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Craig's fantasy football sleepers and must-have undervalued draft picks for 2025. His top QB, RB, WR, and TE draft targets and breakout candidates.
Get your head off your MyPillows (that you got at your local discount store)! The fantasy football season is around the bend, and there are plenty of NFL players you do not want to sleep on!
It is easy to win fantasy football titles when Saquon Barkley and Bijan Robinson are your running backs, Justin Jefferson and Ja'Marr Chase are your receivers, Lamar Jackson is your quarterback, and Trey McBride is your tight end. But one of the keys to a successful fantasy season is finding sleepers in the late rounds in drafts or for low prices at auctions and watching them turn in Pro Bowl years.
So, who are the skill-position sleepers to put checkmarks next to on your cheat sheets come August? Here are my great eight sleepers.
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Fantasy Football Sleepers For 2025
J.J. McCarthy, Minnesota Vikings
The only thing worse than having a terrible rookie season? Try no season at all. That is what happened to J.J. McCarthy, who tore up his knee in a meaningless preseason contest and watched from the sidelines all last season while Sam Darnold played like Dan Marino in his prime.
Now that Darnold has taken his “talents” to Seattle, McCarthy is the main man in Minnesota. Considering he has Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison at receiver, T.J. Hockenson at tight end, an above-average offensive line, and quarterback guru Kevin O’ Connell calling the shots and plays, all signs point to McCarthy having a superb season.
J.J. McCarthy warming up for his first full-pads practice since August 2024. pic.twitter.com/VDJxVk7H0O
— Kevin Seifert (@SeifertESPN) July 28, 2025
Darnold and Kirk Cousins had the best years of their careers with this cast of characters surrounding them, so the same should happen to McCarthy. Many think McCarthy is a glorified game manager, but they felt the same way about Darnold last year, and look what happened.
Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars
2024 was a debacle for Trevor Lawrence and his Jaguars. Nothing went right on offense. Travis Etienne Jr. and Tank Bigsby split the touches and time and therefore ruined each other’s fantasy value. Tight end Evan Engram and multimillion-dollar wideouts Gabe Davis and Christian Kirk all suffered season-ending injuries and were fantasy zeroes when they were on the field.
Meanwhile, Lawrence slumped through the season with subpar numbers until injuries cost him seven games. He enters the 2025 campaign as a middle-of-the-road QB2 fantasy option.
Jacksonville did right by Lawrence this offseason. It purged its injury-prone, overpaid pass-catchers and drafted dynamic Travis Hunter second overall to pair with top target Brian Thomas Jr. The Jaguars front office also hired offensive mastermind Liam Coen to be the head coach. Coen turned Baker Mayfield into a top-10 QB in one year in Tampa Bay. Imagine what he could do with a talent like Lawrence, who just needs the right mentor to blossom?
J.K. Dobbins, Denver Broncos
I am a little biased in my touting of J.K. Dobbins in this piece, fantasy folks. He FINALLY stayed relatively healthy for the first time since 2020 and gifted me and millions of fantasy managers with a career-high 905 rushing yards and nine touchdowns for the L.A. Chargers. Now, he finds himself as a part of the running back rotation in Denver.
Dobbins has a litany of mediocre backs battling him for the bell-cow back crown in Denver, and one exciting rookie named RJ Harvey. The UCF product might be the odds-on favorite to be the main man in Denver’s rushing attack, but rookies are fickle. Look at last year’s rookie running backs from the early rounds. Carolina’s Jonathon Brooks and Green Bay’s MarShawn Lloyd had their seasons ruined by injuries. Arizona’s Trey Benson and Los Angeles’s Blake Corum barely touched the ball.
Fantasy managers are known to stay away from injury-prone pranksters like Dobbins, who only suited up for nine games between 2021 and 2023 due to several serious injuries. But because of the lack of competition in Denver and the fact that he did stay mostly healthy in 2024, I think taking a middle-to-late-round stab at Dobbins to be your RB4 is worth the small price to pay.
Isaac Guerendo, San Francisco 49ers
There are two givens in life. Every human being will eventually die, and most San Francisco 49ers running backs will get hurt at some point every season. 2024 was another year for the latter. Top tailback Christian McCaffrey missed 13 games due to various injuries. Backup Elijah Mitchell was placed on injured reserve before the season even kicked off. RB3 Jordan Mason was able to dress for a dozen games until he suffered an injury.
Isaac Guerendo got injured, too, last season after the others had their health problems that made him jump from No. 4 to No. 1 on the running back depth chart. But Guerendo averaged five yards per carry on the season and averaged 100 combined yards per game over three weeks late last season.
