Development is not linear. It's a truism, but it's a valuable one in the NFL. Teams don't always get better incrementally. If they did, the 4-13 Patriots wouldn't have become the 14-3 Patriots in one short offseason. NFL players don't get better incrementally, either. And even when they improve one season, they are not guaranteed to improve again the next year.
As such, it is a challenge to stand in one moment of time and say with certainty which players will continue to improve or continue to decline. The 2025 season was rife with risers and fallers. Later, we might call those same players one-hit wonders or flashes in the pan. But we might also call them bona fide stars and faces of the league. We just won't know until we get there.
But from here, we can at least predict. I circled five players who suddenly broke out in 2025 and five players whose performance fell off a cliff out of nowhere to ask one simple question: Was it a blip or a trend? Is this player's current arc destined to continue in 2026, or will his trajectory suddenly regress back to previous years -- for better or worse -- in the upcoming NFL season?
Jump to: Breakouts | Cliff falls
Five 2025 breakouts
Jaxon Smith-Njigba, WR, Seattle Seahawks
Perhaps no player is a more obvious 2025 "breakout" than Smith-Njigba, who went from productive young player in 2024 to league leader in receiving yards. Smith-Njigba didn't just lead the league in receiving yards with 1,793 after posting 1,130 the year before. He did it without much cover from his teammates. He produced 44.1% of his team's receiving yards -- a simply preposterous centralization that we have not seen since 2012 Brandon Marshall.
I can craft the argument that Smith-Njigba's 2025 is an unassailable trend simply with his yards per route run: 3.85, the second-best number of the past decade behind 2023 Tyreek Hill. Yards per route run is a particularly sticky stat. Looking at the top 20 players by yards per route run over the past 10 years, we mostly find repeat offenders. Guys at the top of this list tend to stay at the top, and those few one-hit wonders -- players like Brandon Aiyuk and Michael Thomas -- disappeared because of injury and unhappiness with their role.
Top seasons by yards per route run over past 10 years
One of the particularly cool things about Smith-Njigba's emergence is how evidently faster he is from when he entered the league. Smith-Njigba passed on a 40-yard dash at the 2023 combine and instead ran at his pro day; his 4.52 seemed to detail an NFL slot receiver without much downfield ability. That's how he was used at first, as 28% of his rookie targets came on screens under then-offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. Different times!