Fantasy Football Wide Receiver Sleepers, Draft Targets: Early 2025 Analysis

One of the biggest factors in winning fantasy football teams is finding middle-to-late-round sleepers. With wide receivers typically carrying the most drafted players of any position, it makes sense that taking multiple stabs at the position in search of hitting multiple-round values is the way to set yourself apart in drafts.

For 2025, the draft landscape is early in its infancy, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pick out some early draft values and sleepers. I’ve always said that wide receiver depth across fantasy football drafts is a myth, but there are always some great values hidden in the middle rounds up until the late rounds.

Who are these values that stick out in early 2025 fantasy football drafts? Let’s take a deeper look at them.

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Courtland Sutton, Denver Broncos

ADP – 57.9 (WR32)

Year 1 of Sean Payton’s Broncos featured veteran Russell Wilson at quarterback, and he wasn’t bad, but the team moved on. Denver jettisoned Wilson and drafted Bo Nix, giving him the reins in Week 1. Nix was electric in his rookie season and a huge part of that was because of one of the only things we could set our watch to in the Broncos offense: Courtland Sutton.

Over the last two seasons of the Payton regime in Denver, it hasn’t been particularly fruitful to be a Broncos pass-catcher. The team uses a ton of pass-catchers, multiple tight ends, and multiple running backs, and is the opposite of a condensed offense -- what we usually like and prefer in a fantasy offense.

It’s not to say Sutton was BAD in 2023; he caught 10 touchdowns but his fantasy value – WR35 in PPR – was primarily tied to catching a touchdown with just 5.4 targets per game and just 59 receptions in 16 games. In 2024, Sutton had the best fantasy season of his career with career highs in targets (132), receptions (81), air yards share (44.6 percent), target share (25 percent), targets per game (7.8), and first-read target share (31.2 percent).

Sutton was amazingly consistent as well, especially after Week 8. With eight of 10 games where Sutton had no less than eight targets per game, he caught six of his eight total touchdowns and was WR7 in total fantasy points and WR10 in points per game.

As one of the longest-tenured Broncos on the roster since being drafted in 2018, Sutton has seen a lot of things in his days, but after an ACL injury in 2020 derailed his early career, Nix has given Sutton a new lease on his fantasy life after being a good-not-great fantasy asset over the last few seasons.

Another offseason with Courtland Sutton as a huge value at ADP.

He is still the odds on favorite to remain the WR1 in Denver.

Sutton was WR15 overall, & is currently the WR33 on Underdog.

He had a 23.3 % Target Share, a 44.9% AY Share (4th) and a 31.1 % 1st Read Rate. https://t.co/b4rCfC0kDV

— TheOGfantasyfootball (@TheOGfantasy) February 5, 2025

With not much competition around Sutton in terms of challenging his WR1 perch, he’s undervalued in drafts as the WR32 on Underdog. Denver likely uses some high draft capital on a running back rather than a wide receiver, so with everybody still under contract besides Lil'Jordan Humphrey in the receivers room, Sutton's place at the top is unquestioned for 2025.

Ricky Pearsall, San Francisco 49ers

Underdog ADP – 81.4 (WR46)

Ricky Pearsall’s rookie campaign had all the twists and turns of a hit movie, from being selected 31^st in the 2024 NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers to being shot just before Week 1 and losing the first six games of his rookie campaign. However, as the season went on, Pearsall found his footing and ended 2024 on a high note that has fantasy managers excited for his second season in the red and gold.

It’s looking increasingly more likely that the 49ers start the season with Ricky Pearsall and Jauan Jennings as their top-two receivers.

— Dave Kluge (@DaveKluge) February 27, 2025

From his debut in Week 7 to the end of the season, Pearsall never ran less than 64 percent routes per dropback in any game, so he got his rookie growing pains out of the way. In Week 17 and 18, he asserted himself with two awesome games where he earned 10 targets and posted an 8-141-1 line against the Lions and then a 6-69-1 line in the season finale against the Cardinals.

The 49ers receiver room is wide open with Deebo Samuel Sr. traded plus Brandon Aiyuk’s ACL injury recovery potentially opening up things for Pearsall and Jauan Jennings.

With Pearsall’s first-round draft pedigree and opportunity that could be wide open in an offense that can use the playmaking from his final two games, getting him at WR46 is a pretty cheap entry point to buy into Pearsall at his floor and get way more in production than his draft-day price would normally allow.

Rome Odunze, Chicago Bears

ADP – 47.3 (WR26)

Rome Odunze’s 2024 was a mixed bag from the preseason expectations we had as the No. 9 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft and heading into what we thought was a ready-made NFL offense with DJ Moore, Keenan Allen, Cole Kmet, and Odunze catching passes from first overall pick Caleb Williams. That was not to be, but there is reason for optimism going forward into 2025.

The good? Well, Odunze was on the field a TON, thanks to the Bears being one of the most offensively condensed personnel groupings in the NFL.

While he was able to get on the field, it didn’t translate too much into consistent fantasy utilization with Moore, Allen, Kmet, D'Andre Swift, and others in the offense. Not to mention the shabby offensive system in place by now-fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron that may have curbed the growth of Williams in Year 1.

Odunze’s fantasy production was too sporadic to use in fantasy last season and it never felt good plugging him into a lineup. Case in point, all three of Odunze’s top-24 fantasy performances last season were surrounded by a previous and subsequent week of no better than a WR53 finish. Odunze couldn’t string quality games together and you simply can’t trust that in your lineup.

Enter Ben Johnson, offensive mastermind of the Detroit Lions who now assumes head-coaching duties and should right some of the wrongs from 2024. Add Declan Doyle as the new offensive coordinator and this Bears offense should be in a better position to produce some more scoring and fantasy goodness.

With Allen likely headed elsewhere in free agency, Odunze and Moore should head up a strong offensive core. With Johnson at the helm, slotting Odunze into either a “big slot” role or shortening his 2024 14.2-yard aDOT a bit on the outside while working in some easier throws from Williams will do wonders.

Odunze was dealt a bit of a crummy hand with the Bears in his first season, especially when compared to fellow rookies like Brian Thomas Jr., Ladd McConkey, and Malik Nabers.

Because of that, public sentiment on Odunze is down, but the upside is baked into his WR26 price tag at the beginning of the fourth round in early best ball drafts. In typical redraft leagues, that would equate to the end of the fourth into the beginning of the fifth round, so that’s pretty good value there where the Chicago offense should still be condensed and Odunze will get much more opportunity if Allen moves on.

That’s a price we like and will take advantage of if he remains there.

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