What’s that old saying? You can’t win your league in the first round of fantasy drafts but you can certainly lose it? If that’s the case, would the inverse also be true about the final few rounds of fantasy drafts, where you can’t really lose your league but can greatly enhance your chances of victory?
The final 3-4 rounds of fantasy football leagues are where the stakes are low, and where the excitement of making a great pick is magnified. This is where most players take their kicker and/or defense, and where darts are thrown without much pressure to hit a bullseye.
In these rounds, coming away with a player who proves to be useful at any point in the fantasy season — whether that be as an every week starter, trade bait, or even just as a bye week fill in — is a boon to one’s fantasy squad and puts that team a step ahead of others.
Last week, I wrote an article detailing some wide receiver sleepers to consider in essentially the seventh round and later of fantasy drafts. Now, we’ll take it a step further, detailing some wide receivers whom you can get at the very tail end of your drafts or maybe even for free off the waiver wire.
Below are four deep sleepers to consider, with the help of a tool from Fantasypros.com which takes the average ADP (average draft position) of three different platforms — Yahoo, Sleeper and RealTime Fantasy Sports — and compiles them into one list.
Every name in this exercise will be outside the top 55 in Fantasy Pros’ compiled positional ADP list for wide receivers in the half-PPR format, and all are available on average in the 13th round or later of 12-team fantasy drafts. You can find that entire ADP list here.
Mike Williams – New York Jets
Positional ADP: 59th; Overall ADP: 159th
A common philosophy I like following when looking at sleepers is the concept of “following the money.” This is the idea that if a player was given a hefty contract by a team in the offseason (or was acquired for hefty trade compensation), that team will be more likely to utilize and feature him in their offense, otherwise that money will be going to waste. This is not foolproof of course, as we have seen wasteful general managers in the past, but the idea has some logical legs.
Mike Williams was given a $10 million payday by the New York Jets this past offseason, including four void years to minimize the 2024 cap hit, meaning that he will be on their books in some shape or form through 2028. Williams is coming off of a season ending torn ACL in Week 3 of 2023, but with reports that he is already getting team reps in at practice along with the fact that he was not put on the “Physically Unable to Perform” (PUP) list, the expectation is that he will be on the football very early on in the regular season.
When healthy, Williams was a weapon for Justin Herbert in the Los Angeles Chargers offense, with his best season coming in 2021, when he had 1,146 receiving yards and nine touchdowns before leading the Chargers team with 895 receiving yards in a 2022 campaign where he missed four games.
The idea in New York is that the 6’4 Williams will be Aaron Rodgers’ number two receiving option, and his primary red zone weapon. Rodgers is recovering from his own season ending injury but last we remember of him, he was always a prolific thrower of the football within the red zone. The four-time MVP finished in the top 10 in touchdown passes from inside the 10-yard-line in each of the last three seasons we saw from him.
Williams won’t break the bank, and with this selection you are getting a proven commodity with a proven quarterback, who’s main concern (injuries) is baked heavily into his ADP.
Ja’Lynn Polk – New England Patriots
Positional ADP: 66th; Overall ADP: 176th
Given his cost (practically free), Ja’Lynn Polk is one of my favorite rookie wide receivers to target in fantasy drafts this season. Coming off of a season at the University of Washington where he flourished with 1,159 receiving yards and nine touchdowns, Polk showed the Patriots enough to warrant a selection with the fifth pick in the 2nd round of the 2024 draft.
The biggest reason for my excitement behind Polk outside of cost is his uninspiring target competition in New England. The main players in the Patriots’ WR room consist of second year man Demario Douglas, who had 561 receiving yards last year and was a 2023 6th round compensatory selection, K.J. Osborn, who has never had more than 655 yards in a single season, Javon Baker, who went two rounds after Polk in the same draft class and Kendrick Bourne, who is coming off of a torn ACL which has landed him on the PUP list.
Polk has the immediate draft pedigree to be considered the favorite for the WR1 job, and he is expected to be a Week 1 starter. Another player in New England expected to start, if not right away then eventually, is quarterback and second overall pick Drake Maye, whom Polk played with a lot in the preseason, running a route on 34 of Maye’s 38 dropbacks.
Polk has frequently been working with the starters in practice, and has been getting paired with Maye a lot in preseason action. If he does win out that top wide receiver job, he will be the cheapest primary WR you can find in fantasy drafts.
Darnell Mooney – Atlanta Falcons
Positional ADP: 69th; Overall ADP: 200th
Last season, there were five teams who had two wide receivers in the top 15 in percentage of snaps played (when healthy) in the league — the Philadelphia Eagles, Las Vegas Raiders, Carolina Panthers, Indianapolis Colts and Los Angeles Rams.
The Rams had Cooper Kupp on the field 91% of the time (in games where he was not injured) and Puka Nacua playing 87% of the time, and this number would have been higher had he not been pulled early in Week 18 and had he not suffered an injury which knocked him out early in Week 13.
Now, what does any of this have to do with Darnell Mooney? Well, Atlanta’s new offensive coordinator Zac Robinson just came over from the Rams, where he worked under Sean McVay since 2019. He likely mirrors many of McVay’s philosophies, one of which is that the two best wide receivers almost never leave the field. Behind Drake London, Mooney is firmly Atlanta’s WR2 and he was paid like it this offseason, signing a three year, $39 million ($26 million guaranteed) contract very soon after free agency opened up (we’re following the money again).
Mooney’s magnum opus season came in 2021, when he led the Chicago Bears with 1,055 receiving yards and four receiving touchdowns. He’s since been mired with subpar quarterback play and increased competition since, failing to reach 500 yards in each of the past two seasons. The Falcons have nonetheless trusted him with a big payday, and he will be catching passes from the best quarterback of his career thus far in Kirk Cousins.
While London will be the alpha wide receiver in Atlanta, Cousins’ track record of distribution is promising for Mooney’s prospects. In each of Cousins’ last three full seasons in Minnesota (this is not counting last season, when an achilles tear ended his year prematurely), he targeted his number two wide receiver (Adam Thielen) at least 95 times, despite the presence of the great Justin Jefferson in all three of those years. Thielen actually had triple digit targets in two of those three seasons and the only reason he had 95 in 2021 was because he missed four games to injury.
Mooney is not even being drafted in most leagues, despite the fact that he will be on the field a lot, with a quarterback who historically gets his second wide receiver involved, in what is expected to be an explosive offense.
