Exposing Landmines in DraftKings 2025 Best Ball Milly Maker (Fantasy Football)

DraftKings 2025 Best Ball Milly Maker streets are wild. Every room seems to have someone reaching for an unstacked quarterback, locking in their sixth WR before even glancing at RB, or drop kicking ADP through a table like a Bills tailgate. Sometimes, the sharpest move isn’t who you draft. It’s who you don’t.

We’ve identified seven landmines to avoid destroying your lineup. In Best Ball, wasting a single pick can derail your roster construction and kill your advance rate. We’ll breakdown how we identified landmines, the players to avoid, and pivot options for each. 

How We Identified Landmines

To identify landmines, we created a Blended Score for every player by combining 60% projected PPR points from the Ultimate Draft Kit+ and 40% Fantasy Footballers Best Ball Rankings (updated since the Jonnu Smith trade).

This weighting reflects both expected production and how well a player fits structurally in DraftKings’ full-PPR, tournament-heavy format. We then compared each player’s Blended Score to their current ADP for a metric known as Draft Gap. The bigger the gap, the more likely it is to be a landmine.

Note: ADPs accurate as of  7/3/25

Terry McLaurin (WR, Commanders)

ADP: 31
Blended Rank: ~41
Draft Gap: -10

McLaurin is going in the middle of the third round as a locked-and-loaded WR2, but his profile tells a different story. Our blended score projects 13.7 PPR points per game, over two points lower than his 15.75 PPG last year. The primary reason is that he is a TD regression candidate, having recorded 13 TDs in 2024. Based on league-wide averages (155 yards or 11.5 receptions per TD), that number should have been closer to seven. He is also not a target volume hog.

• • Three games with four or fewer targets.  
  • A mere two games over nine targets.

Pair that with the fact that McLaurin and Jayden Daniels aren’t in a natural stacking pocket. You’d have to force the combo at the two/three turn or get lucky and have Daniels fall six picks past ADP. From a tournament vantage point, building around CeeDee Lamb and the Cowboys for a Week 17 runback makes sense, but forcing an early Washington stack is a booby trap built on recency bias. Avoid unless ADP value creates a unique stack at the three/four turn. 

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You can see Terry’s Career Fantasy Finish Chart here from the Ultimate Draft Kit+.

Pivot Options:

• Davante Adams (ADP 30): WR on a team projected for 800+ more passing yards than the Commanders. Major contingent upside with injury to Puka. 
• Josh Allen (ADP 29): Only a few QBs can swing a week; he’s the best at it.
• Tyreek Hill (ADP 33): 2023 WR2 and known spike week collector.

James Cook (RB, Bills)

ADP: 39
Blended Rank: ~56
Draft Gap: -17

Cook is going at pick 39 thanks to 18 total touchdowns and a PPR-friendly profile. His offseason contract grumblings brought his ADP down from 36.6 to 39.4…but that isn’t enough to account for the severe deficiencies that accompany drafting him at this juncture.

The round-and-a-half Draft Gap stems from a lack of confidence in Baller’s projections, touchdown regression, and the fallacy that he consistently drops spike weeks. With projections under 200 attempts and 30 catches, he falls out of the workhorse profile of other RBs in the same range. Plus, he has one of the lowest snap counts of any “lead” back. Of Buffalo’s 1,445 snaps, he only played 40.4%. He screams landmine with these unreliable tendencies and a track record known to lack consistency.

• Even with an excellent statical 2024, he had more than 20 points in only 4 games. See how Cook’s career consistency raises major concern below.

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Pivot Options:

• George Kittle (ADP 40): Elite TE upside with playoff upside potential.
• Breece Hall (ADP 36): True dual-threat back with more snap opportunities.
• DK Metcalf (ADP 42): Boom/Bust profile great for Best Ball.

Joe Burrow (QB, Bengals)

ADP: 46
Blended Rank: ~81
Draft Gap: -35

Burrow goes as QB4, just ahead of Jalen Hurts, mainly because of the stacking pocket he falls into with Ja’Marr Chase (ADP 1) and Tee Higgins (ADP 25). In many drafts, it becomes a game of chicken: “Who gets the Burrow stack?” Since Chase and Higgins often land on different rosters, one drafter usually forces Burrow at the four/five turn. If someone decides to double-stack Bengals, Burrow is always drafted here to ensure he doesn’t get sniped. 

However, just because there is a natural stacking pocket does not justify it as an optimal pick. If the Bengals are a must-have stack, a Week 17 run back of the Cardinals may be necessary. Juggling the ADPs of the Bengals and Cardinals, along with double stacks and runbacks, is incredibly complicated. The top three selections for the Cardinals are Trey McBride (ADP 24), Marvin Harrison Jr. (ADP 29), and James Conner (ADP 60). To build a full double stack with a runback, drafters often have to spend four or five of their first six picks on players from just two teams. 

