Jeff Mans welcomes you to the 2025 NFL Draft Guide!
Be prepared to dominate Fantasy Football seasonal leagues and bring home a Championship 👊
This season marks the 30th season of fantasy football coverage for us here at Fantasy Guru, and that is something we do not take lightly. Nobody in this business has our longevity or success, and we owe 100% of that to each and every one of you. Our members are the bones, heart and soul of Fantasy Guru now and forever. On behalf of our entire staff, let me thank each of you for your support of us throughout the last 30 years and for trusting us to assist you on the journey toward fantasy, DFS and betting success in 2025.
Although a lot of what you see in our 2025 Fantasy Football Draft Guide will be familiar to you if you are a returning member, this is a very different year. Obviously, there are seven new head coaches, 14 new offensive coordinators, 12 new defensive coordinators, 104 new assistant coaches, 19 notable players who have retired, hundreds of players currently without a contract for 2025, 257 drafted players vying for jobs/roles, a brand new schedule, new travel issues, new rest issues, new NFL rules, changes to existing rules and countless other changes across the 32 NFL teams. But that is not what I am talking about here.
I, too, have changed quite a bit since we left off back in February. As a leader here at FG, it’s important to acknowledge that I am not the same person that most of you have come to know. It’s funny because, when I see that picture of me with the frosted tips and sunglasses, I get kind of confused. Obviously, that guy is an egomaniac trying very hard to be tough and cool. And I can confirm, he absolutely was. But that picture was taken in 2009, which today seems like it was an eternity ago. When you guys see that picture, you see a douchebag that is trying way too hard. He was. When I see that picture, I see a young-ish man trying to make something of himself in a new career. He did. People ask me all of the time, “Why do you keep letting ‘them’ use that picture?” The truth is because I am damn proud of who that douchebag is today.
My brother David Mans passed away suddenly in January of this year. I have spoken quite a bit about him and his passing over these last few months, so I am sorry if you are tired of hearing the sad story so frequently. But he was a very big part of my life. Losing him has changed me quite a bit in a very short amount of time. I am not over it, nor do I have any idea of when, if ever, I will be.
I dedicate this Draft Guide and all the success and failure that it brings our community to my big brother, Dave. He was born severely disabled, but he fought like hell to fit in and thrive in a society that often disregarded him. He wasn’t rich, and he wasn’t famous. My brother never married or had children of his own. But his life was full, and his experiences great. Everybody who knew him, from co-workers to friends to caretakers to random people at the grocery store, was better for having known him. There was a simple happiness to my brother that I miss so desperately these days. For him, life was about happiness and the never-ending pursuit of it. David would speak fondly of doing “simply” tasks like doing laundry, making a grilled cheese sandwich, talking to a neighbor or literally anything involving an automobile. For him, the joy was in living and in just being here. I think we all can learn a lot from the way my brother lived his simply life.
Let me be clear: Results have and always will be a very important part of our lives here at Fantasy Guru. That will not change now or ever. But how we pursue those results will be very different, specifically from me, from now on. I see how our competitors are building tools, chasing Underdog jackpots, and raising their prices beyond reasonability. I reached out to several of them to see if they wanted to just use that douchebag picture of me with the sunglasses as a finishing touch but as of this writing have not heard back.
My 21+ years in this business have taught me a lot. Running Fantasy Guru for the last eight years has taught me even more. I know roughly the number of you that are here to be a fixture part of our community, and that will participate and interact with each other regularly. I know the number who are only here to download the rankings for your draft and who we will never hear from again. I know the number of you who are coming here to copy and repurpose our content to try and use as your own. Some of us will win championships, some of us will fail to make the playoffs. Some of us will have mega profits in daily fantasy football, and one of us may even hit for a million plus in DFS. Others will follow the core four religiously and still somehow come up short on the profit sheet. Some of us are going to be profitable NFL bettors. Some will hit huge ass parlays and celebrate like mad. Others will get burned out by losing by a hook, one of us will film ourselves putting our fist through a TV when our parlay loses on a last-second field goal.
Fantasy Football is an activity in which we are competing against one another. It’s friend against friend, co-worker against co-worker, family against family. It’s a competition that only produces one winner per every 12 participants. So why do we all keep putting ourselves through this ecstasy/torture? Probably because it is fun as hell and beats the ever loving shit out of spending our weekends doing menial chores. So that is what I want each of us to take away from the 2025 season. Let’s actually ENJOY OURSELVES this year.
