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Kevin's 4 best late-round best ball and sleeper picks for 2025 fantasy football. His top late-round sleepers include Marvin Mims Jr., Brenton Strange, and more.
The late rounds of best ball may seem like throwaway rounds, but you can scoop up some major value if you look hard enough. Players with excellent traits and situations reside here every season, and picking up a little bit of value with each selection bolsters your fantasy football team that much more. With best ball drafts nearing critical mass with the influx of news and ADP shifting, it's more important than ever to dive deeper into what values are out there before the season.
Just last season, players like Chase Brown, Bucky Irving, Bo Nix, Tyrone Tracy Jr., Jordan Mason, Jerry Jeudy, Wan'Dale Robinson, and a host of other huge values were found in the later rounds, and for those intrepid drafters, it was a treasure trove used to add more riches to their squads. There will no doubt be options comparable to these late-round sleepers hidden away in this season's ADP. It's up to you to find them, but we're here to help and uncover some of them.
Let's take a look at some late-round sleepers you can draft in best ball formats this season.
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Marvin Mims Jr., WR, Denver Broncos
There might not be a more polarizing player in fantasy football to try and evaluate than Marvin Mims Jr. There are so many push-pull elements to describe what he’s done, why he’s had the role he has had the last few seasons, and is trying to figure out what is likely to happen going forward in 2025. But damn it, we’re going to try.
It’s not exactly a state secret that when Mims gets on the field, good things happen. It’s just that, well, he doesn’t get on the field enough. For context, the average number of total pass routes a top-20 fantasy wide receiver ran in 2024 was 559 routes. That’s on average, 85 percent of their respective team’s dropbacks. Mims was at 196 total routes -- 11.5 per game – and 30.2 percent of routes per dropback in 2024. That will not get it done. Under ANY circumstances.
PSA: The next time Marvin Mims Jr. runs 50%+ routes per dropback will be the first time since 2023 Week 18.
Mims has huge upside, but the key to unlocking that upside is... getting on the field.
Seems wild to say that, but for Mims, it's a real obstacle.
Says more about Sean Peyton than anything.
— Kevin Tompkins (@ktompkinsii.bsky.social) April 22, 2025 at 3:54 PM
On a per-game basis, Mims did not run more than 50 percent routes per dropback in ANY game last season. He did that just six times in 14 games in 2023 while maintaining his role as a gadget-type, situational wide receiver. That said, when on the field, he put up a 26% targets per route run and 2.57 yards per route run. For best ball, that efficiency manifests itself in spike weeks, but what if SOME volume came too?
Well, on the chance that Mims DOES earn more routes in this ascending Broncos’ offense, we want to have him on our teams. One big, bright sign of a breakout is efficiency shown in small sample sizes. Doing that consistently in small sample sizes usually leads to more work and utilization. Mims seems to be on that trajectory, and the depth chart lends itself to the Broncos giving Mims more opportunities going forward, with Evan Engram signed to profile in the slot and Mims playing more on the outside.
Efficiency typically breeds more opportunity, and that's what we're hoping for with Mims. That question about the opportunity is precisely why he's going so late in best ball drafts. So I'm more than willing to scoop him up to get a great return on investment.
Isaac Guerendo, RB, San Francisco 49ers
With the always-emphasized running game in San Francisco, they’ve always been one of the most fruitful offenses to pluck contingent backs from for fantasy success. Christian McCaffrey is getting older, and his repeated lower-leg injuries don’t help instill confidence in him playing another full season. That's where Isaac Guerendo comes in, as he's in an awesome spot for the 2025 NFL season.
Isaac Guerendo is somehow being drafted at RB47 (average of Underdog, ESPN, Yahoo).
I think he's the #1 pure backup RB in fantasy football this year. Easy smash!
