Early Sleepers & Values + ADP Picks

bring in other running backs. It is Lamar Miller and Deonta Foreman. And ESPN recently wrote up an article about all 32 teams, who was the camp star? Who was the surprising breakout player of each team's camp? And for the Houston Texans, it was Deonta Foreman, who everybody says looks amazing. Bill O'Brien has been talking them up. And you have to go back to 2017 to remember what was happening.

Deont de Forman's rookie year, they started getting him more and more involved, getting him games with double-digit carries. All of a sudden, Lamar Miller looked like he was, his job was in jeopardy. Yeah. And then he tore his Achilles and Lamar Miller had the entire backfield last year and was the guy. Nobody's been excited about Lamar Miller. Lamar Miller, on his own, he provides a value for where he's being drafted if he's the guy. But the reason why I believe in Deontiformen as a sleeper is because

He's one of the rare guys that I don't believe it requires an injury in front of him for him to actually come into fantasy relevance. He could win the job. He's truly 100% healthy. He's had like an almost two-year recovery timeline. He's young. And if you don't remember Deonta Foreman from when he was drafted in 2017, I loved him. You know, I loved his tape. He had an incredible college production.

Kevin Cole, a great fantasy mind back in the day, was working for RotoViz, had this great running back model, projection model that was really, I mean, it was very accurate. It had just a great historical success rate. And Dea Foreman in that model was the number one running back ahead of Leonard Fournette, Joe Mixon, Christian McCaffrey, Marlon Mack, Aaron Jones, that group that

Those guys scored well. So my point is he's talented. He's got the opportunity, I believe. It reminds me a little bit of the Delvin Cook situation where Combine wasn't as friendly to him, but what you saw in tape and what we saw in the field before the injury was pretty impressive. Sure, but he's not a pass catcher, though. Well, I mean, he was not a pass catcher in college at all. 100% you're right. For some reason, the Texas have talked him up as a good pass catcher. Bill O'Brien has said,

that he's a good pass catcher. But, I mean, we've heard that with, you know, Jordan Howard and things like that. So take it for what you will. That is definitely a question mark. But he's a guy that's going super late or virtually undrafted. 10th round. Deontiform and 10th round right now. Lamar Miller is going in the 6th. And in a Dynasty League, look, I know some people, maybe they draft him, they held on because they're super believe in them and you're not going to prime away. Some people are like, I don't care about this backup who.

Got negative yards last year. See if you can buy him cheap. I mean, I'm with you that it's, when you can get a running back in the, in the double digit rounds, who has the potential to usurp the, the quote starter. Like, Deonté Foreman, it's a wonderful. He's going to be on a high powered office. The Texas are going to score in a lot of points as long as Deshaun Watson and DeAndre Hopkins are on the field. If, if, if, uh, if Foreman can.

steal even just the goal line role and you haven't a great backup running back. Yeah, and the definition that we give for a sleeper is a player who is either not drafted or is drafted very late that are primed to emerge as a contributor, as an impact player, as somebody that can excel due to these reasons you brought up, increased opportunity or the scheme change or the circumstance, you're talking about a player that is not hyped, is drafted much later in drafts. Mike, you just mentioned.

players that have the chance, the opportunity, the percentage chance to usurp, these are, it's a perfect transition because I was deciding between Curtis Samuel, I was deciding between him and Kaelin Belage for my sleeper pick. Yeah, Blage is very similar. And Belage is in that boat. I mean, Kailen Belage is the late 13th round pick. Can you, Drake, is a fifth round pick. I have them projected for the same amount of carries this year. So that's my honorable mention of Kalin Belage, and we'll talk more about him over the course of the off season. It's not to say he's going to do it.

But there are only a certain number of players. It's why I like, you know, we'll talk about Royce Freeman in a little while. Same reason. Yeah, just to sneak in here. Like, I do not believe in Kalin Belage. I don't think he's a good enough running back, doesn't have the moves. And I do believe in Kenyon Drake, 100%. So, like, I'm on the other side. But I still recognize the value that Kalin Belage is in the draft because I could be wrong. It doesn't even matter. Maybe I could be right. And the coaches, they want Belage or they give them the opportunity.

