With help from our game-tracking data, we’re examining five wide receivers who are poised for a national breakout in the 2025 FBS college football season.
Taking the next step.
During the college football offseason one year ago, we developed a list of potential breakout wide receivers in the FBS who already had good to very good seasons. It worked out well in the 2024 campaign.
Not everything was a big risk, though. Predicting wide receivers such as Arizona’s Tetairoa McMillan and UNLV’s Ricky White would have good seasons, after they’d just had good seasons, didn’t require going out on a limb.
But using some of our advanced metrics like burn rate, which measures how frequently a targeted receiver shakes the closest defender to get himself open, we can get a read on a player’s talents that raw catches and yardage might not capture.
This methodology did well in spotlighting Elijah Sarratt, a James Madison transfer who turned out to be the No. 1 wideout for Indiana’s surprising playoff team.
So let’s try it again for the 2025 FBS season with five returning wide receivers who deserve your attention. They play for schools ranging from the defending national champion to a slightly above-average Sun Belt squad. What they have in common is a nice track record of being extremely difficult for defenders to catch, whether before they get the ball, afterward, or both.
MORE FOOTBALL FROM OPTA ANALYST
NFLWhich NFL Team’s New Starting Quarterback is Poised to Succeed or Falter?
3 days ago Tyler Greenawalt FBSWhich FBS Running Back Will Do the Best Impression of Ashton Jeanty in 2025?
2 weeks ago Alex Kirshner FCS FootballAll-Time FCS-Over-FBS Wins: The Biggest, Best and Most Upsets
2 weeks ago Craig HaleyEric McAlister, TCU
Meet the top returning receiver in the FBS by burn rate. McAlister’s 78.9% rate on 57 targets last season was the best among all qualifying non-seniors.
While he had a productive season with 39 receptions for 762 yards and five touchdowns, he only ranked fourth in targets on the Horned Frogs. The three players ahead of him in target share, led by 1,000-yard receiver Jack Bech, are all gone now. That leaves McAlister positioned for maybe the most obvious breakout of any wideout in the country.
He’s a devilish route runner and also great once he gets the ball. His 0.41 missed or broken tackles per touch ranked 10th among wide receivers with 30 or more targets in 2024.
He’ll be quarterback Josh Hoover’s best bud this season.
Carnell Tate, Ohio State
Tate was the No. 3 receiver on the Buckeyes’ national championship team, but he was just as productive on a per-target basis as 2025 first-round draft pick Emeka Egbuka.
Tate (52 receptions, 733 yards, four TDs) posted a 75.4% burn rate – a top-15 ranking nationally among WRs with 30+ targets – while he feasted on defenses that had to pay lots of credence to Egbuka and the best receiver in the country, Jeremiah Smith.
Considering Tate’s burn rate was nearly 10% higher than Smith’s and nearly 8% higher than Egbuka’s, does it mean he’s as good or better than those players? Certainly not, and he’ll have tons to prove this season as he slides into a proper No. 2 role behind Smith.
Tate almost certainly will get less single coverage than he did as a sophomore, but everything is laid out right in front of him to become the latest stud wideout in Columbus who puts up huge college numbers before matriculating to the NFL.
Eric Rivers, Georgia Tech
The transition from FIU to a power conference wide receiver room is not simple. Last year, Notre Dame added the Panthers’ Kris Mitchell, who had just put up a 1,100-yard season in Conference USA and had some of the best speed anywhere.
It didn’t exactly materialize as Mitchell had 22 catches for 224 yards and two TDs in 16 games with the Fighting Irish, with his yards per catch dropping to 10.2 from the 17.5 he had a year earlier. Bear that in mind when evaluating Rivers, who joins the Yellow Jackets from FIU after posting a 62/1,172/12 line.
There’s still reason to be excited if you’re a Tech fan, though. Rivers, on 101 targets at FIU, put up exceptional stats across the board: a 74.3% burn rate (the national average for receivers with 30+ targets: 59.5%), 18.0 burn yards per target (national average: 11.0), and 6.0 burn yards per route run (third in FBS college football).
He was a picture of explosive efficiency, the kind of player who simply didn’t belong on the same field as most of the CUSA defenders guarding him.
How Rivers transitions to the ACC will go a long way toward determining whether the Jackets can make a leap in quarterback Haynes King’s final season.
Corey Rucker, Arkansas State
Rucker is the most precious of college football commodities: An accomplished skill position player at a Group of Five school who did not enter the NCAA transfer portal after the season. (But note he’s played five college seasons, four at Arkansas State with one sandwiched in the middle at South Carolina in 2022. Maybe he’s already lived the portal life and wanted to grow where he was planted.)
Rucker was a second-team All-Sun Belt performer with 69 catches for 1,053 yards and seven TDs – one of the best receiving seasons in Red Wolves history. He was solidly above average in a range of metrics, from burn rate (62.1%) to burn yards per target (11.8%) to big play rate (31.0%).
He’ll be one of the best players in the Sun Belt, teaming with quarterback Jaylen Raynor as one of the better returning QB/WR tandems in college football.
Devonte Ross, Penn State
You see, most great G5 receivers don’t stay put.
Ross is coming off a big season at Troy (76 receptions, 1,043 yards, 11 TDs) that netted him first-team All-Sun Belt honors. It drew the attention of Penn State, which had an utterly dreadful group of wide receivers last year and may well have won the national championship with just an average unit.
Enter Ross, who just may headline a mostly new receivers’ group after the Nittany Lions happily waved goodbye to several of their former receivers via the transfer portal.
Interestingly, Ross was not a superstar data-wise. His 59.8% burn rate was right around the Sun Belt average, and once he had the ball in his hands, he was easier to tackle than Rucker and some of the SBC’s other elite receivers (Ross’ 0.118 missed or broken tackles per touch won’t thrill anyone).
But Ross’ excellence was in handling volume: He had 127 targets, three more than Rucker and the most in the conference. And he didn’t merely feast on the dregs of his league: In Troy’s lone power conference matchup of the season against Iowa and its elite defense, he went for five catches, 142 yards, and scores of 63 and 62 yards, adding in a 77-yard punt return touchdown.
Anyone who can score three touchdowns against two different Iowa units from beyond 60 yards is an intriguing proposition.
For more coverage, follow along on social media on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.
College Football 2025: Wide Receivers Primed to Step (Actually, Race) Into the Limelight Opta Analyst.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( College Football 2025: Wide Receivers Primed to Step (Actually, Race) Into the Limelight )
Also on site :