Fantasy Football 2018: Late-round sleepers for deeper leagues

Imagine yourself drafting a breakout star in the final round of your fantasy football 2018 draft. We all want to do it, so read on for your deep round sleepers for deeper leagues.

Our fantasy football 2018 draft preparation continues. Last week we highlighted breakout players who had a chance to rise from mid-round starter to fantasy star. Now that the heavy lifting is over, it’s time to fill in the pieces and locate good, old fashioned deep round sleepers.

A fantasy sleeper, according to a definition we are going to make up right now, is someone being drafted outside the top 100 picks who could become a weekly starter. These are deep round sleepers you need on your team to win Fantasy Football this season.

Two brothers from New York, Dan Salem and Todd Salem, debate the Fantasy Football 2018 in today’s NFL Sports Debate.

Todd Salem:

To answer your question, yes, the 100 pick mark is completely arbitrary. In fact, the entire exercise is so fluid that Jordy Nelson was above the threshold when we wrote our breakout column, and he is now below it according to current ESPN live draft results. Don’t get hung up on the 100 pick mark specifically. It is more about a mindset. These are players no one is targeting until after they have drafted a few bench guys they feel confident in. After those spots, then we get to sleepers.

As one would expect, there are still plenty of intriguing wide receivers available in this portion of the draft. The position is endlessly deep. My first target is a specific wide receiver though: Dallas’ Allen Hurns.

Hurns is being taken 129th in drafts, even though he appears to be the number-one receiver on a pretty good team. The Cowboys are not going to pass a lot, and Hurns has an extensive injury history, but he also possesses a ceiling unlike most 13th-round selections. 2015 has been his only full season as an NFL starter. In that season, he surpassed 1,000 yards and caught 10 touchdowns. It was a breakout performance indeed. He is unlikely to replicate that, but with only Tavon Austin and Terrance Williams standing in his way of targets, the sky is the limit.

As for running backs, the late picks offer pieces of timeshares. It is the responsibility of us owners to determine which back is the proper one to own. Here are two I like: Green Bay’s Jamaal Williams (111th pick) and Cleveland’s Carlos Hyde (114th pick).

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Williams is stuck in the Packers backfield with Ty Montgomery and Aaron Jones. Thanks to Montgomery’s finite RB history and injuries, and Jones’ suspension and spotty play as a rookie, I think Williams is the safest option. He was also darn good for stretches of 2017. Williams averaged 15.9 fantasy points the final nine weeks of the regular season.

Hyde is similarly squished by Duke Johnson and Nick Chubb, but he too seems to have a leg up. Johnson is a change-of-pace back, not a three-down carrier. He may be the best choice in PPR leagues, but not in standard scoring. And Chubb is a rookie with a questionable ceiling due to his lack of speed. He can become a useful player in the NFL, but is that worth betting against Hyde in the process?

It felt weird that the Browns drafted Chubb after signing Hyde, but that doesn’t mean the first move is washed away, especially since the veteran is signed for three years. And Hyde has already proven himself an effective ball carrier. He even continues to grow his impact in the passing game year after year, topping out last year at a wild 88 targets and 59 receptions. Those 88 targets were fifth-best in the league a year ago among running backs. Unfortunately, one of the players ahead of him was Duke Johnson, which is why predicting a committee timeshare is tricky business.

Dan Salem:

What happened to Jimmy Garoppolo? The San Francisco 49ers quarterback was once the toast of fantasy quarterbacks you just had to draft, but is now sitting at pick 103 and in full sleeper territory. I’m not sure how great Garoppolo will be this season, but I do know that his upside and fantasy football 2018 ceiling are huge. A closer look reveals that he is being drafted as the 11th quarterback off the board, so he’s still going too high! Matt Ryan and Jared Goff are both behind him, which is silly. We must again make a quarterback caveat for our sleeper picks, because pick 100 is too high for signal callers to be a sleeper.

I’m a big fan of New York Giants’ wide receiver Sterling Shepard, currently being drafted around pick 105 on average. He had an excellent season with Odell Beckham Jr. across the field from him in 2016, then suffered last season with some injuries of his own and lack of overall offensive production. Yet he managed to improve upon his yards per catch average, an excellent indicator of his 2018 success. Beckham truly opens the field up for Shepard, as does Saquon Barkley out of the backfield. The Giants may not be a playoff team this season, but they will certainly have a dominant offense. Shepard is a late round pick with major upside.

Diving deeper down the draft board, take a long hard look at running back C.J. Anderson who’s going 151st overall on average. He’s third on the Carolina Panthers’ depth chart behind Christian McCaffrey and Cameron Artis-Payne, but tell me that you honestly trust either player to carry the load in Carolina. I certainly do not.

McCaffrey is not an every down back, meaning either Artis-Payne or Anderson will be getting a solid set of touches. The Panthers always seem to have a fluid set of offensive playmakers, so using a late round pick on Anderson is a solid gamble. Not to mention, he’s coming of a 1000 yard rushing season with the Broncos.