I completely agree with the idea that Kalin Belage is in a perfect situation to be able to be a great sleeper, have the opportunity, and I could just be wrong on the evaluation side. Well, and keep in mind, King and Drake believes he's a lizard person. No. No, he's. No, he doesn't. Oh, he's no Sammy Walker. But I could have got you to take him right out of your breakout list. No, I'm going to go with Curtis Samuel.

Curtis Samuel is one of my favorite sleeper picks. This is a former second round draft pick. And I think what's interesting to look at is over the second half of last year. You know, the hype is there for DJ Moore, right? DJ Moore is currently a sixth round draft pick in fantasy drafts. And for good reason, DJ Moore was a very talented player, high draft capital. First round pick. First round pick. But Samuel was a second round pick. And over the back half of last year, by the way, you can get Curtis Samuel in the 11th round right now.

And I don't think that's going to change. I really don't. They had equal targets last year over the second half, 57 targets, 58 targets, receptions, 33 to 37. Curtis Samuel scored four touchdowns. The DJ Moore has won. Similar receiving yardage, DJ Moore outpaced him a little bit. Fantasy points. Curtis Samuel was better. So when you look at that comparison, what you see on film, Curtis Samuel, he passes all the tests.

reception-wise, very talented player, very good route runner. People look at him as the gadget guy. No, he's a great route runner. Huge opportunity, right, in Carolina for these guys to both emerge. I'll take the 11th round pick, the sleeper that showed out on the field versus the sixth round pick if I have to flip that coin. I think that both guys have the chance to do well, but one of them is free for me.

So that guy is Curtis Samuel. I think he's a great sleeper pick. I think he's got a great opportunity. And I love identifying debt. What I'll call right here the cheaper guess, okay? Give me the cheaper guess in Caleb Belange. Give me the cheaper guess in Curtis Samuel. So that's my sleeper pick. Any thoughts on Curtis? I love the pick of Curtis Samuel, one, being a sleeper. I will say I do believe his ADP will rise. Those industry mocks I was talking about. I know an industry.

mock versus a home league. These are very, very different things. But he basically averages out to be a mid eighth round pick. So people are going to start picking up. They're going to get the fumes, the whiffs of the hype train for Curtis Samuel. So I think he ends up in the single digit rounds before August really gets going. If we have anything to say about it, that will probably be the case. Yeah, it is telling though that in the industry mocks, the people that, you know, do this for a living, they're much higher than the average draft.

price on Curtis Samuel. That alone is telling that they see something there, you know, talent and opportunity that has the potential to break out. And we have to remember, too, before we get into the values. And we talked about this a little in the office today with the Belage, Kenyon Drake situation. There are so many factors in decision making here. It's not like the Carolina Panthers. They don't sit back and they go, man, we're going to give DJ more.

And we're going to give them 30% more opportunity this year because we spent a first round pick on them last year. And two years ago, Samuel was a second round. That's not how you think. You're out there to win games. You're out there to produce. They don't care about your fantasy team. They don't. They don't care if DJ Moore is going higher in your draft. And they don't care if a team does view Kenyon Drake as a player who can't carry a high workload. They don't care about deficiency numbers. If that's the perception.

of the team. Now, we don't know that to be the case with Belage and Drake, and Drake is a hyper-talented player, but we just have to remember they're not looking through the same lens that we're looking through. Stupids? I know. Let's get into the values. Values. The energy is, it's high, Mike. Look, those are some fire drops, fellas. All right, let's talk about some early value picks. Each of us selected one.

Guy, why don't you kick it off Jason? It's a perfect little transition here. Yeah, a nice segue because Curtis Samuel, he does have talent coming into another year in the sense of DJ Moore. He's got talent coming into another year of the system. I think the wide receiving core for the Carolina Panthers, they've got Greg Olson back, they've got those two wide receivers, they've got Christian McCaffery. Decent. Cam Newton is an incredible value right now.

