2025 Fantasy Football Fallers After the Byes

We know the upcoming season’s schedule the minute the previous season ends. Not the order, but the opponents. Two games against each division opponent, playing a couple divisions once each, then a couple more games based on finish. The order matters, but the opponent is the key information. Of course, there’s one more thing we don’t know, and we won’t know it for a couple months, until the NFL schedule comes out in May: The bye weeks. If your team has an early bye, you mourn the long unending stretch of games that awaits them afterward. If it’s a late bye, well, that messes up the fantasy football playoff drive. But what the byes are is the one thing every team runs into over the course of the season, the one time a team can well and truly take a step back and make some significant changes. To that end, every year you see a handful of players see a dramatic shift in fantasy scoring before and after the bye. A guy who gets elevated in role suddenly goes from a fantasy bench guy to a starter. Another guy gets phased out and only remains a fantasy name because of reputation. There are any number of reasons a player sees a big jump or fall in fantasy production around the bye. Today, let’s look at some of the biggest post-bye fallers in fantasy football last year, and what that might mean for 2026. Thursday, we looked at the biggest risers. (PPR scoring; players needed at least three games on each side of the bye and 100-plus total fantasy points to qualify.)

2025 Fantasy Football Post-Bye Fallers

Kayshon Boutte, WR, New England Patriots

PPR points per game before the bye: 10.3 PPR points per game after the bye: 3.7 Change: -64.3%

It’s important to note that the Patriots had a late bye (Week 14) and Boutte missed Week 17, so it’s a tiny denominator here. But Drake Maye didn’t look Boutte’s way much down the stretch. After averaging 3.5 targets per game before ethe bye, including three games of 5 targets and one of 8, Boutte had 1, 3 and 4 targets after the bye, totaling 4 catches for 70 yards in those three games. That’s a big part of why the Patriots bringing in Romeo Doubs isn’t the end of their offseason moves. Whether that’s a trade for A.J. Brown or a draft pick or something else, we’ll see, but it’s hard to imagine they’re done at the position.

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Chuba Hubbard, RB, Carolina Panthers

Before: 10.0 After: 3.9 Change: -60.6%

Rico Dowdle, RB, Carolina Panthers

Before: 14.1 After: 8.3 Change: -41.5% Dowdle left Carolina for Pittsburgh in free agency in part because he seemed pretty dissatisfied with his usage down the stretch of the season. Unfortunately, though, that production didn’t really go to Hubbard, either. The Panthers lost three of four down the stretch (and backed into the division title nonetheless), and those trailing games meant that there wasn’t work for the running backs. So basically, your faith in Hubbard (and Jonathon Brooks, if/when he returns) in 2026 really boils down to whether you believe in the Panthers being decent again.

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Rome Odunze, WR, Chicago Bears

Before: 19.9 After: 8.3 Change: -58.2% Odunze looked like a true star before the Bears’ Week 5 bye. He had at least 15.2 PPR points in each of the four games and trailed only Puka Nacua and Amon-Ra St. Brown in PPR scoring at the position. But after the bye, it dried up. Odunze averaged 8.8 targets, 74.0 yards and 59.0 offensive snaps before the bye. Those numbers dropped to 6.9, 45.6 and, crucially, 62.1, respectively after. He was playing just as much but wasn’t getting targets. Meanwhile, look at the number of his Bears teammates:

If the rookies were going to go up, something had to give, and that something was mostly Odunze’s ceiling. But now, with Moore gone, I’d be comfortable betting on Odunze rebounding. Sure, WR3 is probably asking too much, but the Odunze we saw down the stretch in 2025 isn’t the Odunze we’ll see in 2026.

Jonathan Taylor, RB, Indianapolis Colts

Before: 27.4 After: 12.6 Change: -53.9% Taylor was cruising to an MVP before the Colts’ Week 11 bye. He had 25.1 more PPR points than the RB2, Christian McCaffrey. He had 17 touchdowns. He had 1,139 rushing yards. But after the bye, he only scored 3 more times, and he was only the RB18 in PPR. RB18 is perfectly fine, but it’s not “Whoa, runaway RB1.” Of course, the Colts only had Daniel Jones on the field for two-and-change games after the bye, and he was hurt even during those games. Taylor was never going to keep up the pace he had before the bye, but he fell further than he otherwise might have because the offense overall fell apart. He should comfortably be an RB1 in 2026 if Jones is anything resembling his 2025 self.

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Emeka Egbuka, WR, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Before: 15.4 After: 8.1 Change: -47.6%

Admit it — as soon as you saw the headline to this piece, Egbuka is the player who came to mind. He came on like gangbusters as a rookie, the WR3 through five weeks and the WR7 entering the team’s Week 9 bye. After a good Week 10 game, though, Egbuka fell apart, averaging 6.1 PPR points per game down the stretch, something around Calvin Austin III numbers. He had at least 58 yards six times in nine games through Week 10, then one game over 42 yards after that. He didn’t score again after Week 10. His playing time fell when the Bucs got Chris Godwin Jr., Jalen McMillan and Mike Evans back on the field as well; contrary to what you’d expect from a rookie, three of Egbuka’s four games with the fewest offensive snaps came in is last three weeks of the year. The future is still bright for Egbuka, but he’ll need to start showing that quickly in 2026.