2023 Fantasy Football sleepers: Ranking 25 late-round players who could beat ADP by a wide margin

You'll see the term "sleeper" used a lot during Fantasy Football draft season. In fact, we use the context of sleepers to promote our excellent 2023 Fantasy Football cheat sheets from the SportsLine Projection Model. But what exactly is a sleeper?

Ask 10 different Fantasy analysts and they'll probably give you 10 different definitions of the term. Even among the CBS Sports Fantasy Football staff, which include some of the best Fantasy minds in the country, we don't have a consensus definition for the word "sleeper." But that's not going to stop me from setting some precise parameters for what constitutes a sleeper so I can rank my favorites from the 2023 Fantasy Football draft season.

When talking about sleepers, we're generally trying to identify overlooked players available later in drafts who have the potential to reach a higher ceiling than the tier of players with whom they're being grouped. This could mean young players looking for their first opportunity to have Fantasy relevance, but also veterans no one is excited about who may have hidden upside for one reason or another.

The one thing all should have in common is that they're available for relatively cheap in Fantasy drafts. So our parameters will start with targeting players who fall outside the first eight rounds of a 12-team Fantasy league in ADP, starting our player pool at the 97th highest-drafted player. Essentially, we're looking either outside the top 100 or barely inside of it.

Now we have to figure out what level of over-performance means a player paid off his sleeper designation. In order to individualize that evaluation to each player, I'm going to make our parameter the following: Finish twice as high as the player's ADP at his position, rounded up. So for the QB12 to live up to sleeper status, he has to finish as the QB6 or better. Same for the QB13, while the QB14 and QB15 have to finish at QB7.

As another example, the 40th-best RB needs to be a top-20 RB at the end of the year to have hit as a sleeper in preseason drafts. If that player finishes 24th at the position, he's certainly delivered plenty of value and the managers who drafted him will be pretty happy. So let's not be too hard on ourselves if we surface profitable players that don't quite meet our "sleeper" benchmark. But how we've set the evaluation will prevent us from calling marginal profit a sleeper that paid off.

I'm come up with a list of my favorite sleepers for 2023 Fantasy Football drafts who all meet our first parameter of being outside the top 96 picks, and below I've ranked them by how confident I am they'll achieve the second parameter of paying a huge profit on their draft price. Consider it a target list after you've built the core of your Fantasy squad in the first eight rounds of your draft.

So who gets the top spot as the best Fantasy sleeper of 2023? And which running backs and receivers have the best chance to provide incredible value for their Fantasy teams? ... Join SportsLine here to see R.J. White's sleeper rankings for 2023 Fantasy football leagues!