I would have bet a significant amount of money in April and May that Travis Hunter would be the most bizarre fantasy situation we’d deal with this year. The 2nd overall pick in the NFL draft may or may not play both offense and defense. How much offense? Who knows. How much defense? Shrugs. Where the heck do you draft that in fantasy? That’s a pretty damn unique deal.
And that’s probably still the most bizarre situation of 2025, but this Quinshon Judkins situation is at least making a push for that top spot, so I thought it was appropriate to break it down. It may seem at face value like just a yes/no suspension type deal, which is usually pretty straightforward actually. However, there are several weird and unique variables that factor into this one with wider reaching tentacles for our drafting purposes.
Crazy enough, I don’t even want to start with the suspension angle as that’s somehow not the most important element for from a fantasy perspective in my opinion. What is most important is this 2nd round pick holdout.
30 of 32 Second Round Picks from the 2025 NFL Draft are Unsigned
Rookies are about to report to training camp for every NFL team in the coming days, but it doesn’t look like most of the 2nd round picks will be there. Why? Well, simply put, the NFL has taken advantage of these rookies for a long time. Not only are the rookies paid on a pre-determined scale of contracts based on where they are selected, but they don’t even offer them fully guaranteed deals, despite the bargain these contracts offer to the teams for highly valuable players generally expected to be key starters and contributors to the team for years.
Historically, these 2nd rounders have gotten two or three years guaranteed on their four year contracts. However, the Houston Texans broke that mold this year with receiver Jayden Higgins, signing him to a fully guaranteed, 4 year, $11.7 Million contract. The Cleveland Browns then followed suit with the first pick of the second round, linebacker Carson Schwesinger, giving him a fully guaranteed contract as well.
After these two groundbreaking deals, other 2nd rounders have stood their ground behind Higgins and Schwesinger, including New Orleans Saints QB Tyler Shough and Chargers WR Tre Harris. Frankly, it’s insane the NFL is not already offering fully guaranteed deals. These players are being paid like bad kickers, and they still won’t even fully guarantee less than $3 Million annually for 4 years. But while that’s a conversation for another day, the impact it might have on these 2nd round rookies is not.
Naturally, the owners of NFL teams want to maintain their dominant stance over the players from a monetary perspective. But given the fact that the Texans and Browns opened this door, the players seem adamant about barging through and making a change for both themselves and the future rookies coming into the league. That’s pretty awesome from a real life perspective, but it’s far from ideal from a fantasy perspective.
It is certainly possible that this gets resolved quickly after this writing and it’s a moot point (though I’d be rather surprised), but we should still prepare for the worst here.
Especially for rookies, training camp is a pretty huge deal. Like any other job, you can’t just step in without any training or guidance and perform to the peak of your talents. You have to learn the systems, verbiage, teammate nuances, and other important factors that go into doing your job. Sure, the basics of football are still the same, but training camp is wildly important for learning everything necessary to be able to go out and play full speed without thinking when the real games start. It’s also the time where you can impress your coaches to earn your playing time.
Without this critical camp time, these rookies are seriously behind the 8 ball. Every day of camp you miss, the risk of being delayed in when you get on the field or how effective you are in the regular season grows. It’s always possible that a rookie isn’t quite ready heading into his first season, or even isn’t totally ready at all during his rookie year. But it becomes an even greater risk that the rookie year is a wash if they miss big chunks of training camp.
And in case it wasn’t clear, Quinshon Judkins was a 2nd round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. He is currently unsigned by the Cleveland Browns. So when he was arrested on misdemeanor domestic violence, things become even murkier and riskier for the former Ole Miss and Ohio St. running back.
What do we do with Quinshon Judkins in Fantasy?
Let’s quickly break down all the variable we have now for Judkins because, well, there are a lot more than even meets the eye:
- He is unsigned heading into training camp
- He was arrested for misdemeanor domestic violence
- When/if he signs a contract, the NFL may place him on paid leave until his case gets sorted
- The Browns also drafted another rookie RB in the 4th round of this year’s draft (Dylan Sampson)
- The Browns have veteran Jerome Ford still on the roster after forcing him to take a pay cut
- The Browns have a *peculiar* history with player legal troubles
That enough for ya? Yikes.
