Are There Any Fantasy Football Sleepers Anymore?
“The fantasy sleeper is dead.”
–Dr. Sports Fan (8-3-09)
While I joined the fantasy sports craze in 2001 — just as the whole industry took off with the internet — I’m about as seasoned as anyone in the fantasy world. Despite being a mediocre fantasy player — I’ve won just four fantasy leagues (football in ‘01 and ‘06, baseball in ‘05, and basketball in ‘02-’03) — I’ve played in two or three fantasy football leagues each year since 2002.
Now that you have my resume, I can say without hesitation that the fantasy football sleeper is a thing of the past.
Why?
According to my definition, a fantasy sleeper is a player that comes into the season under the radar but could be in for a solid season. Players like Julius Jones in 2004, Maurice Jones-Drew in 2006, and Steve Slaton last year are all prime examples of players that took fantasy teams to the next level. Each also came into their respective sleeper seasons undrafted or they spent several weeks on the waiver wire.
This year, I had set my sights on Houston Texans quarterback Matt Schaub as my bigtime sleeper pick before checking out the fantasy preview magazines. Now, if USA Today, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated all tell me that Schaub is a sleeper, is the QB really flying under the radar?
Schaub isn’t the only player to get some pub as a fantasy sleeper in ‘09.
Here are some other sleepers being thrown around by USA Today’s Sports Weekly fantasy preview: Pierre Thomas, Kyle Orton, Chad Ochocinco, and Laveranues Coles. Two Packers, Ryan Grant and Donald Driver, are sleepers on the same team and both were stars in seasons past.
I’m not saying that any of these guys won’t be having great seasons, but with the minor exception of Thomas, these guys are definitely not sleeper picks.
The problem to me is the wide availability of information for fantasy owners.
Since so many males (and now females) play fantasy football, there is a lot of money to be made in the fantasy preview market. With hundreds of magazines and — hell — millions of articles on the internet devoted to fantasy sports, there likely won’t be many players flying under the fantasy radar.
Other magazines will give you some more risky fantasy bets — Ray Rice, LeSean McCoy, and Rashard Mendenhall are some names being thrown around — but at the end of the day, every young skill position player is a sleeper pick somewhere.
With everybody ready for the “next big thing,” how can any fantasy owners get ahead now?
If you’re looking to score big with an unknown in 2009, waiver wire and free agent pickups are your main source. With everyone in your league likely doing their own research for the upcoming season, you’re going to have to do your damage after the draft.
Remember, Slaton wasn’t drafted in most leagues last year.
After coming on for an ineffective and broken down Ahman Green, Slaton was the dream waiver wire find for some lucky team in your league last year. While most experts found the West Virginia product too small for the NFL, Slaton finished 6th in the league in rushing with 1,282 yards and 8th in receptions (50 for 377 yards) among running backs. With 20 carries in five of the last six games, the “little” RB handled the load and then some.
No preview mag experts foresaw that kind of year from Slaton. Even the most ambitious fantasy players were catching Z’s on that sleeper. This kind of work can only be done midseason.
Long story short (too late!), you likely will not be getting a leg up on the competition by looking for one in a fantasy magazine. Come to think of it, the only sleepers that really ever existed were the ones that individual owners came up with themselves anyway. Fantasy previews be damned!
While the days of taunting the competition by adding some Z’s after picking your sleeper may be in the past, one thing is for sure: someone will take the 2009 fantasy football season by storm — somebody that even the Talented Mr. Roto has never written about! You’ll just have to wait — like everyone else — for Week two or Week four in the waiver wire to find your surprise fantasy stud.
You just better hope that I don’t have a higher waiver priority than you.
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