2025 NFL Cut Candidates with Fantasy Relevance

The NFL offseason has arrived, and free agency is only a few short weeks away. Today, we’re going to look at players who aren’t yet free agents but could still end up playing elsewhere in 2025 if their current teams decide to sever ties. In other words, these are players who are at risk of getting cut this offseason.

Note that I am hardly an NFL salary cap expert. The players listed below are largely an aggregation of players mentioned from various sources (OverTheCap, ProFootballNetwork, and ESPN, to name a few) combined with additional reading about each individual player to gauge beat writers’ thoughts on whether they are actually cut candidates. As Sam Sherman did last year in this article, we will sort these players into three buckets:

• Fantasy-relevant players with significant cut risk: These are players who would be drafted in nearly every best ball draft (or QBs with massive impact on the players around them) with very significant cut risk.
• Fantasy-relevant players with longshot cut risk: These are fantasy-relevant players who I have seen listed as potential cap casualties but who are regarded by most informed sources as unlikely to be released. Some of these players are likely to be traded but unlikely to be cut.
• Less fantasy-relevant players: These are the rest of the skill-position players who have a good chance of being cut but likely won’t affect fantasy drafts as much.

Note that I specify a 2025 cap savings number for each player. Most of the time, teams save money toward the 2025 cap by designating a player as a post-June 1 cut because that spreads the dead money out over two years (2025 and 2026). However, each team only gets two post-June 1 cuts each year. For the purpose of simplicity, the savings numbers listed in the table below are the literal maximum amount of dollars a team can save by cutting a player — which is often how much they save by cutting a player with a post-June 1 designation, even though not all players will be given that designation due to the small number of slots.

Fantasy-relevant players with significant cut risk

1. Christian Kirk and/or Evan Engram

Rationale: The Jaguars have a new coach in Liam Coen, and Trent Baalke is out as general manager. That means the new administration has no ties to either Kirk or Engram, and Jacksonville could look to go in a different direction with Kirk, saving $10.5 million against the cap pre-June 1 and $16 million after June 1. Spotrac founder Mike Ginnitti mentioned it will be a difficult decision for the Jags as to whether they cut Kirk, and ESPN’s Ben Solak predicted Jacksonville would move on from either Kirk or Engram in the offseason. Kirk seems more likely to be cut/traded than Engram, but Solak mentioning Engram is another candidate to be off the team warrants his inclusion as well.

Fantasy impact: The Jags pick fifth in the NFL Draft and could target a pass catcher with that pick. They also have Brian Thomas Jr. locked in as their long-term WR1, while Parker Washington played well when forced into a larger role, and Brenton Strange had his moments, too. Washington would be the direct beneficiary of a potential Kirk departure (and Strange would benefit from Engram), but obviously both players would have to survive the draft as well. Washington and Strange are both sensible cheap dart throws right now given their roles could expand significantly this offseason, and their current price tags assume basically zero fantasy value. Assuming J