Let’s touch on each bullet and what it means for both Judkins and others.
Judkins is unsigned
The current situation with 2nd rounders doesn’t feel likely to resolve super quickly. Hopefully I’m wrong about that, but these groundbreaking types of deals are not generally speedy, especially when it requires billionaires to hand over a sliver of power to their employees. It’s possible that Judkins will be more likely to be the first “scab” given his legal troubles, which could get him into camp quicker. But it’s also possible he wants/needs the guarantees now more than ever. And before the arrest, the Browns were probably comfortable giving him the same fully guaranteed deal they gave to Schwesinger. But do the Browns even want to sign a deal with him right now? He hasn’t given them a lot of reason to do so. That’s yet another weird risk in his contract situation.
Judkins’ Arrest & Possible Paid Leave
I’m not a legal expert, and I see no upside in commenting on a domestic violence case I have no knowledge of. But reading what others in the industry have said, there’s even some murkiness about whether signing a contract would even get Judkins out of the woods for the time being. Mike Florio mentions that the NFL could place him on paid leave if he does sign his contract. That is entirely up to the NFL and far from a guarantee. Players like Rashee Rice were not placed on paid leave, but there is precedent as it relates to domestic violence specifically. The Browns 2nd round pick from last year, Mike Hall (also from Ohio State), was placed on paid leave within two weeks of being arrested for domestic violence.
The Browns Drafted Dylan Sampson & Re-Signed Jerome Ford
It’s not as if the Judkins situation was totally straightforward to begin with, given the Browns doubled up at RB in the NFL draft, adding Tennessee back Dylan Sampson in the 4th round. I didn’t *love* Judkins as a prospect, and Sampson is no slouch himself. He was the SEC offensive player of the year last year, carrying an anemic Tennessee offense to the College Football Playoff with more than 1,600 total yards and 22 TDs.
It’s possible Sampson was going to take a nice chunk of the backfield as it is. He’s talented in his own right and received real draft capital despite the team taking Judkins at the top of the 2nd. Now, Sampson is likely to get a nice long runway to show he’s worthy of leading their backfield while Judkins is not at camp.
And even if Sampson can’t run with the job, the team does still have trusted veteran back Jerome Ford around. Ford is far from some star, but the team has relied upon him to carry a solid workload on several occasions over recent years. It’s not ideal, but there are far worse fallback options to have.
The Browns have a peculiar history with legal troubles
As mentioned above, the Browns just had to deal with this type of deal last year with their 2nd round pick. And obviously, they have recently dealt with the circus that was Deshaun Watson. What does all that mean in relation to Judkins? I don’t know how anyone can say confidently. Do the Browns simply not care much about legal issues given they happily jumped into those waters with Watson? Or do they feel burned by how that played out and proceed with more caution with Judkins, especially given how the fully guaranteed Watson deal played out? I don’t know, but it’s more risk.
All of this is to say that this is a wildly complex issue, and that’s before we ever even really got to the suspension aspect of it. The aforementioned Mike Hall was arrested in August of last year, placed on paid leave and then pled no contest to his charges in September and was subsequently suspended 5 games by the NFL. Generally, it’s rare for a suspension to come down that quick because the legal process doesn’t play out that quickly. But it did just happen last season in a similar situation with this exact team.
For me, the risk with Judkins is about as astronomically high as any player I can remember. I bumped him way, way down in our Best Ball rankings, and I moved Sampson way up (and Ford up as well). The door has opened for Sampson to take this job, and I’m generally a fan of him as a prospect. I don’t see much upside in plunging into the Judkins waters in drafts right now, as I’d expect a pretty swift free fall that will give you a buying opportunity later if you feel the desire to do so.
But it’s also important to remember the 2nd round pick holdout angle. As much as it pains me, I am bumping down all my beloved 2nd round picks a bit in our rankings. I’m a huge fan of a lot of these guys, notably TreVeyon Henderson, Tre Harris and RJ Harvey, but we have to face the facts that a lengthy holdout may be on the horizon, and that’s a big deal for these rookies.
So, if we add that big deal to all these other factors for Quinshon Judkins, he feels like a hard pass for me right now.