Here's my case:
- CMC is the most likely player in fantasy to get injured, per my Injury Finder analysis (and…
— Evan Ringler (@EvanRinglerFF) July 30, 2025
Guerendo had his moments of decent production last season and not only survived the NFL offseason with just fifth-round back Jordan James being added to the running back room, but the 49ers also shipped out Jordan Mason to the Minnesota Vikings. That's a pretty clear signal that the team likes what they saw from Guerendo and wants to make him the primary spell and contingency play in case something happens to McCaffrey. We know that Kyle Shanahan loves drafting running backs and ‘Toy Story’ing’ them immediately; names like Joe Williams, Trey Sermon, and Tyrion Davis-Price come to mind. James should do nothing to change the pecking order in San Francisco, so Guerendo is a great pick in the double-digit rounds with massive contingent upside.
Brenton Strange, TE, Jacksonville Jaguars
With the constant injuries to Engram last season, that gave Brenton Strange a ton of opportunity in an extended role to see what he can do. He apparently showed more than enough, considering the Jaguars cut Engram before free agency, and not only did the Jaguars sign two blocking tight ends in Johnny Mundt and Hunter Long to replace him, but they didn’t draft a tight end to add to the room either. The runway for Strange is clear to be a massive value for fantasy this season.
What made Strange so attractive to the Jaguars? Well, he’s on his rookie contract for starters. When Strange did get that opportunity, he delivered. With an almost 20 percent target per route run and 1.49 yards per route run last season, Strange was decently efficient on the field and earned targets at a very good clip for a tight end. He was in the slot at 43 percent of his snaps as well, so his alignment versatility should bode very well for the future.
With the stars aligning in terms of the Jaguars’ personnel decisions as well as his burgeoning efficient skillset rendering Engram expendable, Strange has a solid path to targets in 2025. While Brian Thomas Jr. is the unquestioned alpha in the passing game, Travis Hunter’s time on the field as a receiver remains to be seen. Given that the rest of the wide receivers are part-time players or haven’t earned targets consistently to warrant more consideration, Strange’s late-round price tag in best ball is still cheap enough to warrant drafting as a sleeper.
Matthew Stafford, QB, Los Angeles Rams
Many expected the Rams to gracefully move on from Matthew Stafford after 2024, but at the end of February, the team announced that Stafford was coming back as the team restructured his contract. Better yet, the team also did not draft a rookie quarterback, so this team is Stafford’s for at least this season. Provided he performs well, the team will likely go year-to-year with him.
What can we expect from Stafford in 2025? Well, his longtime breakfast partner Cooper Kupp heads north to Seattle, and replacing him is Davante Adams, who still has a lot left in the tank heading into his age-33 season. Thankfully, Puka Nacua exists and makes any quarterback’s life easier. As does head coach Sean McVay, who has proven over his entire tenure as Rams’ head coach to be one of the foremost schemers of offensive football, and he definitely knows how to get a pass-catcher wide open.
Highest Accurate Throw Rates From OUTSIDE The Pocket
[min. 50 dropbacks]1. Matthew Stafford (56.0%)
2. Jared Goff (45.5%)
3. Jalen Hurts (44.2%)
4. Geno Smith (43.3%)
5. Bo Nix (40.7%) pic.twitter.com/4ysHGvYQmy— Fantasy Points Data (@FantasyPtsData) July 20, 2025
We know Stafford’s surroundings are excellent and one of the most fruitful fantasy environments in the NFL, but is Stafford able to take advantage of that to put up great numbers? You also don’t get the rushing upside with Stafford, though even in his more spry days in Detroit, we never got any rushing upside there either. That's just not who he is, but we can expect a bit of an uptick in passing touchdowns with Adams' addition to the offense.
The bet on Stafford here is efficiency, and the old dog may have one more 25-touchdown, 4,000-yard campaign left in him. Stafford resides pretty low in the best ball quarterback rankings, which is more of a QB2 on rosters. He can provide some floor, and he can crack your lineup for stretches. The Rams project to be one of the better offenses in the league, and it makes little sense why Nacua and Adams go so high in drafts while Stafford is so low.
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