Guerendo is now McCaffrey’s backup since Mitchell and Mason are no longer around. With CMC’s penchant for getting banged up, Guerendo could easily use his speed and pass-catching skills and turn them into a superb season in 2025. 1,000 rushing yards and 500 receiving yards are not out of the question if everything falls perfectly into place. The second-year ball carrier is missing some preseason action, but he should be ready to go for Week 1.
Rome Odunze, Chicago Bears
Rome Odunze had an uneven rookie campaign last year as the WR3 behind decorated veterans DJ Moore and Keenan Allen. With franchise quarterback Caleb Williams running for his life behind a tattered, overmatched offensive line while battling Moore and Allen for targets, Odunze posted a 54-734-3 line that did not do anyone any fantasy favors. He saved his worst for last, managing a paltry nine receptions for 149 yards and no touchdowns over his final four games.
Williams will undoubtedly be better in 2025. He has Ben Johnson coaching him, the same man who turned Jared Goff from a league laughingstock to the leader of one of the highest-powered offenses in the NFL. The Bears invested millions into upgrading their offensive line this offseason, so Williams will not be running like he is in Jurassic Park being chased by velociraptors.
With these improvements, along with Allen not being re-signed by the Bears, Odunze is primed for the breakout season fantasy managers thought he might have last season. A 1,000-yard year should almost be expected, but 1,200 yards and eight touchdowns could be in the cards if Williams becomes the franchise quarterback everyone projects him to be.
Keon Coleman, Buffalo Bills
Buffalo QB Josh Allen is one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, but that does not mean all of his pass-catchers see their fantasy values rise through the roof. Tight end Dalton Kincaid is a prime example. Another is Keon Coleman, whose rookie campaign made him more of a fantasy dud than a fantasy stud. He only mustered up 29 receptions for 556 yards and four touchdowns after being drafted to become Buffalo’s big-play threat in the wake of trading Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans.
Coleman did have a dozen 20-plus-yard catches in 2024 and averaged 19.2 yards per catch, so the explosive plays are there. Fantasy managers just need more of them, not just one per game. Since Buffalo did not do much to upgrade its receiving corps this offseason, Coleman should be given ample opportunities to rack up huge chunk plays in 2025.
With another year of experience under his helmet and more time to build chemistry with Allen, I think Coleman could have 55 catches for 900-1,000 yards and six to eight touchdowns in his sophomore season. It would be a major fail if he cannot become Buffalo’s WR1 in Year 2.
Brenton Strange, Jacksonville Jaguars
Brian Thomas Jr. and Travis Hunter will be the ones catching 70-yard touchdown tosses and making the Sunday night "SportsCenter" highlights on ESPN this upcoming season. Someone has to catch the seven-yard passes over the middle when that talented twosome is double-covered, though. That someone is lining up to be Mr. Brenton Strange.
Strange is the top tight end in Jacksonville after learning the ropes behind the aforementioned Engram during his first foray in the NFL. His 40-411-2 line during his second season set nobody’s stat sheets on fire, although he had six games where he either scored a touchdown or supplied 50-plus receiving yards.
Watching @BrentonStrange highlights just to feel something 🔥🔥pic.twitter.com/yEJbsiL4sK
— SleeperJaguars (@SleeperJaguars) May 12, 2025
With Engram out of the way, Strange should be Trevor Lawrence’s third option in the Jaguars’ revamped passing attack. With a starter’s reps and nobody to worry about behind him on the depth chart, Strange could get 80 targets and turn them into a 600-yard year with six or seven touchdowns. Draft him as a TE2, and you may get blessed with a TE1.
Cole Kmet, Chicago Bears
Cole Kmet went from Justin Fields as his quarterback to Caleb Williams in 2024, but somehow that did more harm than good to his fantasy value. Kmet’s receptions, targets, and receiving yards (47-55-474) were his lowest since his rookie season back in 2020.
He was a forgotten man in the offense, underutilized when his steady hands could have bailed Williams out of jams when the young signal-caller was scrambling for his life.
A lot of what I wrote about Odunze applies to Kmet. A better offensive line will, in turn, lead to a more accurate and productive Williams, and that should mean more passes in Kmet’s bread basket than at his feet or over his head. Say no more, and Kmet’s stats have nowhere to go but up, up, up like a Dollar Tree helium balloon that a little kid lets go of.
Kmet has proved he can be a top-10 fantasy tight end in the right situation. The guy has scored 17 touchdowns over the past three seasons while averaging under 70 targets per year and while playing on a below-average team with a subpar offense. I think a career year where he accounts for 750-800 yards and eight touchdowns is not out of bounds for Kmet. At worst, he will be a high-level TE2. Chances are, though, he will be better.
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