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Chet Gresham gives you his 2025 fantasy football drafting tiers

The NFL season starts in a few weeks, which means it is officially fantasy football draft season. For my money, a tiered drafting sheet is THE way to draft. So, that’s what I’ve provided here for your perusal. Tiers help us place players with similar fantasy value into groups. Those groupings then allow us to visualize how many players at a certain position are left to draft compared to other positions. It’s a fairly simple, but effective way to manage your draft.

We’ve now had a whole training camp and two preseason weeks worth of games to help solidify rankings and tiers. We’re still waiting on Terry McLaurin’s contract dispute to be cleared up as well as the length and dates of Rashee Rice’s suspension, but overall there aren’t a glut of unanswered questions at this point.

Injuries

The rest of the questions are about injuries and some depth chart maneuvering. We’ll never be rid of injuries, so we might as well lean in and figure out where some of these guys stand.

Matthew Stafford, QB, Rams

Stafford has finally returned to practice after dealing with a back injury. His age and the complications of back injuries keep him as a risky fantasy player, but it’s nice to have some positive news for once for the Rams starting QB. And his presence is needed for the other offensive players to reach their fantasy potential.

Joe Mixon, RB, Texans

Mixon hasn’t practiced this preseason and there has been no positive news regarding his foot injury, while negative rumors swirl. There isn’t a lot to go on here, but time is running out. Nick Chubb and Dameon Pierce have been splitting first-team snaps, while rookie Woody Marks has upside behind those two.

Chris Godwin, WR, Buccaneers

Godwin continues to recover from his ankle injury and has yet to be elevated from the PUP list. He could get ramped up in time to play early in the season or he could go on the regular season PUP list and miss the first four games or he could have had a setback and take even longer. The latter seems unlikely, as the team has said his rehab is on track with what they expected, but there have been no real timetables from the team and until we learn more, he remains risky.

Isaiah Likely, TE, Ravens

Likely broke a foot bone and had surgery in early August. The timetable for return is around six weeks, so the hope is he’ll return in the first few weeks of the season.

Khalil Shakir, WR, Bills

Shakir was the Bills No. 1 receiver last season and hopes to build on that this year, but a high-ankle sprain has hurt his chances for a fast start to the season. The hope is still that he’ll be ready for Week 1, but he’ll probably need some time to ramp up to a full complement of snaps.

Najee Harris, RB, Chargers

Harris has yet to practice after his Fourth of July eye injury, but was seen working out on the side of practice. Harris’ absence has likely helped rookie Omarion Hampton get a leg up on the competition.

Updates

The rankings and tiers will continue to be massaged as news comes out. Just as I was finishing these to be published, news came in that Brian Robinson Jr. won’t play on Monday night and will likely be traded or released. That really kills Robinson’s value, but helps Jacory Croskey-Merritt’s. The life of a fantasy ranker is never done! And we’ll continue to see moves and news that pushes the rankings needle as we get closer to kickoff. Every Friday until the season starts, I’ll keep the tiers updated for your fantasy football drafting needs.