These days are flying by. We are all getting older, slower, and the world around us is changing rapidly and rarely for the better. So, let’s remember what we are REALLY searching for this NFL season, in our fantasy football leagues/contests and here at Fantasy Guru. Enjoyment. Please take my advice as somebody who has been through it and who has won every single thing there is to win around fantasy sports and betting. My best seasons have come when I have been happier in my personal life. If you are unhappy about the world, if you are one of those who find yourself angry every single night about something going on in the world (that usually has NOTHING to do with YOU) and find yourself scurrying around the internet trying to find something or someone to lash out on, then nothing we do will be able to change that for you. What’s more is that you are what we call “dead money” in the competitive sense. An angry player is a losing player, and there isn’t any bit of advice or counsel that will change it.
So, what I am working on this year is to make this place a lot more welcoming and fun for each and every one of us. I want the days of arguing in Discord and Sunday afternoon meltdowns to be over with. If you’re not capable of handling a loss, this isn’t going to be a place for you. Access to our Discord is 100% NOT A PART OF YOUR FANTASY GURU MEMBERSHIP. That means if/when you get kicked out, it is permanent, and there is no recourse for you. No, we will not refund your membership. No, writing an email or social media post will not have any effect. My best advice to that end is to NOT GET KICKED OUT.
Oh, another thing that I know about our membership is that 95% of you read those words and had no reaction whatsoever. The other 5% who immediately got their blood boiling are the ones that I am speaking to now. I want you folks to know that the game you are playing will not work here. If your goals are to bitch and moan and complain and to point out something I or the staff got wrong, then just save us all a lot of time and leave right now. When I am wrong about a player, everybody here knows it. Harping on it and shitting on a loss isn’t making any of us better. Thus, it’s just not going to be tolerated any longer.
I used to talk to my brother every Sunday, often going over to his house to take care of whatever he needed help with that week. During the NFL season, though, those Sunday chats would take place on Mondays after the radio show. I cannot express to you how frustrating it would be to talk about the grocery store having lunch meat on sale or how a guy he used to work with 10+ years ago bought a new car, a day after a 60% Tucker Kraft stuck his two random touchdowns up our asses in DFS. Even though he would always ask me how “football went yesterday,” usually centered around the Bears game, we rarely talked about anything to do with my work or sports.
I now realize that those phone calls would get my brain away from whatever bullshit that I couldn’t really control and onto things that I could. Those phone calls that I would usually dread, if I am being honest, might be what I wind up missing the most. My brother never cared if the players I recommended did well or failed. He cared about how I was doing, and somehow that always made me feel a lot better.
The best way to show just how much somebody who is no longer here meant to you is by carrying on the parts of them that you loved most. That is what I am doing here for my brother. Fantasy Guru is about a lot more than just sports. We are a community, the largest active community in fantasy sports and/or betting, as a matter of fact. Our powers are more than just winning and losing competitions. We are a family. Maybe not one we chose or even knew that we had, but like it or not, we are together this season. Some of us will win big, some will win small, some will lose. But we will all be challenged, learn a ton, get better, and have a blast doing it.
I know that emotions will get the best of us at some point and that I will be the guiltiest of anybody. But if you all have some patience with me, I will have it for you. What we are doing here is more than what any projection model or lineup optimizer could ever comprehend. Let others use the same tired data sources and AI-produced content. My staff and I are here for you every single minute of every single day, no matter what, over these next six months (and beyond if you are a VIP member). There is nothing that will happen this NFL season that you will not be ready to handle. But in addition to the draft advice, waiver pickups, DFS plays and NFL bets, we’ll share a hell of a lot more. Our FG community will be watching the games together. We will be live betting together. We will be drafting together. We’ll be reacting to the injuries together. We’ll be wishing each other a Happy Birthday and a Merry Christmas. We’ll be giving each other advice on what to get our spouses for an anniversary. We’ll see pictures of newborn babies brought into the world while their father is wondering if he should pick up Jaylen Wright off waivers. From the end of spring to the end of winter, we will spend most of the next year together. None of you will be alone while you are a member of the Elite Mafia.
Now, if any of you have a time machine that can go back to that thirty-something guy with the frosted tips and sunglasses and tell him that he doesn’t have to try so hard, that would be appreciated. And while you have his ear, tell him that he should pay more attention to the books at Guru Elite, don’t take the bait on Kadarius Toney, and make more time for his big brother, Dave.
Here’s to a GREAT 2025 NFL SEASON!!!
Jeff Mans
