2025 Fantasy Football Playoff Schedules To Attack: Bucs And Falcons Are Primed For Points

The NFL released the 2025 schedule, giving us the fantasy matchups for the entire season. More importantly, we now know what the fantasy playoffs are going to look like. I put together a fantasy playoffs strength of schedule based on 2024 EPA data. Denny Carter has joined me to break down the most enticing fantasy playoff schedules for the 2025 season.

2025 Fantasy Football Playoffs Schedule

The list is sorted by opponent defensive EPA per play (red means good matchups) and also includes opponent offensive EPA per play (red means shootout potential). Games listed in italics are indoors. These numbers aren’t meant to be taken as gospel but give us a good starting point for identifying teams who could find another gear down the stretch.

Saints and Jets Have Sleeper Potential

New Orleans Saints

The down-bad Saints have the easiest fantasy playoffs schedule this season and the second-easiest real-life schedule.

Whether that will mean much for one of the league’s worst rosters is another question entirely.

I suppose a squishy soft end-of-season schedule could make Tyler Shough or Spencer Rattler -- or whoever happens to be under center for New Orleans in December -- reasonable quarterback options. Chris Olave and Alvin Kamara would be the most obvious beneficiaries of an easy Week 15-17 schedule for the Saints, particularly Kamara if the Saints are as run-heavy as many believe they’ll be in 2025.

Stacking Saints isn’t a headache so much as it is a 72-hour migraine. Who knows if Shough -- he of seven years of college experience -- will make it to the end of the season with Rattler waiting for his turn. If you’re intent on stacking Saints, consider Shough, Olave, Kamara, and of course big-play merchant Rashid Shaheed.

New York Jets

Justin Fields, the most efficient rushing quarterback in modern history, is shaping up as a superb pick in all fantasy formats, in part because he (likely) won’t get pulled for no reason like he was last year in Pittsburgh. New York’s starting job appears to be his barring catastrophic on-field results.

The Jets head into 2025 with the league’s second-easiest fantasy playoffs schedule, just a smidge behind the aforementioned Saints. The Jets, however, have the easiest playoff schedule for passing EPA specifically. Taking advantage of this soft December slate means we start with Fields and go from there, stacking the hyper-mobile QB with his unquestioned No. 1 wideout, Garrett Wilson.

From there it gets tricky because it’s unclear right now who could emerge as the Jets’ No. 2 pass-catching option. Perhaps you could take TE Mason Taylor (very) late to pair with Fields and Wilson. Josh Reynolds would be another viable stacking play with Allen Lazard unlikely to suit up for the Jets in 2025.

Throwing Breece Hall into the mix doesn’t make a ton of sense considering Fields has never been a check-down guy and is among the worst short-area passers in the NFL.

NFC South Fantasy Showdowns

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

This one is easier than the Jets and Saints because Tampa -- with the league’s fourth-easiest Week 15-17 schedule -- has worlds more quarterback stability. We know Baker Mayfield is the guy.

The Bucs, who last year were top-10 in pass rate over expected even with a run-heavy end to the year, are fairly easy to stack. Mike Evans has to be paired with Mayfield. If we know one thing about the Bucs, it’s that the team will be force-feeding Evans targets in the final couple weeks of the season as he chases yet another 1,000-yard campaign. It’s the reason the Bucs franchise exists.

Bucky Irving certainly makes sense as a stacking partner with Mayfield and Evans (or as a standalone selection for schedule-centric drafters among us). Irving in 2024 was targeted on a solid 21 percent of his pass routes. He averaged 3.5 receptions per game over Tampa’s final ten games of the season as he took over the team’s RB1 role from Rachaad White. That sort of pass game involvement should make Irving a fine stacking partner with Mayfield.

Chris Godwin is a tough call as part of this easy-end-of-season stack. Coming off a major ankle injury and perhaps competing for slot snaps with electric rookie WR Emeka Egbuka, Godwin might not have the kind of fantasy upside to which we’ve become accustomed. The uncertainty around his early-season availability and the team’s decision to draft slot-guy Egbuka has created an eminently reasonable ADP for Godwin. That might make it easier to stack him with Mayfield and Evans (and Irving) and go all-in on a Tampa mega-stack that faces a soft playoff slate. Godwin, after all, was targeted on a gaudy 25 percent of his routes last season before his Week 7 injury.

Atlanta Falcons

Michael Penix and the Falcons begin the fantasy playoffs versus the aforementioned Bucs and get the sixth-easiest fantasy playoff schedule, offering a little incentive to focus on Penix-based stacks in the coming months.

Obviously that starts with Drake London, who was targeted on a healthy 25 percent of his routes in Penix’s three 2024 starts (London also commanded a ludicrous 48 percent of the Falcons’ air yards in Penix starts). I guess, if you can make yourself click the button, Kyle Pitts would make sense as part of an Atlanta stack. Leaving Bijan Robinson out of such a stack would be best ball malpractice. He saw a dozen targets of Penix’s three starts, good for a 13 percent target share.

Darnell Mooney -- who last year led the team with 12.5 air yards per target -- would be the obligatory better-in-best-ball option to pair with Penix, London, and Robinson.

Fantasy Fades

Green Bay Packers

No team has a nastier end-of-season schedule than the Packers. Combine that tough Week 15-17 slate with a hugely run-heavy offense -- only the Colts and Eagles had a lower pass rate over expected in 2024 -- and a receiver room without a true No. 1 guy and you have all the makings of a hideous fantasy football situation.

