9 Wide Receiver Sleepers to Target

Success in fantasy football often depends on getting production out of later round sleeper wide receivers. Here are some of our targets.

August 12, 2020 - by Jason Lisk

Marvin Jones is perpetually undervalued, and he looks like a solid pick again in 2020 (Photo by Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire)

Wide Receiver sleepers emerge every year to provide great value in fantasy football. Last year, rookies like A.J. Brown, D.K. Metcalf, and Terry McLaurin were not being drafted in most leagues at this time. Veterans like Allen Robinson, DeVante Parker, and John Brown were coming at great value. Some other young guys had their breakout years, like DJ Chark and Courtland Sutton.

Here are 9 of our favorite wide receiver sleepers, which we will define here as going outside the Top 30 at the position in Fantasy Football drafts. These picks range from some names you know who are going at value, to some names that might not even be drafted in some leagues, but are worth keeping an eye on.

Michael Gallup

Can we put Michael Gallup on this list? He did have over 1,100 yards receiving last year. But he is being drafted outside the top 30 right now, because the Cowboys also drafted CeeDee Lamb in the first round. Lamb is going just a few picks behind Gallup in drafts. We expect Gallup to still provide good value, as the Cowboys are going to be one of the top passing teams in the league. Young breakout wide receivers like Gallup don’t tend to just disappear, and there’s no guarantee that Lamb will overtake him in the pecking order.

If the market is going to suppress Gallup’s value, take advantage here.

Will Fuller

Fuller stands to be the big beneficiary of the DeAndre Hopkins trade, if he can stay healthy. That’s a big IF with Fuller. He’s missed 20 games over the last three seasons. Those injuries, though, have masked that he was already pretty productive before the Hopkins move, averaging over 65 yards a game. If you are looking for guys with the upside to put together a Top 15 season if things break right, being drafted outside the Top 30, Fuller is on the short list.

Marvin Jones

This one comes down to team expectation and opportunity. The fantasy football market seems to be expecting a Matthew Stafford bounce back year coming off missing 8 games last year. Stafford is going around 13th at quarterback. You would think a pocket passer with that kind of expectation would have teammates going highly. Yes, there’s Kenny Golladay. But T.J. Hockenson is going outside the Top 12 at tight end, and Jones is outside the Top 36 at wide receiver. And the running backs are both young guys without a history of receiving success. If Stafford really does come back strong, either Jones, Hockenson, or both are likely to have big years.

And it’s not like Jones has been bad, but it feels like he is perpetually overlooked. He was 27th in points at WR last year while missing 3 games and with Stafford being out half the year. The last time he finished outside the Top 40 in a year where he played at least 10 games was back in 2014, as a backup in Cincinnati.

Darius Slayton

Darius Slayton profiles as a potential wide receiver sleeper breakout candidate this year, after a rookie season where he scored 8 touchdowns. In fact, the Giants’ offense as a whole looks like a team that could be in a lot of shootouts, and has the weapons to score in quarterback Daniel Jones’ second year in the league. Slayton put up two games of 120+ yards and 2 touchdowns last year, and could showcase more of that in 2020. His draft value is held down by the presence of both Sterling Shepard and Golden Tate. But that also means value opportunity, and the potential to get this year’s Kenny Golladay or Courtland Sutton.

Here’s last year’s yards per target for the Giants’ key options:

Slayton: 8.8
Tate: 8.0
Shepard: 6.9
Engram: 6.9

We are banking on that productivity being a precursor of things to come for the 23-year-old Slayton.

Diontae Johnson

Johnson was not a starter with Pittsburgh before Ben Roethlisberger got hurt. But as a rookie, he ended up leading the team in receptions per game anyway, outperforming JuJu Smith-Schuster. This year, you can get Johnson about 5-6 rounds later than Smith-Schuster. Sure, you might expect a bounce back season for Juju, but it seems like Johnson being pretty good in a bad situation as a rookie should produce a little more optimism here.

Jamison Crowder

Sure, it’s the Jets and no one gets excited about the prospects of a Jets’ wide receiver. Lots of factors, though, point to Crowder being a value in 2020 who could pay dividends. Yes, the Jets’ passing numbers aren’t impressive. But they were better when Sam Darnold played, and would have been closer to a 3,700 passing yard, 23-24 touchdown type year if you prorate his stats to a full season. The offense was dreadful when Darnold was out.

If you look at just the games Crowder played with Darnold, he averaged nearly 6 receptions a game. That would translate to over 90 catches. He scored 6 touchdowns in 12 games with Darnold. And now, Robby Anderson is gone, replaced by Breshad Perriman. You can do worse than getting the top possession wide receiver, who is still only 27 years old, on a team with a high QB draft pick who is about to turn 23 years old.

Preston Williams

Preston Williams tore his ACL early last November, after eight games as a rookie. He already showed flashes of promise, averaging four catches per game in Miami. The team is cautiously optimistic that he will be ready for the start of the season, and if you can have a little patience for the first few weeks, he could pay dividends. Both Albert Wilson and Allen Hurns opting out of this season solidifies Williams’ standing as the second wide receiver in this offense, and with Tua Tagovailoa potentially starting, there’s some uncertainty/upside in improved offense in Miami. He’s currently going outside the Top 50, which means he’s in a good range to take an upside swing that he is back from his injury.

Michael Pittman, Jr.

The fantasy football market hasn’t always been great at identifying which rookie wide receiver sleepers will breakout. Odell Beckham went outside the Top 50. Michael Thomas was being drafted at WR49 according to Fantasy Football Calculator, behind other rookies like Sterling Shepard, Corey Coleman, and Tajae Sharpe. A.J. Brown and Terry McLaurin were largely undrafted in redraft leagues last year. We aren’t going to sit here and say we have a crystal ball. But what we can say is that when the market seems to be all over the place on evaluating the rookie wide receivers, a good strategy is to look for values that don’t require a significant investment if you are wrong, but could pay off handsomely.

The 6’4″ Pittman is one of those, and can often be drafted very late. He has the reasonable draft pedigree (34th overall) and was the Colts’ first choice this year, at an area of need. Our team projection is for the Colts to have over 4,000 yards passing. T.Y. Hilton, the presumptive No. 1, is coming off an injury, is 31, and has not played with Philip Rivers before. Pittman is in competition with others (Parris Campbell and Zach Pascal) for playing time, which is holding his draft slot down right now.

But you can envision scenarios where Pittman is one of this year’s breakout guys as a rookie and emerges as Rivers’ leading receiver.

Brandon Aiyuk

Brandon Aiyuk is another rookie in a position where he could surprise. The only returning receiver with significant production from last year, Deebo Samuel, suffered a foot injury in June. His status for the start of the season is uncertain. Aiyuk was taken in the first round by the 49ers on a team that had low passing volume a year ago while going 13-3, but high efficiency. If those numbers regress a bit (let’s say the 49ers are a 10-6 or 11-5 type team) then they are going to have higher passing volume, because they’ll be passing to catch up a bit more and running to protect a lead a bit less. Aiyuk could be the second option in this offense (behind tight end George Kittle) if Samuel is not fully healthy. Right now, he can be had very late in drafts.