They found the guard sleeping.

They found the guard asleep.

Are both these sentence acceptable and equivalent?

For some reason I can't get beyond thinking "sleeping" is a verb but in this case is it a gerund?

Present participle?

Thanks ABC

Sleeping is usually a present participle but I was hoping the moderator could confirm it.

The reason I suspect it might be a gerund has to do with what happens if you rearrange the sentence by writing

"Sleeping, they found the guard." or "Sleeping on duty, they found the guard"

Could the moderator weigh in here?