Stacking Jordan Love was never going to be easy, especially after the team took Matthew Golden in the first round for some reason. The schedule gods are begging us to fade the Packers as a team to stack in 2024. I’m inclined to listen. Sorry to get religious.

Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys have the third-worst fantasy playoff schedule, squaring off against the Vikings, Chargers, and Commanders to close the season. It’s not a pretty thing for Dak and company.

I don’t think this should sour us completely on a Dallas stack. The ball is going to two guys in this offense: CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens, who Prescott complemented this week as “more than a 50-50 catcher” and someone who can win at all levels of the field. And I don’t care what Dallas coaches say in the coming months, they’re going to be a pass-first team. It’s not a complex idea: Dallas has the league’s worst running backs room and Dak is a volume thrower.

The team’s ugly Week 15-17 slate, however, might make you think twice about going in on the Cowboys trifecta.

Las Vegas Raiders

This hurts because the Raiders are going to be a highly concentrated offense that’s pretty easy to stack in best ball formats. But they head into the 2025 regular season with the NFL’s fourth-toughest fantasy playoff schedule and the 18th-hardest schedule overall.

It’s enough to take the shine off a Geno Smith-centric stack if you’re seeking upside in the final few weeks of the regular season (and you should be). The Raiders face the Eagles, Texans, and Giants from Week 15-17. Maybe if they can get by against Philly and Houston, Geno and the boys (Brock Bowers and Jakobi Meyers) can deliver against the Giants, who enter the season with the NFL’s toughest schedule, and whose season will be long over by Week 17.

Stacking Dome Games

When looking at games to attack in the fantasy playoffs, we want good offenses and bad defenses, but we also want the optimal conditions for them to bear fruit. The Browns would be thrilled to get a game with snow flurries and a few 20 MPH gusts of wind in Week 17, while the Falcons, playing indoors and in the NFC South, haven’t seen a cloud in years. Domes lead to more overall points and rule out the nightmare scenario of a blizzard or torrential downpour killing the fantasy potential of everyone involved. Two teams play indoors for all three of their playoff bouts: The Texans and Lions.

Houston Texans

Houston opens the fantasy playoffs with matchups versus the Cardinals and Raiders before taking on the Chargers in Week 17. The supposedly dead-on-arrival Texans throttled LA in the Wild Card Round last year. Nico Collins posted a 7/122/1 line and Joe Mixon rumbled for 106 yards and a touchdown. On the other side of the ball, Ladd McConkey put an exclamation point on his dominant rookie season with 197 yards and a touchdown even as his team got blown out. If you needed another reason to pull McConkey closer to the 1-2 turn in drafts, pairing him with Nico will do.

Detroit Lions

The Lions have an ugly schedule, facing the fifth-toughest defensive run in the fantasy playoffs. On the other hand, Jared Goff never leaves the comforts of his or someone else’s climate-controlled dome. Goff has averaged over five additional fantasy points per indoor game compared to outdoor matchups over his past three seasons.

Like Houston, Detroit closes the season with a rematch of a late 2024 contest. The Lions get the Vikings, whom they hung 31 points on in Week 18 last year. Jahmyr Gibbs shouldered the load in that game, scoring all four of Detroit’s touchdowns. While you can’t pair any of the biggest names in this game together because they all go in the first round, mixing and matching the speedster WR2s—Jameson Williams and Jordan Addison—with their first-round counterparts is a strong way to attack this game.

Fantasy Playoff Shootouts

Miami Dolphins

Tua Tagovailoa was the QB14 in points per game last year and ranked seventh in EPA per play. He currently goes off the board at QB22, largely because of legitimate injury concerns. Another concern with his game has been his inability to handle the elements.

Luckily for the Dolphins, they get a pair of home games against the Bucs and Bengals in the final two weeks of the fantasy season. This also gives Miami the fifth-best schedule of opposing offenses in the final three weeks, even after dinging them for a low-wattage matchup versus the Steelers in Week 15. Miami may never get back to the Deathstar offense they were early in the 2023 season, but we can at least write off poor conditions as a reason to fade Tua and co.

New England Patriots

No team faces a more fun string of opponents to end the season than New England. The MVP and runner-up are both on the docket and they close the festivities versus an improving Jets squad. The difference between their opponent’s average EPA per play on offense and the second-best offensive schedule is the same as the distance between No. 2 and No. 12. They also face the ninth-easiest passing schedule but the second-hardest run schedule. For fantasy purposes, Drake Maye was lights out in New England’s many losses last year. He averaged 18.9 points in 10 losses. That would have made him the QB8. With Mike Vrabel now on the sticks, New England will need negative game script to keep Maye’s passing volume up. Showdowns with Buffalo and Baltimore are all but guaranteed to make that happen.

Cincinnati Bengals

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but Cincinnati games look like a lot of fun once again. They rank top five in opponent offensive strength with a mediocre stretch of defensive matchups. Cincy faces 2024’s top offense by EPA per play (Baltimore) and another top-10 unit in Arizona. Their one weak matchup is with the Dolphins, who are a spreadsheet cooking machine when their quarterback is healthy. If you’re picking at the top half of the draft, pairing Ja’Marr Chase with two players from his Week 17 game versus Arizona is absurdly easy. Tee Higgins, Chase Brown, Trey McBride, and Marvin Harrison Jr. all have ADPs between 21 and 33.