Uriah Wesson 
If you have been playing fantasy sports for a while I am sure that you have heard someone say something along the lines of “you win your leagues in the mid-late rounds of your draft”. While there are a lot of things that go into a successful season I largely agree with the adage. In your first couple of rounds you usually know what your players are going to do. Sure there are injuries and crazy flukes where a player will drastically underperform here and there but most of the time they are not going to ruin you.
Where you make your gains and separate yourself from the competition is making the right choices in your waivers/faab bids and in your late round players who breakout at just the right time. What I am going to do below is give you a handful of guys at each position that I think are going a little under the radar and will exceed the draft position that you can get them at right now. Let us not waste anymore time and get into Win Daily Sports 2021 NFL Fantasy Sleepers
My definition of sleeper:
We all have slightly different view on what a sleeper so I want to make sure that you know what mine is. Simply put, it is a player that I expect to perform at least one tier above where they are being selected. A wide receiver who is being drafted as a WR3 performing as a borderline WR1/2. A quarterback who is going as the 25th QB off the board who can become an every week starter. I am going to try and keep this list to guys that you can pick up after the first six or seven rounds. By this point, most of your starting roster is filled out and you are now looking to build depth.
All Average Draft Positions are as of 06/01/2021 and pulled from nfc.shgn.com if you would like to tool around with the settings and customize yourself.
These are my personal sleeper ranking, if you would like to see our tiers and ranking list check out our seasonal ranking page where we keep you up to date as injuries, trades, and signings happen here.
Win Daily Sports 2021 NFL Fantasy Sleepers
Quarterbacks:
Looking at the drafting landscape with quarterbacks there seems to be a slight lean towards taking the top QB’s (QB1-10) a bit earlier than we are used to. The top 10 quarterbacks in 2021 to date are all being taken in the first seven rounds (Matthew Stafford at 7.11). In 2020 and 2019 the 10th QB in the draft did not go until pick 8.10 and in 2018 it was not until pick 9.1 when the 10th QB went off the board. The last time we saw a trend like this was six years ago when Sam Bradford was the QB10 with an average draft selection of 7.10. In my opinion, this is great for those of us who tend to wait. While people rush to grab up the top talent we get a slightly deeper pool of RB’s/WR’s/TE’s and we still have plenty of depth to target for the QB position.
Carson Wentz: ADP 134.23
No doubt about it, Carson Wentz has looked awful since his MVP caliber season with the Eagles in 2017. Bad enough to even get himself benched in 2020 for Jalen Hurts. But, what people are not putting enough emphasis on is just how bad the Eagles O-Line was. In part, they went to Hurts because they needed a QB that could run to safety and that just is not Carson. Wentz was 7th in the league with 149 pressures in only 12 games. Give him a full season and that is 199 pressures, worst in the NFL by a wide margin. Now he goes to the Colts where Phillip Rivers had to deal with less than half of that and he arguably has better weapons in TY Hilton, Michael Pittman, Zach Pascal, Mo-Allie Cox, and the ever present Jack Doyle. Will he return to MVP form? Probably not. But can he be a QB1 behind what should be a great line? Absolutely.
Ryan Fitzpatrick: ADP: 158.83
I just wanted to put Fitz in here to put this picture in:
In all seriousness, it has been a long time since Fitzmagic was on a team where he does not have to hand the starting job off to the rookie or had to deal with a coach that just randomly likes to bench his players constantly (looking at you Bruce Arians). There is a ton to be excited about for Fitz this season as he is on arguably his best team since 2015 and possibly his career. Even at 40 he can still push the ball downfield with the best of them so this should be fun. With receivers like Terry McLaurin, Curtis Samuels, and Adam Humphries paired with Athletic tight end Logan Thomas he has even better passing weapons than last year’s Miami roster with Devante Parker, Preston Williams, Isaiah Ford, Jakeem Grant, and Mike Gesicki. It is also worth noting that last year, had the Dolphins not forced Tua into the starting lineup Ryan was on his way to his best season ever. He was on pace for almost 4,100 yards, 27 TD’s, and 15 INT’s with a career-high 68.5% completion percentage. He honestly just got a raw deal and we get to take advantage of that with a 14-15th round ADP with an even better offensive personnel group.
Ben Roethlisberger: ADP: 162.23
I am out on a wire at Win Daily on this one. I do not think Big Ben is done just yet. Questions about his arm strength (we will come back to that), age, and injury history are valid points but we are ignoring a couple of things. First, the dearth of pass-catching options that he could trust to not drop passes was silly. The pass catchers for the Steelers dropped 41 passes in 2020. Not only does that damage the stat line on a per attempt basis, but that stalls drives and kills the flow of a team’s entire offense. Even with that Ben completed 65% of his passes and threw 33 touchdowns for just under 4,000 yards in 15 games. We also see all three of his WR targets going in the top six rounds. So we are expecting the drops to get better, all three receivers to do well as a fantasy community, and we are Drafting Ben in the 14-16 round area?!?!? What sense does that make?
Now the arm strength. We seem to do a better job understanding this in baseball. Damage to the ulnar nerve and ulnar collateral ligament takes a full season AND offseason to get back to normal. I know this personally, I had my ulnar nerve surgically rerouted in 2008 and it took me almost two years to get back to 100 percent. This is his “actual” first year back to full health. Trust me, you can afford to take a shot here.
Ryan Tannehill: ADP: 89.07
People can keep disregarding Ryan Tannehill and I will just keep getting a QB who is statistically equivalent to Patrick Mahomes over the last 24 regular-season games (seriously, he has been) 65 picks later. I do not put a ton of weight on Julio over Davis (I see it as a neutral trade-off), but either way he has had almost two full seasons as a top performer in the NFL and he is going as QB12. Players like Jalen Hurts (who only played a handful of games and has questions) and Tom Brady (who played great but still finished with fewer fantasy points). There is simply no reasonable explanation why Tannehill is going in the 8th round with his floor/ceiling combination.
Win Daily Sports 2021 NFL Fantasy Sleepers
Running Backs:
This position is…..well, thin. There is a reason that running backs account for half (18) of draft picks in the first 3 rounds. That’s ok though. While it may not be the prettiest position in the article we do have a handful of targets that we can find to fill out your roster and potentially find a league winner for you.
Trey Sermon: ADP 78.45
The 49’ers under the coaching of Kyle Shanahan have produced the most innovative and effective run game in the NFL over the last several seasons. The zone concepts are very potent, helping to make players who would be largely unknown otherwise into relevant fantasy stars like Raheem Mostert and Jeffrey Wilson. No knock on what either has done but the 49’ers are not going to trade up for a guy and not make him a feature piece of the offense. Now, what is feature? That really is the question. In terms of snap share, the Niners’ Kyle Juszczyk led the team with 472 plays followed by Jerick McKinnon with 372 so we have to go a little further back to see what Kyle would do with a “feature back”. With the Falcons in 2015, he had a backfield with Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman in it. Freeman was the starter for the entire season and saw 227 carries in 16 games compared to Coleman’s 118 carries in 13 games. So, given Trey’s pedigree and ability, if we project a similar workload I think he can see between 50-60% of the teams’ snaps which would be plenty for him to exceed his 7th round ADP.
Chase Edmonds: ADP: 66.82
Kenyan Drake is gone, we saw James Connor fail on the goal line over and over and over again for the Steelers last season, and Chase Edmonds just fits the spread style of offense. In what everyone is expecting to be a high-powered offense I felt like I needed to mention Chase even though he is technically higher in terms of ADP than what I would call a “sleeper” play. Arizona was the 7th highest in the NFL in rush attempts with 470 carries last year. I know 133 of them belonged to Kyler Murray and while he will get plenty of carries that still leaves 337 carries on the table with Kenyan Drake accounting for 239 of them. While I expect Connor to get a decent share of those we know that injuries are a constant concern for him and Edmonds has an explosive element that Conner has not shown since his 2018 season. Given the ADP of both of these guys, you could handcuff this backfield for a great price and have a piece of what should be a top-five offense in the league.
Damien Harris: ADP: 95.52
I am going to keep telling people this and either you listen or not. Cam Newton’s throwing mechanics are getting worse by the year. I have told Panthers fans that even before the injury before I ever started writing. I told Patriots fans and DFS players last year, and I am saying it one last time. I do not care if he got two tight ends. If you throw off your back foot, step to the side instead of through your throws, and drop your elbow, you are going to miss your receivers, badly. The Patriots need to hide him behind the run game and Damien Harris will be the beneficiary of that. Last year Harris came off the IR and just started to demolish opponents, averaging 5.0 yards per carry, and in the four games, he saw at least 15 carries he exceeded 100 yards on the ground in three of them. If you have not gone back to look at his games you should check out week 10 against the Ravens and you will see why I like this guy so much. This season we also get something we normally would not. A semi-clear backfield situation. We still have James White for passing down work, and unless something drastic happens Sony Michel is nothing more than a backup. So this is Harris’ opportunity to be in a feature role in an organization that has not has a feature back since LeGarrette Blount in 2016.
Tevin Coleman: ADP: 178.94
Deep flyer at the running back position. While everyone else is rushing to get Michael Carter I am holding off and taking his counterpart 100 picks later. Tevin Coleman is nothing spectacular but he has a few things going for him over Carter. I expect this first year with rookie QB Zach Wilson to be full of growing pains. The Jets will likely be down a lot and defenses will be teeing off. What can help with that is a veteran running back, that is a capable pass blocker/receiver, and it’s a huge bonus if said running back is familiar with the offense. Who was it that Tevin Coleman worked with in San Francisco? Oh yeah, that would be the Jets now offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur. Wilson needs that presence on the field for a whole litany of reasons. Best case scenario, Coleman wins the job outright this season and you look like a genius. Worst case scenario, he gets most of the work in passing down, hurry up, and scenarios where they abandon the run and he still exceeds his 16th-17th round value.
Win Daily Sports 2021 NFL Fantasy Sleepers
Wide Receivers:
This is the deepest group of wide receivers that I have seen in a long time. I think that may be part of the reason that we have seen the decision by some to draft QB’s a bit earlier than we usually would. No matter, there are still a few areas where I think we have players in good spots who are going unnoticed.
Mecole Hardman: ADP: 130.50
I am not sure how many of you guys/gals know this. The Chiefs have a pretty good quarterback. We know without hesitation that Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill are going to be at the top of the season leaders for their respective positions but with an offense that is going to score 40 points a game nearly every week the second receiver has an enormous ceiling as well. Enter Mecole Hardman. We have been waiting for him to finally break out and I think we are getting a little lucky with his ADP. It looks like people are still taking a wait-and-see approach even though he now appears to be the number two with Watkins in Baltimore. We are talking about a player who has the same insane top-end speed that Tyreek Hill has, in the exact same offense, with the same QB. It is difficult to find someone in a better situation with this kind of value.
Michael Pittman: ADP: 102.78
Pittman was severely hampered by who was throwing him the ball. I guess you can say that about all of the Colts if I were to be honest with myself. Even so, he showed some real flashes of what could be in his rookie season. He was incredibly effective catching and running in the middle of the field, taking slants and short crossing routes, and turning them into big gains. Now that he has a full offseason and a new quarterback who should be able to push the ball downfield the Colts will be able to expand his route tree and take advantage of his big frame with some deep 50/50 balls.
Antonio Brown: ADP: 103.33
I can not believe AB is in a sleeper article. It is crazy what a couple of years can change. If it was not for all of the offseason stuff we would still be drafting Brown as our WR2 at worst and not thinking twice about it. Brady loves this guy, he has never had a hint of an injury concern, and now he gets a full offseason going into year two with the Bucs. Brady is the King of petty. If you do not think he will go out of his way to pepper Brown with targets this season just to prove a point than you must have never watched him play. I did not see anything to indicate that Brown has lost a step at any point last year and I can see him coming into this year with a level of focus and motivation that I doubt we have seen from him before. For a 10th round pick it is well worth the shot.
Jarvis Landry: ADP: 104.48
Do people still think Jarvis Landry is a possession receiver or something? This is silly. I know he did not reach 1,000 yards last year and at the surface surface the number are meh. But he is still the top receiving option going into year three with his starting QB. I can already hear it now. Odell Beckham is their number one. Stop it, no he is not. Landry has led the team in targets, catches, yards per game, and touchdowns between the two. Yeah Beckham was hurt last year, But in 2019 he was not and Landry was a better player from a raw points and value standpoint. Cleveland also played in two games last year with wind speeds in excess of 50 MPH which did not do anybody any favors. If I were to ask you if you wanted a play who would give you 1,000 yards, 80 catches, and 5 TD’s in the 10th round and you had to take it without knowing the name 10 times out of 10 you would say yes.
Hope you enjoyed Win Daily Sports 2021 NFL Fantasy Sleepers. Hopefully, you have learned something that you can make use of in your Dynasty, Best Ball, and Seasonal Drafts, and got the juices flowing a bit to help you take down a big one in week one when the time comes. I look forward to creating more content for you all leading up to the 2021 NFL Season. Any questions about the article, I will be available in the WinDaily Discord chat. Don’t forget to subscribe to the WinDaily Youtube channel and follow me @stoweby and @WinDailySports on Twitter to stay current and up to date on all of our fresh new content!
