Fantasy Football: Assessing the injury fallout from top wide receivers Tyreek Hill, Malik Nabers and more

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We’re just a month into the 2025 NFL season and there have already been multiple significant injuries to wide receivers. This will have an impact on the rest of the fantasy football season, and possibly beyond. Matt Harmon dives into these major injuries and what it means for the players and surrounding talent.

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Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins

Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill suffered a gruesome injury on Monday Night Football against the New York Jets in Week 4 while going out of bounds at the start of the third quarter. Hill was immediately put into an air cast and was taken to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with not only a dislocated knee but also multiple torn ligaments, including his ACL.

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It’s a devastating injury for any player, but even more so for a wide receiver who will be 32 years old in March and was already in the decline phase of his career. Not only is Hill a longshot to be ready to start the 2026 NFL season, but at his age and play on the field already starting to drop off, I’m comfortable saying that we’ve seen the last of Hill as anything close to a high-end WR1. Given what already seemed to be a tenacious relationship with the team and the fact that he’s facing another accusation of domestic violence from his ex-wife, I’d say it’s highly likely Hill has played his last down with the Miami Dolphins. It’s not out of the question that the severity of this injury, plus everything else that looms over Hill, that we don’t see him on another roster for quite some time, if ever again.

That variable does matter when assessing how this Dolphins’ pass-catcher rotation will play out for the rest of the season, and we received some clues as to how it may go in the second half of last night’s win after Hill exited following just three snaps.

Coming into the season, I thought it would behoove the Dolphins to take of the gimmes that Hill gets in the offense and assign them to Jaylen Waddle. While Hill was always unlikely to be a part of the team’s future, Waddle is in the middle of a contract extension they handed him last year that still has him ranked as the 12th-highest paid wide receiver in average annual salary and doesn’t expire until 2029. Waddle can do all of the run-after-the-catch, “in space” work that Hill gets from the designer plays in the offense, but has been limited to working as the outside vertical receiver on the line of scrimmage. That deployment, with little to no layups, is a big part of what’s made Waddle a frustrating fantasy receiver playing for a team whose quarterback gets the ball out in under 2.5 seconds on average the last three years, since De’Von Achane arrived to also take screens and short-area looks.

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We already know that Waddle can erupt without Hill in the lineup, as he dusted the Jets for 142 yards and a score on a 37% target share in Week 15 of the 2023 season, his lone game without Hill since the veteran arrived in Miami. If Waddle received the type of role change I’m outlining, it would increase the ceiling and floor potential, making him a top-15 option at the position the rest of the season, even with the Dolphins’ struggles.

On Monday, Waddle still lined up as an outside receiver on 96.3% of his snaps in the second half, so we didn’t get an immediate role change. However, it’s worth remembering that sometimes teams don’t make these sorts of structural changes without a week of practice to prepare, especially not in games where they had control of the contest for most of the evening.

However, I found it interesting that Nick Westbrook-Ikhine was the man tapped to run the second-most routes behind Waddle (75% route participation) from the third quarter on. He’d been operating behind Malik Washington on the season but it makes sense he would play more with Hill out. Washington is likely a slot-mostly player who should not expand his duties at the perimeter but the big-bodied Westbrook-Ikhine can function as the ideal sacrificial X-receiver for this offense. Using the 6-foot-2, 211-pound former Titans vertical receiver outside and on the line would afford Waddle the chance to be the primary movement and designed target player for Miami.

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Promoting Westbrook-Ikhine and empowering Waddle in this role makes the most sense for the offense. It also allows Miami to continue developing Washington, who was a prospect I really liked in the 2024 NFL Draft. I ranked him as a Day 2 talent who fell to the sixth round because of a neck injury and general size-based bias from the league.

Washington showed an ability to win on some of the critical horizontal-breaking routes at UVA in his Reception Perception charting and was a menace with the ball in his hands. Washington was a great dynasty sleeper who now launches up the redraft sleeper list. He can replace some of the work left behind by Hill.

Lastly, we also saw the return of Darren Waller on Monday after coming out of retirement to sign with the Dolphins following the Jonnu Smith trade. Waller only ran 10 routes on the night but scored two touchdowns. He lined up as an outside receiver on 57.1% of his snaps and scored his first touchdown lined up in a bunch.

Waller may not be able to handle a full snap workload but he should remain a red-zone option for this team and will take perimeter snaps away from some of the receivers. Given the usage we’re hoping to see for both Waddle and Washington, that’s something we don’t mind.

