• Rome Odunze’s potential to emerge as WR1 in Chicago is too important to ignore: While there’s plenty of target competition for the Chicago Bears, Odunze winning the WR1 role in Ben Johnson’s offense offers too much upside to avoid.
• Marvin Mims was one of the league’s most efficient wide receivers in 2024: Earning a larger role in 2025 should allow Mims to become a consistent fantasy option for the first time in his NFL career.
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Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

Each season, there are players that take their game to another level and significantly improve their fantasy production along the way. For the wide receiver position, targets and talent are the best recipe for success.

A few qualifiers before diving into this year’s candidates

• Wide receivers must not have exceeded 220 PPR fantasy points – finished as a WR1/high-end WR2 in any previous season.
• A significant jump in overall fantasy finish or fantasy points per game is expected, not just an incremental improvement.
• We’re looking for at least 220 PPR fantasy points/13.4 PPR points per game in 2025.
• No rookies. Let’s make things more challenging than that. List of rookies that will make a fantasy impact in Year 1 can be found here.

10 examples of players over the past five years who fit the above criteria before delivering their breakout season

The first and maybe most obvious choice for a breakout season heading into Year 2, Harrison undoubtedly disappointed fantasy managers last year after being a fringe first-round pick, depending on the format, as he finished the season as the overall PPR WR33. Compared to his rookie peers Malik Nabers, Brian Thomas Jr. and Ladd McConkey, Harrison’s disappointing finish was even more amplified, but there is still plenty of reason to believe that he can deliver a big year in 2025.

Continue as a high-end target-earner

Harrison’s 114 total targets as a rookie ranked among the top-20 wide receivers in the league, which yielded an average fantasy point total of 237.2 PPR points among that group of wide receivers as a whole. Even for the wide receivers ranking 14-20 (excluding Harrison), the average fantasy point total for that many targets was 214.4 PPR points, still well above Harrison’s 181.2 as a rookie. There was too much meat left on the bone with Harrison’s fantasy potential as a rookie, but not all of that was his fault. 

The biggest detriment to Harrison’s fantasy potential in 2024 was that he had just an eighth percentile catchable target rate (59.3%) for his position, and as covered here, left more fantasy points on the table than any other player at his position as a result. Luckily for Harrison, catchable target rate tends to fluctuate year-to-year, as it is not a stable metric, even with the same quarterback, so what matters more than anything else is his role in the offense, his volume of targets, and his overall talent.

Deliver on his top-five NFL draft capital potential

Coming out of college, Harrison profiled as one of the best wide receiver prospects in recent years, delivering a 91.3 career PFF receiving grade (94th percentile among WR prospects since 2019) and 2.98 career yards per route run (93rd percentile). He was selected fourth overall as a result. While several of Harrison’s 2024 draft class peers have already surpassed him in ADP, it’s not too late for him to catch up and potentially leapfrog his way back to the top of that mountain with a strong 2025.

Harrison and Trey McBride are the two clear top options in this passing game, and both can coexist as top-tier fantasy options as long as Kyler Murray continues to bounce back after his injury-shortened 2022 and 2023 seasons, getting back to being a top passer in the league. Murray posted his best passing grade (77.9) since 2021, which was a top-12 mark at the position and much more indicative of his ability to allow Harrison to thrive than the uncatchable target rate mentioned earlier. Considering the player and the profile as a prospect, it doesn’t take much stretch of the imagination to project Harrison to have a better season overall in Year 2, both in terms of his receiving and fantasy production, with the potential to finish as a WR1 in 2025.

Odunze is the other top-10 wide receiver pick from the 2024 NFL Draft class whose rookie season wasn’t top-10 draft pick quality. However, Odunze’s expectations were also much lower considering that both DJ Moore and Keenan Allen were in place as the top two targets in the offense, which would have Odunze third in the pecking order at best. This was the case in 2024, but now with Keenan Allen gone and Moore coming off a career-worst PFF receiving grade season (73.3), Odunze has the potential to finish 2025 as the Bears’ WR1.

Fend off all the target competition

Becoming the WR1 in Chicago is a lot easier said than done, as there are arguably more mouths to feed this year than there were even during Odunze’s rookie season. The Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III additions in the draft are significant to the passing offense, but Odunze now has NFL experience and seniority in his favor to get the first crack at those starting reps in order to build more of a rapport with quarterback Caleb Williams. 

Of course, these new additions have the favorable fact that they were selected by the new regime and not just inherited like Odunze, but new head coach Ben Johnson has praised Odunze as a player he’s been impressed with post-NFL draft. Odunze may be the odd man out given the new regime’s investment in other players, but considering his talent and his prospect profile coming out of college as a top-10 pick entering just his second NFL season, he’s just as likely to be a prime beneficiary of this new and improved Chicago offense.

