In fantasy football, targeting the right sleepers is what can separate you from the rest of your league. The top sleepers at each position should do the trick.
Entering the 2018 fantasy football season, Kansas City Chiefs second-year signal-caller Patrick Mahomes was marked as the top sleeper at quarterback. As most people know at this point, he proved to win a number of fantasy football owners their championships.
While finding the next Mahomes is a bit of a stretch, fantasy owners can find the next game-changing talent late in the draft to help win a fantasy football championship. Other players like Chris Carson and George Kittle also proved to be among the best sleepers for 2018 as they both finished near the top of their positional rankings after being taken in the late rounds in the average draft.
Now we move on to the 2019 season, however. That means a whole new batch of storylines, players and, of course, sleepers. We’ll be looking at the top fantasy football sleepers at quarterback, running back, wide receiver and tight end for 2019. We start at quarterback.
Biggest QB Sleeper: Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens
Running quarterbacks always have tremendous value in fantasy football. That remains true with Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. Fantasy Pros’ consensus rankings have Jackson sitting outside of the top 15 and, frankly, it’s hard to understand why that’s the case.
In Jackson’s seven games as the Ravens starting quarterback, he averaged 17 carries per game. Translated to a 16-game season, that averages out to 272 carries. If you can draft a guy in the late rounds with the ability to get near 300 carries while also being a starting quarterback, it becomes a no-brainer. If his carries don’t dip, Jackson could post a 1,000-yard rushing season — again, at quarterback.
But wait, there’s more. Jackson averaged 18.6 points per game in his starts as a rookie. Head coach John Harbaugh had to change his entire offense on the fly due to the stylistic difference between Joe Flacco and Jackson.
Now, with a full offseason established was Lamar Jackson as the starter, the entire team should be prepared to run through Jackson. The additions of wide receiver Marquise Brown via the draft and running back Mark Ingram in free agency will make this team much better and give Jackson more weapons to work with.
If Jackson manages to improve his passing to go along with his running ability, Jackson will be a fantasy football league winner at the position.