It’s “Sleepers Week” at Beyond the Boxscore over on the Fantasy Football Today YouTube and podcast pages. For those who are new to Beyond the Boxscore, Jacob Gibbs and I have expanded the content to a multi-episode per week offering, and you can find all of our content (most of it evergreen) over here. We’ve ranked offensive play callers for Fantasy Football leagues in 2025, ranked quarterbacks by tiers, pinpointed the players we’re drafting most in each round, and now we’re focused on finding you sleepers to draft in your leagues in the double-digit rounds and beyond.
We kicked off Sleepers Week by bringing on three of my all-time favorite Fantasy Football analysts: Rich Hribar, JJ Zachariason, and Ben Gretch. These guys go deep into the film and analytics — like Jacob and I — to come up with not just sleepers but all players to target and avoid in drafts. For the first episode of Sleeper Week, Jacob and I devised a plan to have these three analysts compete in a snake draft format. Using CBS Sports ADP, we allowed each analyst to pick their favorite sleepers from Rounds 9, 10, 11, and 12. We wrapped things up by featuring their favorite deep sleeper — think last-round draft pick — that player you don’t want to leave your drafts without.
JJ kicked us off with his favorite Round 9 sleeper, and that player is a favorite of both Jacob and myself, too. Well, he was a favorite of mine. A training camp calf injury has me reconsidering his outlook. JJ remains steadfast in drafting him.
“My ADP database has seen 211 wide receivers play at least eight games while being selected in that WR30-WR50 range (average draft position) historically (data stretches back through 2014),” JJ said. “Only 11 of them had a previous season yards per run of 2.2 or better, which is where Jennings was at. Those players outperformed their ADP expectation, which is essentially PPR points per game at a certain ADP based on history. They outperform expectations on average by two PPR points per game. And then if you look, only five of them had a targets per route run uh above 0.25 from the previous season. Jennings was at 0.26 last year. Those five players outperform expectation by 3.9 PPR points per game.”
JJ continued his analysis of why he loves Jennings so much as a sleeper pick in Round 9 by pointing to how likely the 49ers are to throw more in 2025 and, more importantly, throw for more touchdown passes. Positive regression is due for the San Francisco offense this season with Christian McCaffrey, Brandon Aiyuk, and Trent Williams back in the lineup.
Gretch and Hribar then made their favorite picks for Round 9 sleepers based on who was left on the board. You can find that over on the Beyond the Boxscore YouTube feed. You can also listen to Beyond the Boxscore wherever you get your favorite podcasts in audio form. You’ll find that here. You can watch the entire Sleepers episode and see how the snake draft unfolds below:
Gretch loves a sleeper who is not getting the most hype in his own backfield due to the rookie running back his team drafted. However, the data suggests Fantasy managers may all be sleeping on his upside.
“You’re talking about a guy who last year didn’t show the long speed when he was coming back from the Achilles injury, but showed incredible quickness, and he was a very strong success rate runner,” Gretch said. “He’s basically never played in an offense that throws the ball to backs very much. He’s basically always been in Greg Roman offenses, but at Ohio State, he had 20+ catches in three straight years. I do think he can actually play in the passing game. I think this is a situation where Sean Peyton’s offenses have always featured the running backs in the past game. They didn’t as much last year and yet were still top-five in the league (in running back targets) in a league that is trending toward fewer passes to running backs — these targets can be very meaningful then if you can start to create a gap there. One of the craziest stats that I can’t get out of my head is Javonte Williams had 70 targets last season, and now they go out and acquire Dobbins and let Williams walk.”
For all Round 10 sleepers picks, you’ll find them at the episode linked above.
Finally, let’s break down Rich’s deep sleeper pick, and boy, did he go into his bag with this one. Rich pinpointed a player who is being drafted on average ADP after pick 350! This is a deep league sleeper.
Hribar’s deep league sleeper: Jermaine Burton, WR, Bengals
“I’m willing to give Burton at least one more look,” Rich said. “Players that are in these offensive environments, that like we expect to be good. He’s a year two wide receiver and everything — by all accounts — seems to suggest his head’s on straight now. He went to voluntary workouts with Joe Burrow. There’s upside here. My comp for him coming out was Kenny Stills. I still think that’s still in his range of outcomes to be like a Bengals version of Kenny Stills. And then if Tee Higgins or Ja’Marr Chase miss any time with injury, there’s even more upside here.”
Rich went on to discuss a bit more of the game theory behind targeting a player like Burton as well as his outlook for 2025. You’ll find that and more in our Sleepers episode over at Beyond the Boxscore.