That’s a lot of eggs in one basket. Drafters also tend to romanticize Burrows’ statistics based on his pocket passer archetype. Even as the league’s “best” pocket passer, he only went over 300 yards in seven games for a 39% hit rate. For reference, Jared Goff (ADP 101) achieved this six times, and Geno Smith (ADP 153) accomplished it five times. If you can push him to the six/seven turn, go for it, but that’s a tall order and one I’m not risking personally.

Burrow’s weapon is his ridiculously consistent floor, not his ceiling. His ideal price is somewhere in the middle of the 7th round and that will not happen this year. Burrow should be closer to Mahomes at 71 so lineups can smash other skill positions that have higher ceilings around his current ADP.

Pivot Options:

• Jameson Williams (ADP 44): Vertical WR with 70-yard TD potential.
• Xavier Worthy (ADP 45): Speed-based player with multiple TD upside.
• DeVonta Smith (ADP 50): Consistent target volume with contingent upside if A.J. Brown is not available.

Bo Nix (QB, Broncos)

ADP: 91
Blended Rank: ~109
Draft Gap: -18

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Bo Nix rocked out as a rookie, and the result is a higher ADP this year. He is the 8th QB off the board thanks to a solid year-one campaign through the air and on the ground. The issue is that there are 12 QBs selected after him in the range of picks 93-119. Starting a position run means you’re paying the most for that position. Everyone after you gets better value. 

There are still plenty of upside plays you could choose in this range. By passing on Nix, you can add firepower to your lineup with another RB, WR, or TE. It’s smarter to take an RB who could become (or is) a starter or a rookie WR with unknown potential. THEN, you come back a round later with another QB in a similar tier. You don’t need to force picks because they line up with ADP. Drafting smarter combos beats drafting by script.

His first stacking partner, Courtland Sutton, does not fall within a stacking window either. Sutton goes at 48, so a drafter with pick one, two, or three gets him at average ADP. At 91, Nix goes to drafters with pick five, six, or seven. That means you’ll have to get Sutton five spots behind ADP to stack him with Nix without reaching multiple spots.

Pivot Options:

• Jayden Reed (ADP 89): A WR who can finish as the WR 1 in any week.
• Darnell Mooney (ADP 94): Deep threat with tournament-friendly volatility.
• Jaylen Warren (ADP 96): RB with unknown role in an Arthur Smith offense that is going to run, and run, and then run some more.

Jonnu Smith (TE, Steelers)

ADP: 110
Blended Rank: ~163
Draft Gap: -53

This landmine is simple. Smith switched teams and went from a TE 1 in a pass-friendly offense to a run-first team that leads the league in 13 Personnel usage (three-TE sets). The pie is too small, and his slice isn’t worth drafting, especially at pick 110. His ADP will naturally slide as more drafters adjust, but for now, he’s showing up in queues far too early.

Here’s why it’s a landmine: If you haven’t updated your rankings, Jonnu is the kind of player who ends up on your team when you lose service, get busy, and you – heaven forbid – end up auto-drafting. If he ends up on your squad before Round 16, you just handed the rest of your pod an edge while diminishing yours in the playoff weeks…if you even get there.

Pivot Options:

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• Anyone not named Jonnu Smith or Pat Friermuth before pick 165.

Dont’e Thornton Jr. (WR, Raiders)

ADP: 191
Blended Rank: ~264
Draft Gap: -73

Thornton is one of the fastest risers in the late rounds due to OTA buzz, rather than the certainty of a role. There is no confirmation from the team that he is starting over second-round selection Jack Bech. Yet, Thornton is now going ahead of multiple veterans with actual production, roles, or contracts to justify as better picks. He is the kind of player who gets steamed up without doing anything in pads. Here are some veterans going behind Thornton:

• Darius Slayton – Three-year extension for $36 million. 
• Tutu Atwell – $10 million contract for 2025. 
• Ray-Ray McCloud – 87 targets last year.

These names are not shiny, but they will be on the field. In Rounds 17+, your job is to find players who will score points. Instead of betting on camp reports, pivot to players with evidence of a role. 

Pivot Options with Low Ownership:

• Dyami Brown – 64% owned. Signed a $10M, one-year contract.  
• Noah Brown – 22.2% owned. WR3 for explosive WAS offense.
• Tre Tucker – 15.7% owned. Same team, same position, and already proven big-play ability.

Ownership is data from the DraftKings Network released June 10th, 2025.