10 Fantasy Football Draft Sleepers the Experts Love: Quarterbacks (2023)

What makes a fantasy football sleeper? It’s a term that has been thrown around over the year. We’ve done our best to quantify the phrase fantasy football sleeper. To us, sleepers are players that have a strong chance to exceed expectations to become surprise difference-makers for fantasy managers. We’ve put together some ranking parameters for these sleepers and asked our experts to share their top draft values and potential difference-makers. You can find all of our fantasy football sleeper rankings here. Let’s take a look at our expert sleeper rankings.

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Fantasy Football Draft Sleepers the Experts Target

Here are how experts rank 2023 fantasy football sleeper targets.

Fantasy Football Quarterback Sleepers

Our QB sleepers are based on a poll of experts that selected their favorite QBs with high upside. Each QB has a consensus draft rank below #15.

Rank	Quarterbacks	Team	Bye	Num Experts	ECR	ADP
1	Anthony Richardson	IND	11	17	15	16
2	Jared Goff	DET	9	12	17	17
3	Russell Wilson	DEN	9	10	18	18
4	Jordan Love	GB	6	4	22	26
5	Brock Purdy	SF	9	5	23	21
6	Kenny Pickett	PIT	6	4	21	19
7	Sam Howell	WAS	14	4	27	28
8	Ryan Tannehill	TEN	7	3	24	30
9	Bryce Young	CAR	7	2	26	22
10	Matthew Stafford	LAR	10	1	20	23

Anthony Richardson (IND)

The Colts rookie quarterback is my favorite long-shot bet to win Offensive Rookie of the Year and to break out in Year 1. The former Gator brings an exceptional level of athleticism to the table, and with the right coaching staff, his sky-high potential can be fully realized. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him secure the Day 1 starting position, especially with Gardner Minshew as his only competition. Even if the Colts don’t have a strong real-life record, Richardson’s rushing production and off-script playmaking will put him over the top. At Florida, Richardson averaged 60 rushing yards per game. Also, Richardson’s extremely low pressure-to-sack rate (sub-10%, first in the 2023 QB Class) further highlights his off-script playmaking.

This THROW by Anthony Richardson ?

Richardson reportedly once again took all of the first-team reps in his return to practice.

Richardson said that he’s gained “8-12” pounds of muscle over the off-season.

Richardson reportedly plans to play around 250 pounds, which is 10… pic.twitter.com/iTkTsFQ6NN

— NFL Rookie Watch (@NFLRookieWatxh) August 2, 2023

It’s this exact rushing that will give Richardson a high floor in fantasy, with an improvement as a passer taking him to the next level. Because if you just look back at first-round rookie QBs that offered value with their legs, their production matched that of a low-end fantasy QB1.

The points per game marks ranged between 17–19-point averages which has been the QB15-QB10 range over the past two seasons. That’s considering the rookie years of Justin Fields, Trey Lance, Jalen Hurts, Kyler Murray, Daniel Jones, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. Of course, only by factoring the games, they were the featured/starting QB.

2020: Jalen Hurts Year 1: 3 full games played as a rookie: Fantasy QB1 (top-12) in all three games averaging 282 passing yards per game (27.2 ppg)

2019: Kyler Murray Year 1: QB12 (18.6 ppg) as a rookie, 3rd in carries, 2nd in rushing yards. QB7 overall. 11th in top-6 finisher %.

— Andrew Erickson™ (@AndrewErickson_) June 30, 2023