense. So, even if you’re wrong on the kick returner role, you can still be right because these RBs can massively out-earn their expected fantasy points. But if these RBs don’t ascend, you get an increased floor with the kick return yards.

On the ambiguous side, the most obvious name is Bhayshul Tuten. The way ADP currently sits, you’ll draft RBs from 30 other NFL teams before drafting a Jaguars RB. Only the Cowboys have their RB1 drafted later. Tuten had 82nd-percentile rush TDs per attempt and 97th-percentile avoided tackles per attempt throughout his college career. His biggest red flags are his receiving efficiency with 26th-percentile or worse receiving yards per team pass attempt and YPRR in his final season. And he was only a fourth-round pick in the draft. With that in mind, I’m absolutely still willing to take the other guys, with Tank Bigsby earning high praise throughout camp, but also lacking a receiving profile. But Tuten has some chance to earn the kick return work as a floor and then ceiling if he consolidates work in the RB room.

On the handcuff side, I’m most confident in Tyjae Spears and Isaac Guerendo earning a massive opportunity share if their respective starting RBs went down. Keaton Mitchell is a tougher sell. He’s shown an insanely explosive side when he’s been healthy. But he’s just rarely been healthy. And the Ravens have made it clear he’d still have to compete with Justice Hill for touches if Derrick Henry went down.

And then there is Dameon Pierce. He just returned from injury to a complete shitshow of an RB room in Houston. Joe Mixon is dealing with a foot injury of indeterminable length, Nick Chubb is going into his age-30 season with a novella of an injury history, and Woody Marks is a rookie without a strong profile. I’m not a Pierce fan, but he’s absolutely worth a shot at this point given the Texans’ depth chart.