5 Fantasy Football Lotto Tickets: Justin's Late-Round Picks with League-Winning Upside

August 28, 2025

Justin's fantasy football deep sleepers for fantasy leagues in 2025. His top deep fantasy football value picks, including Brenton Strange, Aaron Rodgers, and more.

Everyone talks about sleepers, but sometimes those normal kind of sleepers just won't cut it. You just hear the same names repeated over and over again. Like, do we really need to hear more about Jacory Croskey-Merritt? No offense to him, but I think the whole fantasy football community understands why he has upside.

No, sometimes you want to really scrape the bottom of the barrel and find the hidden gems inside. You want to know which players might be worth adding with the final pick of your draft, the guys who no one else in your league is even thinking about.

Here are five deep sleepers. All currently rank outside the top 150 players in the consensus rankings.

Jayden Higgins - WR - Houston Texans

It feels like some of the Jayden Higgins hype that initially existed has subsided after it's become clear that Xavier Hutchinson isn't just going to make the Texans' 53-man roster, but that he's in line for major playing time as the potential No. 3 receiver. That limits the number of looks for Higgins off the bat.

Here's the thing, though. I'm a Texans fan who lives in Iowa. I've watched a lot of Higgins. I've watched a lot of Hutchinson, and while I love what I've seen out of Hutchinson this preseason, I still firmly stand on the side of Higgins emerging as a key player in this offense and passing Hutchinson in the pecking order.

There's also the fact that two of Houston's key receivers have dealt with injury concerns in recent years:

jayden higgins is very good while Nico Collins and Christian Kirk have combined to miss 21 games across the past two seasons

higgins not being a "starter" for week 1 or playing in 2WR sets is not a concern...just draft the good player

— kev mahserejian (@RotoSurgeon) August 25, 2025

How much you weigh the Nico Collins and Christian Kirk injury factor depends on how you feel about the whole "injury-prone" label. Not every injury is foreshadowing more future injuries, but sometimes they are!

I know that's a very, very oversimplified way of discussing injuries, but it's also the reality of things. Collins and Kirk's injury histories might suggest future injuries and thus increase Higgins' upside. They could also both have fully healthy 2025 seasons. Still, that history is worth remembering when you're at the end of your draft and you're trying to decide if you should take Higgins or someone else.

Quentin Johnston - WR - Los Angeles Chargers

The Chargers drafted Tre' Harris in the second round and brought franchise legend Keenan Allen back. They also spent a fifth-round pick on Keandre Lambert-Smith in their quest to revamp the receiving unit.

But there's a good chance that the No. 2 receiver on this roster after Ladd McConkey just winds up being Quentin Johnston.

Johnston, a first-round pick in 2023, was pretty rough as a rookie, catching 38 passes for 431 yards and two scores, but he took a major jump in 2024, catching 55 passes for 711 yards and eight touchdowns. His yards per game almost doubled.

Quentin Johnston today: 13 catches, 186 receiving yards.

A really cool story in player development from year one-to-year two pic.twitter.com/jiTv2b6fX4

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) January 6, 2025

Despite that, everyone seems down on him this year. Yes, the added competition complicates things, especially with the Chargers bringing Allen back. In fact, I almost bought into Allen being too big a hindrance for Johnston!

Ultimately, though, it comes down to this: a third-year player who took a huge leap in Jim Harbaugh's first season as head coach vs. a 33-year-old receiver who just averaged under 50 receiving yards for the first time. We have to lean on Johnston there, right?

Maybe we'll be wrong. Maybe returning to the Chargers will reinvigorate Allen, and he'll have another 1,000-yard season, relegating Johnston to the sidelines. But the range where Johnston is being drafted makes it really easy to just cut him loose if he struggles early in the year. He's worth taking a risk on based on his ability to find the end zone and the uncertainty of this receiving room.

Brenton Strange - TE - Jacksonville Jaguars

With Evan Engram gone, Brenton Strange has full control of the tight end room in Jacksonville. Despite that, he's being drafted around TE21 at the moment.

There's actually a lot of potential value this year in waiting at tight end. In addition to Strange, Chig Okonkwo, and Isaiah Likely are outside the top 20 at the position and are worth taking a shot on, but Strange has the most potential out of those guys.

One reason is the lack of pass-catching weapons for quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr. might be elite, but there are major question marks after him. Travis Hunter is an immense talent, but how much will he play on offense when he's also being used at defensive back? Then the No. 3 receiver is Dyami Brown, and it gets worse beyond that.

This situation means that Strange is going to see a good number of targets in 2025, and his 2024 numbers suggest he can do some really good things with that.

Per RotoViz's Game Splits app, Strange averaged 8.56 PPR points per game in the eight games Engram missed last year, with an average of 5.0 targets per contest. Add in a full offseason of working as the team's starter and a new head coach who just turned Cade Otton into a fantasy-relevant player, and you wind up with a really nice value option in Strange.

Aaron Rodgers - QB - Pittsburgh Steelers

Alright. Hear me out here. Like most of you, I don't have high hopes for Aaron Rodgers in 2025. He didn't look like the same quarterback last year when he returned from a torn Achilles, and now he landed in an offense that isn't known for producing big passing numbers.

With that said, Rodgers is one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history and is currently being drafted around QB28. On average, he's the lowest-drafted quarterback who is safely projected to be his team's starter all year. Everyone below him could be replaced by someone else on the depth chart.

Again, I understand why everyone is low on Rodgers. Over his last two full seasons as a starter, he's thrown 22 interceptions. Over the five seasons before that, he combined for 21 picks. Something has fallen off there, and it's made him far less effective.

Here’s why the marriage of Aaron Rodgers and Mike Tomlin make the #Steelers the steal of the #NFL season. @GetUpESPN pic.twitter.com/mBMd4O3r1B

— Mike Greenberg (@Espngreeny) August 21, 2025

But this is a four-time MVP. This is a guy who still managed to throw 28 touchdown passes last season despite not looking like his old self. He doesn't have a great supporting cast, but DK Metcalf as the No. 1 receiver plus an extremely underrated tight end duo of Pat Freiermuth and Jonnu Smith is nothing to scoff at.

No one's saying to draft Rodgers as your QB1, but if you need a cheap backup with upside, why not bet on a Rodgers bounce-back campaign?

Brashard Smith - RB - Kansas City Chiefs

The Chiefs are set for another season of Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt as the primary running backs, but seventh-round pick Brashard Smith has a chance to earn a lot of snaps, especially on passing downs.

Smith is one of the most interesting players in this rookie class. While he was drafted as a running back after finishing with 1,332 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns at SMU last year, Smith began his college career at Miami, where he played three seasons at wide receiver.

Now, Smith switching to running back is why he made the NFL. This isn't like a Cordarrelle Patterson situation, where you have a guy who can excel at both spots. Smith's passing game impact will largely come out of the backfield, though he could see limited snaps in the slot,

Still, he has game-breaking speed and plays behind guys who aren't huge threats as receivers. That should allow him to get on the field in passing situations fairly early in his NFL career, giving him deep-league PPR upside.

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