When you think of one-year wonders in Fantasy football, who comes to mind? It's Peyton Hillis, right? Or Josh Gordon. Maybe Steve Slaton.
Every year, there are players who come out of nowhere to emerge as viable Fantasy options, and those players will often go on to become mainstays in the early rounds of Fantasy drafts. Those are your breakouts — and Ben Gretch wrote about the biggest breakouts of all time. But it might be even more fun to remember those players who shone so brightly for one season and were basically never heard from again.
We still talk about Hillis' incredible, out-of-nowhere 2010 season — the one that incredibly landed him on the cover of Madden. Mention his name to any Fantasy player, and you're going to get at least a chuckle out of them; who can even remember the rest of the top-five scorers at RB that season. Adrian Peterson's dominance was expected; Hillis' was magical.
I surveyed the Fantasy Football Today team for their favorite one-year wonders as part of our Fantasy Football Yesterday week, and they came up with 12 names. Here are the biggest one-year wonders in Fantasy football history:
Peyton Hillis 2010
One of the all-time great one-hit wonder seasons in any sport, though maybe it is unfair to classify him that way — after all, he did somehow manage to lead the 2008 Broncos in rushing yards as the starting fullback with a whopping 343. The Browns ultimately acquired him ahead of the 2010 season, where he began the season listed on the depth chart as a fullback and tight end. However, injuries to Jerome Harrison and James Davis pushed Hillis into action as the No. 1 back in Week 3, and he responded with 144 yards on 22 carries, while adding seven catches for 36 yards.
Hillis was dominant from that point on, averaging 83.7 rushing yards and 32.6 receiving yards over his next 13 games with 11 total touchdowns, good for 20.2 Fantasy points per game. Hillis couldn't follow it up in 2011, struggling with injuries and a contract dispute with the team, and ultimately rushed for just 1,258 yards and six touchdowns over the final four years of his career. We'll always have that Madden cover.
Steve Slaton 2008
Slaton was dominant this season, putting up 1,659 yards from scrimmage and 10 touchdowns, finishing as the No. 7 RB, just behind LaDainian Tomlinson. Ahman Green actually got the start in Week 1, but it soon became clear Slaton was the more dynamic player. He was especially valuable down the stretch, racking up 508 rushing yards and 179 receiving yards over the final five games of the season, a sure sign of the greatness to come.
However, Slaton struggled with fumbles the following season and was ultimately benched after losing the trust of coach Gary Kubiak before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury. An undrafted free agent named Arian Foster took over in 2010, and Slaton rushed for just 177 yards in 2010 and 2011, the last he would see of NFL action.
Gary Barnidge 2015
It usually takes tight ends a bit of time to develop, but even there you don't usually see 29-year-old breakouts, but that's what Barnidge was. After bouncing around for seven anonymous years, Barnidge broke out as the Browns' No. 1 receiver, leading the team in targets (125), receptions (79), yards (1,043), and touchdowns (9). Only 12 tight ends have put up a better Fantasy season than Barnidge's 2015 since 1997, and most of them are Hall of Famers or will be some day. The biggest exception?
Jordan Reed 2015
Reed was even better than Barnidge in 2015. In fact, he was better than every tight end in the NFL on a per-game basis, and only 11 wide receivers were better that year too. He caught 87 passes for 952 yards and 11 touchdowns, and was especially dominant during the Fantasy playoffs, racking up 25 catches for 333 yards and five touchdowns – 29.4 Fantasy points per game. He even dominated in the playoffs, catching nine passes for 120 yards and a touchdown against the Packers. It should have been the start of a run alongside Gronkowski as the best tight ends in football.
Instead, injuries derailed Reed's career. He was very good when he was on the field in 2016 but missed six games; he has played just 19 games in three seasons since, and it's unclear if Reed's career is over as he nears his 30th birthday.
LeGarrette Blount 2016
Everyone's definition of a one-year wonder differs, and Blount might not fit yours. After all, he had a 1,000-yard season in just 13 games as a rookie in 2010. But 2016 was just different. He established new career highs in carries and yards (1,161), but it was the role as the Patriots goal-line back that really separated Blount. He scored 18 times to lead the league, finishing as the No. 9 RB in PPR scoring despite catching just seven passes; among all seasons by an RB with at least 200 PPR points since 1997, Blount's seven receptions are the second-lowest.
Of course, it was already Blount's age-30 season, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that he didn't have much left in the tank, though he did have enough to rush for 90 yards and a touchdown in a Super Bowl win over the Patriots the following season.
