College Football Fantasy Five: Flying Under the Radar in the Big 12 for 2023

This article is part of our College Football Fantasy Five series.

College Football Fantasy Five: Underrated Big 12 Players for 2023

With just under a month to go before the season starts and we start delving right into college fantasy football drafts, it's time to take stock of each of the power five conferences, as well as the Group of Five, to determine what players should be on your radar in later rounds. It would be easy to go ahead and recommend the highest projected/rated players, but we won't do just that, we'll go even deeper into our projections to recognize some players with huge upside entering the 2023 season.

If you would like to take a peak into the college football player projections yourself, please do so at the link provided. Linking your actual fantasy league using our College Football MyLeagues feature is a huge timesaver during the season when assessing lineups and top free agents each week.

Top Projected Players in the Big 12

Quarterback

1.) John Rhys Plumlee, UCF
2.) Jalon Daniels, Kansas
3.) Tyler Shough, Texas Tech

Running Back

1.) Tahj Brooks, Texas Tech
2.) Devin Neal, Kansas
3.) RJ Harvey, UCF

Wide Receiver

1.) Matthew Golden, Houston
2.) Xavier Worthy, Texas
3.) Jalil Farooq, Oklahoma

TE

1.) Mason Fairchild, Kansas

College Fantasy Football Tools

• College Football Depth Charts
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• College Football Custom Rankings
• College Football Futures
• Heisman Trophy Odds
• Underrated SEC Players for 2023
• Underrated Big Ten Players for 2023
• Underrated ACC Players for 2023

Under The Radar and Undervalued Big 12 Players for 2023

5.) Quinn Ewers, QB, Texas

Texas brings back the entire starting offense except for Bijan Robinson who is now the starting running back with the Atlanta Falcons. While Robinson is a huge loss for the team, it will give Ewers more of a chance to shine in Steve Sarkisian's high-scoring offense. Ewers has top-notch weapons at receiver with Worthy, TE Ja'Tavion Sanders, Jordan Whittington and even Adonai Mitchell coming over from Georgia. With Arch Manning and Maalik Murphy waiting in the wings, Ewers has all the motivation to live up to his five-star prospect hype. The best part is that he's going much later in fantasy drafts than he should be considering how good this offense will be.

4.) Javon Baker, WR, UCF

Baker posted seven games with double-digit fantasy points during the 2022 season. I expect him to be even better in 2023 with fellow wideout Ryan O'Keefe transferring out to Boston College. He should be the first read for John Rhys Plumlee on most plays for an offense that averaged 33 points and 470 yards per game. The big question will be whether they can keep up that type of production in the Big 12 compared to the teams they played in the AAC. I'm betting they can as Gus Malzahn is an experienced coach and they have a ton of talent on this team, particularly on the offense.

3.) Ben Sinnott, TE, Kansas State

For those who have followed my waiver wire article each year, I'm a stickler for great tight end play because it's so consistently rare for college fantasy purposes. You're getting one of the best in the country with Sinnott as he converted 31 of 54 targets for 447 yards and four touchdowns during the Wildcats' surprising 2022 season. Sinnott ranked 10th in the country at 8.3 yards per target among tight ends with at least 50 targets. That's fairly impressive when you consider he received just 3.9 targets per game and only 13.8 percent of his team's target share. I think both of those numbers will increase in 2023, meaning he should be a breakout player at the position in the conference.

2.) Aidan Robbins, RB, BYU

For new faces in new places (aka the transfer portal), Robbins is one of my favorites because I was sicko enough to watch UNLV games late on Saturday nights last year. He had a breakout season with the Rebels with 1,011 rushing yards and 10 total touchdowns. This included a 227-yard performance and three touchdowns against North Texas. At BYU, he'll be the top guy as both Christopher Brooks and Lopini Katoa have departed. Moreover, the team has brought in Kedon Slovis at QB who works out of the pocket much more than the dual-threat quarterback Jaren Hall did. Hall had 86 rushing attempts a year ago which means Robbins will likely need to handle a much bigger load in the backfield.

 1.) De'zhaun Stribling, WR, Oklahoma State

The popular fantasy pick at receiver for the Cowboys will probably be Brennan Presley like it was last year, but I like the immense upside of Stribling later in drafts. Presley was somewhat disappointing in 2022 with 67 catches (on 91 targets) for 813 yards and just three total touchdowns. Meanwhile, Stribling had 51 catches (on 80 targets) for 602 yards and five touchdowns with Washington State last year. When you average that out for fantasy points per game, Presley had 13.0 and Stribling had 11.8. Give me the better value in the draft and I don't think transfer QB Alan Bowman has a preference for one of these receivers at the moment.