A pair of running backs, who combined missed 36 games to injury the past three seasons, has dominated the fantasy football landscape in 2025.
Christian McCaffrey and Jonathan Taylor have occupied the top two spots on the fantasy scoring leaderboard, in either order, every week since Week 7. With standard leagues beginning their playoffs in Week 14, they are understandably also the two players most commonly found on ESPN playoff teams.
Taylor, second in scoring with his 297.6 fantasy points (24.8 per game, also second), leads the way by appearing on a playoff team in 72.3% of ESPN leagues. His league-leading five games with 30-plus points — that’s two more than the next closest — surely is a contributing factor.
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McCaffrey, who leads in scoring with both his 328.5 total fantasy points and 25.3 per-game average, isn’t far behind with his 71.9% playoff-team roster rate. McCaffrey has a league-leading 10 games scoring at least 20 fantasy points, two more than anyone else.
It’s a dramatic turnaround by both players, for whom managers lacked the level of draft-day enthusiasm they’d exhibited in the past. For McCaffrey, his No. 6 overall average draft position (ADP), while still an awfully good number, represented the latest he has been selected in ESPN leagues since 2018 (17th overall). Taylor’s No. 15 overall ADP, meanwhile, was the third latest he has been selected in his six NFL seasons, trailing only his 2020 rookie year and 2023, when he began the season on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list as he recovered from January ankle surgery.
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This season, McCaffrey and Taylor have remained remarkably healthy, each playing every one of their teams’ games and each playing at least 73% of the offensive snaps in each of those contests. McCaffrey has finished within the top 10 in running back scoring in all but two weeks (25th in Week 8, 11th in Week 13). Taylor has been one of the position’s three best scorers in six of his 13 games.
It’ll be interesting to see whether these two playoff leaders continue to serve as such during our postseasons. McCaffrey and his San Francisco 49ers enjoy their bye week in Week 14, while Taylor faces the Jacksonville Jaguars, who have afforded running backs the fifth-fewest fantasy points per game (and 10th fewest when adjusting for the schedule). Incidentally, in Week 15, Taylor faces the Seattle Seahawks, who have allowed the seventh-fewest points per game to running backs, and the Jaguars again in Week 17.
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Why JSN is Stephania Bell’s fantasy loser of Week 13
Stephania Bell breaks down Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s fantasy struggles in the Seahawks’ Week 13 shutout against the Vikings.
McCaffrey and Taylor didn’t lap the field in claiming the top two spots on the fantasy playoff appearance list. Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who before Week 13’s 4.3 fantasy point stinker was on pace for one of the five best single seasons by a wide receiver, resides on a playoff team in 71.0% of ESPN leagues, a close third place on the list.
Here are the top 50 players found on the roster of a playoff team in ESPN standard leagues. Included are their preseason ADPs and year-to-date scoring totals.
Most Common Players – ESPN Standard League Playoff Rosters
Check back here in two weeks, when we’ll update the list of most-rostered players as fantasy championship matchups dawn. Best of luck to everyone in the playoffs!
Additional takeaways
1:13
Daniel Dopp: Rashee Rice has been unbelievable
Daniel Dopp reacts to Rashee Rice’s stellar fantasy performance in Week 13.
Since his return from a six-game, season-opening suspension, Rashee Rice is tied with Smith-Njigba for the most fantasy points among wide receivers (130.6). Rice’s missed time has apparently not set his fantasy teams back in the postseason race, as his 55.4% rate of appearing on a playoff roster is sixth-best at the position.
This is the first time since 2021 that no quarterbacks can be found on the roster of a playoff team in at least 60% of ESPN leagues, and the modest fantasy point totals of leaders Josh Allen (57.5%) and Patrick Mahomes (56.5%) probably have a lot to do with it. That said, Allen’s QB-leading number represents the fourth consecutive year that he has had at least that good a percentage and been one of the three most-rostered quarterbacks on playoff teams.
Rico Dowdle has been by far the waiver wire hero of 2025, at least going by playoff-team roster rates. Among undrafted players, meaning those selected outside the top 160 and in fewer than 50% of ESPN leagues during the preseason, Dowdle’s 59.9% roster rate is easily the highest. Among that same group, only Matthew Stafford (235.92), Daniel Jones (225.64) and Trevor Lawrence (196.94) have scored more fantasy points than Dowdle (183.30), but per our consistency ratings, Dowdle has been worth your fantasy start more often than any of them.
If we expand the above criteria to players selected outside the top 100 overall and in fewer than 75% of ESPN leagues — let’s call them breakouts — then Jake Ferguson (54.3% playoff team rate), Drake Maye (52.6%) and Stafford (45.8%) are the top three players on that list. Maye has been the No. 6 overall scorer, and No. 3 among quarterbacks, for the season, but like the aforementioned McCaffrey, he and his New England Patriots have their bye in Week 14. Maye also faces the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore Ravens in Weeks 15 and 16.
The Dallas Cowboys might be orchestrating the year’s most compelling comeback story thus far, but two of their stars have surprisingly modest ESPN playoff roster rates. Quarterback Dak Prescott is the only member of the position’s top five in fantasy scoring who resides on a playoff roster in fewer than 50% of leagues (42.5%, ninth at the position), while running back Javonte Williams has the lowest roster rate among any of the position’s top 10 in scoring (51.6%).
This year’s busts
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Can fantasy managers start Brian Thomas Jr. with confidence?
Field Yates explains his lack of confidence when it comes to starting Brian Thomas Jr. in Week 14.
If we’re to use playoff roster rates as a means to judge the biggest busts of 2025 — removing players who have missed at least half their teams’ games due to injury — then Chuba Hubbard (only 23.6% of ESPN leagues have him on a playoff roster) is in the early lead. The No. 40 overall pick during the preseason, Hubbard has played 11 games and ranks 32nd in fantasy points per game among running backs (10.0). Among other top-50 overall selections who rank highly in this metric, Brian Thomas Jr. (17th in ADP, 32.2% playoff team rate), Alvin Kamara (38th, 33.6%), Xavier Worthy (50th, 34.2%), Sam LaPorta (48th, 35.5%) and Kenneth Walker III (46th, 38.0%) round out the list of players who are on a playoff roster in fewer than 40% of ESPN leagues.
You might notice from the above ADP numbers that the fifth round appears to have been jinxed in 2025, with three of the players selected between 41st and 50th having stayed mostly healthy and landed on playoff rosters in fewer than 40% of ESPN leagues. You can also lump fellow fifth round picks Garrett Wilson (41st overall pick, 40.0% playoff roster rate), James Conner (45th, 9.2%) and Mike Evans (49th, 22.1%) as injury-influenced busts from within that round. The most successful fifth-round pick so far this season, by a massive margin, is Mahomes, who ranks second best among quarterbacks with 266.32 fantasy points and a 56.5% playoff roster rate.
We’ll keep saying it annually, but it’s folly to invest an early draft pick on a team defense/special teams. The Nos. 1 (Pittsburgh Steelers), 3 (Baltimore Ravens) and 5 (Minnesota Vikings) D/STs selected on average during the preseason all find themselves on the roster of a playoff team in less than 30% of ESPN leagues.
