B/R 99: Ranking the 99 Best Fantasy Football Seasons of All Time

When a fantasy manager lands a league-winning player, it's an event . A full season's worth of pure football joy and something to hold over leaguemates for years on end.

It's one of the purest reasons to play this game we all love, allowing us to say, even if for just a short period: I made the better call.

Fantasy football is littered with these seasons in the decades since it became popular. To sort them all out, two-time Fantasy Sports Writers Association Football Writer of the Year Gary Davenport considered several factors, including total scoring in full-point-per-reception formats, average draft position, performance relative to positional peers and some good old-fashioned subjectivity from years in the fantasy game.

Since 1980, no one's done it better than this bunch.

Try the B/R Fantasy Picker and build your own all-time squad on a $15 budget.

The list kicks off with a grouping that features two of the lowest draft positions in our ranking. Baker Mayfield went 158th in 2024, and Cam Newton went 152nd in 2011. Each finished as QB3, which is roughly the bar for entry here.

Keep scrolling to explore the next tier.

Nine of the 10 players in this group had already finished among the top 12 at their positions the previous season. Most, however, were not the only players at their respective positions to post career years.

Still, this group is one of the clearest indicators that a player didn't have to win his position in a given year to make the list. Only four of these 10 did so, the fewest of any group from here on out.

The 1990s are well represented here: four of the 13 seasons from the magazine era (1987-98) land in this tier—Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders.

It's also the tier with the most surprises, as Jimmy Graham, Steve Smith Sr. and rookie Edgerrin James were all off the fantasy radar the year prior.

There was lots of value to be had in this group. Seven of the 10 went off draft boards at pick 18 or later the year before, including 1999 Marvin Harrison after a WR32 season, 2017 Todd Gurley after finishing RB20 and 2021 Tom Brady following a QB8 finish.

There were exceptions, though, with 2021 Josh Allen, 2020 Travis Kelce and 2004 Tony Gonzalez all repeating as the top player at their respective positions.

Expectations were high in this group, and it turns out that drafters got it right. Six of the 10 went in the first 10 picks, and nearly all of them were top-12 at their position the year before.

This is also the most modern stretch in the rankings, as 2003 is as far back as this group goes.

No other tier covers more ground. It's the only one that touches all four eras of fantasy data, spanning from 1983 to 2025. The logic of the rankings shows in the spread, as 2022 Mahomes has the ninth-highest raw point total on the list, while the two tight ends sit in the 90s.

Position scarcity and era context carry as much weight here as anywhere on the board.

All 10 seasons in this group finished No. 1 at their respective positions, making it the first tier to feature a clean sweep—though not the last. In 1980, Kellen Winslow outscored the next-best player at his position by a larger margin than any other player on the list.

Speaking of that era, nearly half the list's pre-1987 entrants are packed into this group. Winslow, 1983 Eric Dickerson and 1985 Roger Craig make three of the seven representing fantasy's early days.

We arrive at the second consecutive group in which every player finished No. 1 at his position.

This time, the cost of admission varied wildly.

2015 Antonio Brown went third overall on average and 2001 Marshall Faulk went first, while 2011 Gronkowski (119) and 2015 Cam Newton (84) came off the board much later.

This tier illustrates the value that elite tight end and quarterback seasons can provide when managers identify breakout candidates at a discount.

This group features dominant seasons from a young Arian Foster in 2010 and a veteran Randy Moss in need of a change of scenery before his reemergence in 2007, both of whom were completely off the fantasy radar the previous year.

Elsewhere, both 2006 Steven Jackson and 2003 LaDainian Tomlinson were RB2 in those years, each finishing behind a player who had a top-10 season on our list.

Also of note, Dan Marino's 1984 is the earliest season in the top 20 and the highest ranked entry from before 1987.

The top 10 is exceptionally strong, and any one of these seasons could have delivered a fantasy league title. The five running backs in this tier were all top-five picks, underscoring the position's value. Even with that lofty draft status, they still exceeded expectations.

The other positions paint a different picture. The two quarterbacks in this tier—2018 Patrick Mahomes and 2019 Lamar Jackson—had ADPs near 100 and were afterthoughts the previous season. Cooper Kupp, the highest-ranked wide receiver, finished as WR34 in 2020 before his historic 2021 campaign.

2022 Kelce, the lone tight end in this group, ranked No. 87 in raw points among the 99 seasons. That was the largest disparity between a season's overall ranking and its raw-points ranking, illustrating the value of outperforming positional peers.