Josh Gordon 2013
Gordon's story hasn't been fully told, but to date it has been a story defined by disappointment. His 2013 is the lone exception, and it stands as one of the all-time "what could have been" seasons. He played just 14 games and still managed to lead the NFL in receiving yards, including a two-game stretch where he nearly racked up 498 receiving yards. He had 1,020 yards and six touchdowns in his final seven games, and it's just disappointing we never got to see him at that level again.
Robert Griffin III 2012
Speaking of "What could have been …" Griffin was Lamar Jackson before Lamar Jackson, except he might have been an even better passer. Griffin took the league by storm in 2012, averaging 25.3 Fantasy points per game in his first five despite leaving one with an injury. Griffin finished his rookie season fourth in Fantasy points per game among quarterbacks and seemed poised to dominate the league for the next decade.
Instead, an obviously already injured Griffin was left in on bad turf in the playoffs, suffered a torn ACL and was never the same. There are some who will tell you the league figured out RGIII. Nonsense. His fall was the result of coaching malpractice and a body that failed him.
Brandon Lloyd 2010
It's a bit surprising that Lloyd only had the one truly excellent Fantasy season, because it felt like we talked about him regularly for a full decade. But it really was just the one season when he caught 77 passes for 1,448 yards and 11 touchdowns despite catching passes from the combination of Tim Tebow and Kyle Orton. He had another couple of solid seasons with the Rams and Patriots, but 2010 stands far above the rest — he actually finished as the No. 2 WR in PPR scoring and No. 1 in non-PPR. He never finished as a top-24 WR in any other season, and was only top-30 once otherwise.
Jay Ajayi 2016
Given Ajayi's role on the 2017 Super Bowl winning Eagles, it seems a bit odd to include him as a one-year wonder, but it actually fits. Of Ajayi's 2,546 career rushing yards, 1,272 came in 2016; of his 14 touchdowns, eight were in 2016. And the season was even more impressive than that makes it sound; he had just 18 carries in the first four games of the season, and wasn't even active in Week 1. Incredibly, Ajayi rushed for 200 yards on three separate occasions, a feat only Earl Campbell has bested since the merger; Tiki Barber and O.J. Simpson are the only other players to do it.
Nick Foles 2013
Hey, who knows, maybe Foles will revitalize his career and the Bears offense in 2020 — stranger things have happened. Like, for instance, Nick Foles throwing seven touchdowns in a game. Or, say, Nick Foles catching a touchdown as the starting quarterback for the winner of the Super Bowl. Nick Foles has had a strange career.
Foles' 2013 was supposed to be proof that Chip Kelly's offensive genius really would work in the NFL. And for 11 games, it worked incredibly well. From Week 5 through the end of the season, Foles averaged 27.4 Fantasy points per game, which would have been good for No. 2 behind just Peyton Manning's historic 55-touchdown season. Foles might have had one of the biggest outlier games of all time, but he was great that whole season.
Muhsin Muhammed 2004
Muhammad had a long career, ultimately racking up 11,438 yards over his 14 seasons. He even had a few 1,000-yard seasons early in his career, including one in which he led the league in receptions. But nothing came close to what he did in 2004, when he wasn't just the No. 1 receiver in Fantasy — he was 30-plus points north of the No. 2 finisher. The 31-year-old seemed to have settled in as a fine complementary piece to Steve Smith at the start of his incredible career, but when Smith went down early in 2004, Muhammad found himself as Jake Delhomme's No. 1 option, and found he was still up to the task. He had more than half of Delhomme's 19 touchdowns, and nearly doubled up the Panthers No. 2 receiver in receptions and yards.
Le'Ron McClain 2008
Shouts to Fantasy Football Today producer Ben Schragger for pulling this one, because I really didn't remember it, and it's actually a pretty fascinating season. McClain split time with Willis McGahee and Ray Rice, but was the clear lead option, which doesn't actually even feel real typing it. The converted fullback started all 16 games for the Ravens, but really made his impact felt for Fantasy down the stretch, rushing for 531 yards and five touchdowns over the final six games of the season.
He finished that season with 902 yards and 10 touchdowns, more than two-thirds of his career totals in both categories. But the most impressive part of the campaign had to have been the 82-yard-touchdown run he had against the Cowboys in Week 16. It was the longest run by any player in the NFL that season — and it has to be one of the longest runs by any player to run a 4.88 second 40-yard dash. Plus, it came the drive after McGahee ripped off a 77-yard touchdown run, making them to first players to have 70-plus-yard touchdown runs on consecutive drives. That touchdown run clinched the win over the Cowboys, putting them in position to face the Eagles in a win-or-go-home matchup in Week 17 — a game the Cowboys lost 44-6.
Oh, and McClain's 82-yard touchdown was the final touchdown ever scored at historic Texas Stadium. Aren't you glad you read all the way down here?
