What Are Fantasy Sleepers? Fantasy Football 101
Fantasy football’s market share should grow to 38.6 billion USD by 2025. This makes sense as this game is highly popular. Millions of people play the sport every year.
Do you want to get in on the action? If so, you’ll probably need to do some research on fantasy football terms, strategies, and so on. This article can help you get started on the first thing.
Read on if you want to learn more about fantasy sleepers.
Table of Contents
What Is Fantasy Football?
First off, let’s make sure that everyone is on the same page. Some people reading this may know what fantasy football is, but many may not. So here’s a general definition of the game.
Fantasy Football Teams
When a person participates in a fantasy football game, they act as the owners and managers of a fake American football team. These teams will never play in stadiums as they aren’t composed of real, physical human beings. Rather, the members of a fantasy football team are made of imaginary representations of real football players.
How Players Are Chosen
A fantasy football game should have at least a few players. These are oftentimes friends, family members, acquaintances, etc. In other situations, people will play with large groups of strangers online.
At the beginning of a game, these players participate in a draft. A selected number of National Football League (NFL) athlete representations will be available. The players will pick the athletes they want to be on their team.
How Players Win
Players win based on how their athletes perform during the football season. With any beneficial action that an athlete takes, each player will earn points. For example, a touchdown could net six points.
What actions a certain athlete can get points from depends on the position of the player. You may need to look up the different positions on a football team to learn how your athletes can get points.
Whoever has the most points at the end of a game session wins. A lot of games last all season. However, some games can only last a day or a week.
Is Fantasy Football Gambling?
It depends. You don’t have to bet money on a fantasy football game, but you can. Some jurisdictions characterize online fantasy sports as gambling and regulate them accordingly.
But this may not be a good game for someone interested in gambling activities like sports picks, football futures, and football predictions. If you’re interested in those kinds of bets, you may be interested in reading this article: best NFL prop bets today.
What Are Fantasy Sleepers?
The term “sleeper” evolved from the idiom “don’t sleep on”. People use this idiom to describe someone or something that shouldn’t be underestimated. So, based on their performances, “sleeper” is the perfect term to describe these athletes.
Essentially, sleepers are the black horses of fantasy football athletes. Players may underestimate these athletes for several reasons. So they won’t choose them for their fantasy football teams.
By doing this, however, they are making a big mistake.
They’ll Exceed Expectations
People in the know will know the true value of a sleeper. They know that this athlete will exceed expectations. So they select them.
In a nutshell, players who choose sleepers know how to look where the other players aren’t looking. So they won’t have to compete with other players for these unique treasures.
May Lead to Winning
Sleepers may or may not perform in the exact way that their cheerleader players expect. If they perform well, the lucky players will gain a ton of points. They may even win the entire game.
Yes, there is a possibility that players with sleepers may still lose. Other players can also have chosen sleepers and/or have used other effective fantasy football methods. Still, choosing sleepers can be a very effective method.
How to Find Fantasy Sleepers
However, to nab the most effective sleeper, you may have to put in a lot of legwork. You’ll likely need to learn how certain football athletes performed previously and use that to figure out how they’ll perform in the future. Here are some sleeper-picking methods that you can use:
Read What Writers Are Saying
Not everyone has the time to research what athletes could be sleepers. If you have a family, full-time job, etc., this may be you.
Luckily, you don’t have to leave choosing sleepers for the more dedicated fantasy football players. Several news outlets across the internet have articles that predict the sleepers of the next season. You can easily look these articles up and write down the athletes that several writers think will do well.
However, keep in mind that these articles are available to everyone. Many of your fellow players may want the same athletes that you do. So using journalist-chosen sleepers may defeat the whole “looking where others aren’t looking” part of choosing a sleeper.
Look at the Average Fantasy Drafts
You can usually find statistics for the popular fantasy sports picks from the previous list. Once you find these, look at the least popular athletes. Then research the exact reasons why these athletes aren’t favored.
It may be that this particular athlete just had a single bad season, and they’ve been perfect for the rest of their career. Fortunately for you, a single bad season can still make an athlete a less popular choice for the next season. You can then swoop in and grab this athlete for your team.
Look at a player’s particular actions and the number of them in the seasons before the last.
Learn More About Sports With Us
The next time that you play fantasy football, consider picking up some fantasy sleepers for your team. These athletes are very likely to bring your game to heights that you can’t imagine.
What if you don’t know much about football in general? If so, consider checking out the articles in our sports section. We also have articles about health, foods, technology and so much more.
Go ahead and read them to your heart’s content!
Last Updated on July 30, 2023