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Malik Nabers, New York Giants

The Giants got a win in Jaxson Dart’s first start, but it came at a cost, as Malik Nabers went down with a torn ACL in the second quarter after just 10 routes.

Nabers is one of the best wide receivers in the NFL. He played like a top-10 option at the position in real life last season and has lost zero steam on film this year. Losing him is a massive blow to the Giants offense and there are no “winners” here, especially since the Giants don’t have a proven high-end perimeter option to drop into anything close to his workload.

It was clear to me what the Giants would try to be with Dart under center. They were going to go extremely run-heavy with tons of RPO concepts layered into their offense to take advantage of Dart’s mobility, set a physical tone with rookie back Cam Skattebo and keep the quarterback comfortable while trying to replicate some of what he did at Ole Miss as he adjusted to playing at the NFL level. That style of attack was going to lend itself to a ton of first-read looks for Nabers both as a designed option on quick-hitters underneath and in the vertical game down the sideline.

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Neither of the Giants top two remaining wideouts, Wan’Dale Robinson and Darius Slayton, can do both. So they’ll likely try to recreate Nabers in the aggregate, with Robinson being the top target underneath and Slayton the vertical option. Robinson had a -0.5 air yards per target in the second half on a team-high 15 routes in Week 4. Slayton and Jalin Hyatt both ran 12 routes, with Slayton the only one to draw a target. I’m skeptical that either of these hyper-designated roles results in a significant fantasy option, considering the construction of the Giants’ run-first offense, the presence of a rookie passer and a brutal upcoming schedule from Week 6 on.

CeeDee Lamb, Dallas Cowboys

Few receivers are as crucial to their team’s offense as CeeDee Lamb. So it was always going to be fascinating to see how the Cowboys navigated the waters without him but especially since they traded for George Pickens in the offseason. Pickens is best deployed as a strong No. 2 alongside a movement No. 1 like Lamb but he has filled in as the leading man for Pittsburgh in past seasons.

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My concern on Pickens as the WR1 for Dallas was that he was almost exclusively used as a perimeter X-receiver in the first three weeks of the season. My sense was that he needed to move around the formation more in order to hit big for fantasy.

Well, based on the results, that concern was overblown. While he did score his first touchdown of the game from the slot, it was his lone target from the position and he took just 3.3% of his snaps there overall.

The Cowboys did get Pickens more reps off the line and in bunches as the outside receiver, while also making some minor tweaks to his route tree. He still ran a ton of go routes but his slant and in-route rate increased, per TruMedia. That is probably enough to erase any concerns for Pickens being a pure perimeter player in the absence of Lamb, considering he does his best work in those isolated man coverage reps, anyway. His next three matchups are against the Jets, Panthers and Commanders. Pickens was the player I named as the guy I wanted in every draft this summer in my 2025 Draftday Blueprint piece and I couldn’t imagine considering benching him during this upcoming stretch.

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Mike Evans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

We saw our first game for the 2025 Tampa Bay Buccaneers without Mike Evans, as the veteran receiver is set to miss multiple weeks with his annual hamstring injury. It also marked the debut of fellow franchise staple Chris Godwin Jr. amid his return to the lineup from a 2024 major ankle injury recovery.

As expected, Emeka Egbuka led the team with 41 routes run and drew 10 targets. in Week 4 vs. the Eagles The rookie receiver has been fantastic this season and impactful from all three receiver positions. There were no restrictions on Godwin in his return to action, as he had the second-highest route participation (93%) on the team and was also targeted 10 times. What was even more notable is how he was used. Godwin only lined up in the slot on 29.1% of his snaps and averaged 14.6 air yards per target. That’s interesting considering he was a 61.5% slot player with a 5.74 air yards per target in his white hot seven-game stretch to start last season. Godwin can beat man coverage but considering his best fantasy seasons have come when he’s been a slot-forward player, this is something to watch.

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My guess is that when Evans returns, we see Godwin return to the interior. Depth receivers Sterling Shepard (48.8%) and Tez Johnson (40.9%) led the team in slot rate. Considering we’ve already seen Egbuka play well on the perimeter, I’d bet this team, with a coach on staff last year, knows its best usage of Godwin likely comes with him as the power slot option. This could be something that hampers his production the next few weeks, even if he returned to a full-time role in Week 4.

This news was originally published on this post .

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