Fitting into Ben Johnson’s offense

Odunze’s fit in this new offense is crucial to his fantasy success, as he’ll likely start the year opposite DJ Moore as the team’s WR2. Depending on how well he learns the new playbook and is able to translate that knowledge into success on the field, that role can even grow to eventually overtake Moore as the WR1, playing a similar role in this offense as Amon-Ra St. Brown did for the Detroit Lions these past few seasons under Johnson.

St. Brown’s role in Johnson’s offense has required a little more than half of the player’s routes to come from the slot, and while Moore is typically closer to the average slot receiver’s size, Odunze shouldn’t be ruled out of that spot. In 2024, Odunze ran a higher rate of routes from the slot than Moore and was even more effective in that role, as highlighted in the chart below.

It’s a small sample, but on just 39 more routes than Moore, Odunze was undeniably more efficient out of the slot in his rookie season. Adding in the potential Year 2 development, an improved offense under Ben Johnson and another year of rapport with Caleb Williams – who will also be looking to improve this season – Odunze should be considered a solid bet for a breakout 2025 season and greatly improve on his relatively quiet rookie year.

Rome Odunze’s WR ranks in 2024:

Mims isn’t the high-pedigree wide receiver prospect that Harrison and Odunze are, but he’s a second-round pick from the 2023 class that has shown some flashes recently on a team in need of a consistent second option to emerge. Mims was the best deep-threat receiver in the 2023 class, and entering Year 3, Mims will have to prove he’s more than just a deep target. If he’s able to prove effective in all areas of the field, he could become a consistent fantasy starter in 2025.

Earn a consistent role in Sean Payton’s offense

Mims’ potential has always only flashed in small samples as he awaited an opportunity to take on a larger role. As a rookie, Mims delivered a big performance in just his second NFL game, delivering 113 yards and a touchdown on just two receptions and six routes, highlighting his elite deep threat ability. Unfortunately, the rest of his rookie season was less consistent because his role didn’t grow enough until the second half of the year, when his route share jumped from 31% to 56% of the team’s routes while his targets went from 1.8 per game to 2.3 per game – still far from fantasy-relevant however.

Through the first half of his second season, Mims’ role still hadn’t improved enough to make an impact for fantasy and had even reverted to where he was at the start of his rookie year. Mims was averaging just 25% of the team’s routes from Weeks 1-10 while seeing just 1.9 targets per game. All hope of a Mims breakout looked lost, but the second half of last season saw him increase his route share to 41% in addition to a career high 3.9 targets per game from Weeks 11 through the team’s lone playoff game. 

Ideally, Mims will play over 70% of the team’s routes in Year 3 for this breakout to come to fruition – and this was the case in the team’s lone playoff game last season – so Payton has shown confidence in him during the team’s most important game of the year. The other aspect that hints at the team wanting to get Mims more involved was his high target rate, which also increased to an elite 28.5% through the second half of last season, up from just 15.0% through his first year-and-a-half in the league. Maintaining a high target rate on a larger workload is everything fantasy managers can ask for when it comes to a breakout season for Mims, but it won’t necessarily come easily.

Become more than just a deep threat

Helping Mims earn a larger role and a higher target rate late last season was that he became more than just a deep threat in the Broncos offense. Through the first year-and-a-half of his career, Mims saw a 13.9-yard average depth of target but in that second-half stretch in 2024, that number dropped to just 4.8, which played a big part in improving his overall target rate.

Getting Mims more involved created dividends for the offense as well, as his targets increased, so did his overall efficiency to the point where he averaged an elite 3.63 yards per route run from Week 11 through the team’s playoff game last season, up from just 1.32 to start his career. Even on the lower average depth of target, Mims became the ultimate weapon with the ball in his hands, leading all wide receivers in yards after the catch per reception (12.3) last season – 3.8 yards per reception more than the next closest player.

Mims brought in 88% of his receptions 10 yards or fewer from the line of scrimmage in 2024 as the team got him more involved in the screen game, recognizing his effectiveness with the ball in his hands, as he ranked second among the league’s wide receivers in screen targets (27). Mims’ efficiency, size and role in the offense make him the most unique wide receiver in this Broncos’ corps. While there may be a rotation among a lot of the other comparable options, Mims has the opportunity to earn a more consistent role and stay on the field as the only sub-6-foot starting-caliber receiver on the team, while also proving to be by far the most efficient with his touches in 2024. If Mims is able to build on his great stretch of play in 2024, he’s in a great position to break out as a consistent fantasy option in 2025.

Marvin Mims’ WR ranks in 2024: