Here is a little look at the sleepers and rookies I hit on, and then guys I totally missed.
(* = missed at least one game to injury/CoVid)
My sleepers are a lot of young guys and a lot of good players who are in situations where they should excel past what they were being projected. All of this had to do with their fantasy ADP (average draft position), so it's hard to tell if someone was a value selection or not in just four weeks.
Since four weeks is all we have to evaluate, however, we can say pretty thoroughly that Mike Williams, Jamaal Williams, Dallas Goedert, Kenneth Gainwell, and others have out-performed expectations through the first quarter.
While it's not completely over for the "Misses", they have certainly not seen the volume or health to reliably used in a starting lineup.
In Higgin's case, he has been inured, but the emergence of Chase so early will limit his ceiling as far as the heights I was projecting. Sermon, Aiyuk, and Marshall Jr could see increased consistency as the season progresses and their roles are solidified in productive offenses.
Concerning the rookies, it's not completely fair to judge them as football players just yet. But we can judge their fantasy value, because if they don't have any, we can cut them. My "hits" are merely people on pace to hit or exceed my projections for them. The "Misses" here are (unintentionally) all rookies that I really thought would steal the show early in the season, but up to this point they have barely had bench value.
"The Miss List" is basically two groups of players: guys I was super down on throughout the off-season, and guys who have been productive, but I didn't talk about them at all.
Matthew Stafford and Joe Burrow were my sleeper QBs, and despite having solid Septembers neither of them hold a candle to the start Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones have had. I was down on Mike Evans, Adam Thielen, Cole Beasley, and Deebo Samuel before the season, but they have excelled for a variety of reasons and now we just need to see if their performances are sustainable.
I picked Robert Woods to be the receiver to break out in LA with Stafford, but by far it's been Cooper Kupp and that was a big miss on my part considering their ADP was so close together. I had Woods finishing in the top 12 and thus far, even the WR3 on the Rams (Van Jefferson) has outscored him.
Kareem Hunt fell in drafts closer to where I was comfortable taking him, but turns out...he should have been going in the first two rounds. The Cleveland backfield once again is producing two top-10 fantasy running backs between him and Nick Chubb, with Hunt being the higher scorer of the two.
For being as down on Mike Davis in the Falcons offense as I was, I should have looked at Cordarrelle Patterson more. Patterson has the perfect fantasy skill set, not requiring a lot of volume to have value. For a guy that largely went undrafted, he should have been on my sleeper radar.
In a league thirsty for tight end help, I had my eye on CJ Uzomah and Dawson Knox as deep sleepers, but my main sleeper targets were Dallas Goedert, Mike Gesicki, Tyler Higbee, and Blake Jarwin. Through four weeks, I should have been way higher on Knox, and Gesicki is finally seeing the targets in Miami to become an every-week starter.
I correctly identified the value of a dominant tight end in the Dallas offense, I just picked the wrong one: Dalton Schultz has emerged as the target hog, and while Blake Jarwin has seen his share of snaps, he hasn't had many meaningful fantasy plays.
We will check back in on the SportsLeaf Hits and Misses for 2021 at the halfway mark of the fantasy season in four weeks.
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