He ended the year injured, obviously, had the surgery on his shoulder in the offseason, and his last two games were basically he couldn't throw the ball more than 10 yards. They were taking them out on plays when they had to throw it deep. It was unbelievable. And look, I'm scooting, I'm scooting that booty. I'm scooting at. Oh, here's the reality. Cam Newton is one of the best fantasy football players or quarterbacks of,

All time. He never doesn't produce when he's on the field. Now, you can worry about injuries, right? In his career, when he plays 16 games, he has been a top four quarterback. The lowest he's been in a 16 game season is quarterback four. That's pretty doggone good. And he's right now being drafted as the 10th quarterback in the ninth round. I'm usually a double-digit quarterback drafter. I wait until the 10th round and then I start looking.

This year in the ninth round, I'm going to be looking for Cam. It's the shoulder sale. You get a discount. You get a discount on the shoulder sale. And I don't care about the injury. And a man with only one shoulder. I don't care at all about the injury or the injury risk that Cam presents. When I get my quarterback at the ninth or tenth or tenth, let's say he re-injures it and he's out. Whatever. I'll pivot. I expect that there's a good chance when I draft my ninth or tenth round quarterback to strain the position. You don't scoot your booty with your shoulder.

But here's the thing. That's true. No. He's had this surgery before and came off of it for a career year and was amazing. What I care about is on a week by week basis, is this a guy that's going to dominate? And if you look at what he was doing last year before the shoulder injury, he was dominating. Eight of his first 11 games, if you go through week 12 or every team's had their by week, he's, he had eight games as a top 10 quarterback.

Do you want to know who else had eight games as a top 10 quarterback? The list is Pat Mahomes, Cam Newton, and no one else. Not Matt Ryan, who was great. Not Jared Goff, who had that incredible first half of the year, not Breeze, not Deshawn Watson or Aaron Rogers or Andrew Luck. None of them had that kind of a rate, a percentage of their games played in the top 10 at quarterback. Cam Newton is a huge value in, you know, near double-digit rounds, and he's already...

past the shoulder surgery. He's already throwing full in mini camps and, you know, so he's going to go and have a full training camp, full preseason. I am all about Cam Newton this year. I feel like last off season we spent a lot of time, or I tried to spend a lot of time telling you he was going to run and he's not going to stop running. The case with Cam Newton is always, eventually that will happen, right? Eventually some year, something will happen where Cam Newton's not going to do it for, you know, an infinite amount of time.

But thus far, you're right. I mean, the proof is in the pudding when he plays. He's great. When he doesn't play, doesn't put up numbers, unfortunately. But when he plays, he's been great. And I think he's going to stay at a discount. There are too many other fantasy quarterbacks with glisten and gleam coming off of them. The Baker Mayfields, the Carson Wins, not to say that he should necessarily go ahead of those guys, but because there's so many that are...

Interesting, right? Even guys like Matt Ryan, who finished number two last year, definitely going ahead of Cam in this year's startup. Yeah, you don't just have players like Drew Breeze or, you know, Tom Brady sitting ahead of him in drafts. There's a lot of very young, attractive other options, so it makes him a value. I doubt he changes much before. Fantasy drafts. Sure. I'll jump in. It's Royce Freeman. Royce Freeman is my early value pick.

It would have given me nothing but joy to maintain my full Philip Lindsay fandom into the off season. Loved him last year, picked him up in every league. Enjoyed every moment of owning Philip Lindsay except at the very, very end of the season. But you've got to stay water in fantasy. You've got to rotate your viewpoint. And this is another situation like Belage and Drake where Royce Freeman.

Royce Freeman is a high draft capital guy. Mike spent much of the offseason talking up Royce Freeman last year. Stupid Philip Lindsay. I'm pretty sure it was my guy for you last year. Yes, he was. And the thing is, is the season didn't go the way we expected for Royce Freeman. But it wasn't all Royce Freeman's fault. He battled through injury throughout this season. And Philip Lindsay was great. He showed up. He showed out. He stole carries.