The Fantasy Options Most Helped By Their Division In 2025

The NFL schedule changes every year. Your results, and those of others, swing it from one season to the next. But there is a big chunk of every season that stays the same. Divisional games. The Bengals might face the Patriots one season, the Titans the next, the Chargers the year after that, but we know for a fact that they’ll face the Ravens, Steelers and Browns twice each season. That’s six games, 35% of the schedule, that is predictable. That doesn’t have to mean much, but at the least, you can use teams’ divisional games as the control to the rest of the schedule’s variable. If a team is in a division with three putrid defenses, and its players thrive in those games but struggle out of the division, well, that tells us something, but it also means good news for that team’s players the next year, because they will still play those teams. The inverse is also true if a team’s divisionmates are all defensive stalwarts. Of course, this is small samples we’re dealing with here. In a 17-game season, you face divisional opponents six times and non-divisional opponents 11. Miss a game here and there, and the sample size is even smaller. So just doing well or poorly against division foes isn’t enough to draw a conclusion. But it’s a heck of a place to start, especially as we’re progressing through free agency and seeing where most everyone will be playing next season. That’s what I’m doing today and Friday. Below, I’m looking at the fantasy players most helped by their division in 2025, and what (if anything) that means for 2026. Friday, I’ll do the opposite — players most hurt by their division. (All scoring is PPR, and players needed at least four intradivisonal games to be considered.)

Players Most Helped by Their Division in 2025

Cedric Tillman, WR, Cleveland Browns

Outside the division: 2.1 PPR points per game Inside the division: 8.6 Difference: +308.0% Tillman has scored 5 career touchdowns in his three seasons, and four of those have come against AFC North foes, including three against the Ravens. The numbers show a big boost against the division, but ultimately, when you score so little all the time, a touchdown or two is enough to really make the difference.

Rhamondre Stevenson, RB, New England Patriots

Outside the division: 7.7 Inside the division: 21.8 Difference: +181.8%

Stevenson had a 142-yard game last year, a 102-yard game, a 153-yard game. All three came against AFC East opponents. He didn’t top 88 yards outside of the division. He had three multi-score games, and all three came against divisional foes (one against each team, as it turns out). The immediate reaction is to say that Stevenson thrived against the division while TreVeyon Henderson must have performed in the other games, but … that’s now how it turned out. Stevenson saw a 181.8% boost against the AFC East, but Henderson saw a 68.0% bump himself. Stevenson topped 20 PPR points in Weeks 2, 17 and 18, all divisional games, while Henderson did so in Weeks 11 and 14, and he also tossed in 17.3 alongside Stevenson in Week 18. Basically, the Patriots were excellent last year, and two of their three divisional foes were pretty terrible (and could be again in 2026), and that bodes well for running backs.

Jacory Croskey-Merritt, RB, Washington Commanders

Outside the division: 6.6 Inside the division: 11.3 Difference: +71.9%

The funny thing is that ol’ Bill’s best game as a rookie actually came outside the division, when he ran for 111 yards and 2 scores against the Chargers in Week 5. But his second-, third- and fourth-best games all came in divisional matchups, and five of his eight rookie touchdowns came against the NFC East as well. The Commanders finished with four straight divisional games last year, and while I’m fine ignoring Week 18, JCM was the RB8 in standard leagues in Weeks 15-17. Why standard leagues? Because he is the least PPR-y back ever — Bill had all of 9 receptions and 13 targets last year, and zero targets after Week 11. If he isn’t doing it for you on the ground, he isn’t doing it for you. But with the Cowboys and Giants both generous defenses to Bill’s ground game, he might be a nice flyer a few times in 2026 as well.

Nico Collins, WR, Houston Texans

Outside the division: 12.4 Inside the division: 20.5 Difference: +66.0% The best players don’t usually have a big gap between intradivisional performance and interdivisional, for a simple reason: They’re the best players. They’re always good. But the gap for Collins last year was stark. He had five games of 20-plus PPR points, and four of them came against AFC South opponents (22.4 points against the Jaguars in Week 3, 20.6 against the Jaguars in Week 10, 24.2 against the Titans in Week 11, 21.5 against the Colts in Week 13), and he didn’t even play every divisional game last year, sitting out Week 18. Two of his three hundred-yard games came in the division (both against the Jags). And all this despite Collins scoring more touchdowns outside the division than inside it (4-3). This isn’t a one-year thing, either — per the FTN Splits Tool, in 2024-2025 combined, Collins has averaged 20.8 PPR points per game against the division compared to 13.6 outside the division, basically the difference between Jaxon Smith-Njigba last year and Wan’Dale Robinson. That’s … a big difference.