Sleepers are crucial to success in fantasy football. You need to find undervalued players before your league mates do. These players can be used as starters, depth, or for trades. If you can collect enough solid players in the late rounds of the draft and free agency (often called waiver wire pick ups) throughout the season then you will win your fantasy football league. This article will contain strategies you can deploy to find your own fantasy football sleepers. When your new to fantasy you might find yourself a little confused about how you can find out which players are valuable and which aren't. This article will help you master your fantasy football skills.
Using Stats
One of the first ways to look for sleepers that is obvious but not always so simple is to look at player stats. Look for upward trends in overall fantasy points as well as yards, touchdowns, and targets (referring to passing attempts, rushes, or receiving targets). The stats are often a dead give away to everyone. If a player is scoring tons of fantasy points then someone is bound to notice eventually, but if you look for targets then you can sometimes correctly predict when the value of a player could rise before your player is well known by the fantasy community. Another give away would be a decrease in any of the above categories by a competitor (meaning running back, receiver, etc. on the same team). This could signal a shift in the depth chart in the favor of your player thus making that player a sleeper candidate.
Injuries
Injuries to a teammate could impact another players value a lot. This is the most common in running backs. If a starting running back goes down then try to pick up his back up unless you can't afford to drop anyone. Receivers should also see an uptick in production if someone above them on the depth chart is injured but it is less common than with running backs. The effect can be the same for other positions but less value is gained due to the depth at most other positions fantasy football wise unless your league has multiple quarterbacks, tight ends, kickers, or defenses. Picking up a player who benefits from an injury is a pretty wide known practice so don't expect to be the only one gunning for that player.
League Stats
League stats are the statistics concerning own percent and change in own percent on your fantasy football site. To me these are some of the most useful stats you can use to find fantasy football sleepers. What you do is sort the player stats by the +/- own percentage and look for players that are trending upwards. This is a good way to start off finding sleepers. This will allow you to see who other players are picking up basically allowing you to jump on the bandwagon pretty early. Once you find a player with a good positive change in own percentage then you should continue to investigate his stats and other factors that could be causing the increase in value. If you are confident enough and have players to drop then pick him up. The total own percentage can be useful as well in searching for players that could have been dropped by other owners and still have value left. They might be suitable for an add. Of course you should always watch all the transactions of other owners in your league anyway and investigate the players that they drop.
Use the Web
The internet is the easiest way you can find sleepers. Let other people do the work and see what they write about it online. You can start your search here on this website by reading my articles Fantasy Football Sleepers and More Fantasy Football Sleepers. Some of my recommended sites that have great fantasy football articles can be found on my Links Page. I highly suggest using forums as well. They are often faster than websites at releasing sleepers. If you are in a deep league forums can also be great for finding waiver wire adds and sleepers as they usually contain information on lesser known players. RotoWorld is one of my favorite sites to use for fantasy football forums. RotoWorld also streams player news which is very useful, I also suggest you use Google News once you want to do deeper research on a player.
Using Stats
One of the first ways to look for sleepers that is obvious but not always so simple is to look at player stats. Look for upward trends in overall fantasy points as well as yards, touchdowns, and targets (referring to passing attempts, rushes, or receiving targets). The stats are often a dead give away to everyone. If a player is scoring tons of fantasy points then someone is bound to notice eventually, but if you look for targets then you can sometimes correctly predict when the value of a player could rise before your player is well known by the fantasy community. Another give away would be a decrease in any of the above categories by a competitor (meaning running back, receiver, etc. on the same team). This could signal a shift in the depth chart in the favor of your player thus making that player a sleeper candidate.
Injuries
Injuries to a teammate could impact another players value a lot. This is the most common in running backs. If a starting running back goes down then try to pick up his back up unless you can't afford to drop anyone. Receivers should also see an uptick in production if someone above them on the depth chart is injured but it is less common than with running backs. The effect can be the same for other positions but less value is gained due to the depth at most other positions fantasy football wise unless your league has multiple quarterbacks, tight ends, kickers, or defenses. Picking up a player who benefits from an injury is a pretty wide known practice so don't expect to be the only one gunning for that player.
League Stats
League stats are the statistics concerning own percent and change in own percent on your fantasy football site. To me these are some of the most useful stats you can use to find fantasy football sleepers. What you do is sort the player stats by the +/- own percentage and look for players that are trending upwards. This is a good way to start off finding sleepers. This will allow you to see who other players are picking up basically allowing you to jump on the bandwagon pretty early. Once you find a player with a good positive change in own percentage then you should continue to investigate his stats and other factors that could be causing the increase in value. If you are confident enough and have players to drop then pick him up. The total own percentage can be useful as well in searching for players that could have been dropped by other owners and still have value left. They might be suitable for an add. Of course you should always watch all the transactions of other owners in your league anyway and investigate the players that they drop.
Use the Web
The internet is the easiest way you can find sleepers. Let other people do the work and see what they write about it online. You can start your search here on this website by reading my articles Fantasy Football Sleepers and More Fantasy Football Sleepers. Some of my recommended sites that have great fantasy football articles can be found on my Links Page. I highly suggest using forums as well. They are often faster than websites at releasing sleepers. If you are in a deep league forums can also be great for finding waiver wire adds and sleepers as they usually contain information on lesser known players. RotoWorld is one of my favorite sites to use for fantasy football forums. RotoWorld also streams player news which is very useful, I also suggest you use Google News once you want to do deeper research on a player.
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