Fantasy football: Tory Horton, Jaxson Dart, Adonai Mitchell among deep sleepers for 2025 - ESPN

To win your fantasy football league, you need only proper preparation and a little luck.

To consistently excel at this grand game, it's essential to have a deep and thorough knowledge of the sport and familiarize yourself with more than simply the top 160 players in a standard draft.

If you're willing to challenge yourself this season, why not try a 12- or 14-team, a dynasty or even an IDP (individual defensive players) league? Going outside your comfort zone can pay dividends, even in the shallowest fantasy football league, due to the demands these formats place upon your knowledge of players deeper on the depth chart, many of whom might swiftly become universally important performers.

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To help give you a head start on populating your late-round target lists in deeper formats, and give you the beginnings of an in-season watch list for prospective pickups, the list below comprises my annual «deep sleepers.» These are players who by all accounts will not — and in most cases should not — be selected in standard 10-team ESPN drafts, yet have decent odds of becoming fantasy-relevant during the upcoming season.

Remember: This is a deep sleepers column, meaning you won't find players I value as late-rounders in standard leagues, such as Jaydon Blue, Jayden Higgins and Michael Penix Jr. This list aims to dig much deeper into the player pool, familiarizing you with names you might not know yet, but should want to.

Dyami Brown, WR, Jacksonville Jaguars: After four years of disappointing regular-season returns, Brown delivered a pair of breakthrough playoff games for the Washington Commanders last season,