Fantasy Football GM's

With fantasy drafts around the corner, sleepers are always a hot topic because if you can get some of your late round draft picks to pan out or get a great value for an underrated player it can make the difference between a championship and watching the playoffs from the sideline again.

Here are some tips on how to identify sleepers:

1) Contract year players- sometimes we feel that players should just play at their best all the time, but reality is when they are playing for a contract they almost always play better. There is a great list of contract year players from fftoolbox, some of my personal favorites this year are Ronnie Brown, Phillip Rivers, LenDale White, Vincent Jackson and DeMeco Ryans if you're an IDPer.

2) Addition/Loss of key players- When a key player from the previous year leaves or retires somebody has to fill those shoes. If it is a player that few know about, has not played much or is a rookie then that player will drop due to risk factors. However, if you pay attention to pre-season football, know the systems and do your homework, you may be able to pick up on some good finds. For example, I was just watching some of the Panthers vs. Giants pre-season game and noticed that Eli Manning was targeting Mario Manningham quite often. Obviously the Giants are trying to find somebody to replace Plax and Eli will have to throw to somebody, looks like Manningham could have some potential along with Steve Smith, so I will definitely monitor this situation. Also keep an eye on players that could benefit from key off-season additions, especially offensive line upgrades which effect the whole offense like Jason Peters in Philadelphia and Orlando Pace in Chicago.

3) Players coming off injury or 2 years removed from major surgery- Tom Brady won’t fly under anybody’s radar this year, but players like Felix Jones, Darren McFadden and Ronnie Brown will all most likely be undervalued by your commerades because of injuries last season. This is where it comes in handy to know your opponents. For example, if you’re picking out of the 10 or 11 spot in a 12-team draft and have your eye on one of those players coming off injury, if you know that your opponent picking after you had one of those guys last year, you can risk laying off on them on your first pick and be pretty confident that they will be there on the come-around because they won’t want to be disappointed two years in a row by the same player.

4) Players who came on at the end of last year i.e. Kevin Smith and Cedric Benson. Teams that are out of the playoffs will test some things out at the end of the year. If you were paying attention or if you go back and look at some of the stats, you may not be able to get a real good read on the player but maybe just enough of a glimpse to take a well-calculated risk that could pay off big time for you.

How much weight you’d like to give each of these factors is up to you but I would rank them in the order that I have listed them. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any other tips as well!