Summer Sleeper: Jacksonville Jaguars

Doug Green Posted On July 21, 2015

jags

We continue our annual 32-part Summer Sleeper series where DLF scribes identify a lightly-touted player on each NFL roster who may be worthy of your consideration. Our subjects all have varying levels of “sleeperness,” but each merits a bit of in-depth discussion here in the Premium Content section.

To help everybody along, we are going to be categorizing our sleepers under one of three headings:

Super Deep Sleepers – Players who aren’t roster-worthy in 12-team leagues, but are still worth keeping an eye on.
Deep Sleepers – An end of the roster player who is more often than not on the waiver wire in 12-team leagues.
Sleeper – A likely rostered player who makes for a good trade target. Their startup ADP puts them out of the top-175 or so.

Because we aren’t going give you the likes of mainstream sleepers like Allen Robinson or C.J. Anderson, most of these players will undoubtedly fizzle. All we are asking is for you to keep an open mind and perhaps be willing to make room for one of these players on your bench. You never know when the next Alfred Morris is going to spring up. Feel free to add your own thoughts about our choice for the designated sleeper, or nominate one of your own in the comments below.

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Allen Hurns, WR Jacksonville
(Sleeper)

Yes, yes. I hear you. I know what you’re saying.

“Dude, how is a team’s leading receiver from the previous season a sleeper?”

Well, mostly because it’s Jacksonville. But it didn’t help Hurns’ case that he was an undrafted rookie free agent from Miami coming into last season. Couple that with little national coverage for the Jaguars and Hurns is a well kept-secret, currently checking in at No. 224 overall in the July ADP, which places him firmly in the Deep Sleeper category.

So why is Hurns a buy? Well, for one thing, everyone has fallen in love with teammate Allen Robinson, as well they should. But, that means you can get Hurns for practically free at this point.

Secondly, he was the leading receiver last season with Robinson on the team, which says that quarterback Blake Bortles has a comfort level and rapport with the 6-foot-3, 195 pound Hurns. He also had led the team with 13.3 YPC, almost two full yards better than Robinson. As Bortles matures as a passer, his accuracy should improve, giving Hurns a better chance at passes. Last year Bortles had the 24th-most passing yards in the league. If he can move into the top 16, Hurns will be one of the main beneficiaries.

Third, while I think the Jags are going to be better this season, I still think they are going to be playing from behind a lot. That means more passing opportunities. Yes, Jacksonville brought in Julius Thomas from Denver at tight end, but they also let wideout Cecil Shorts walk, so that’s basically a wash. At a minimum, I would expect Hurns to duplicate his numbers of 51-677-6 from last season. I am willing to bet that those go up to at least to 60 catches and 750 yards and I don’t think 65 and 800 is out of the question.

Hurns had two 100-yard games last season. The first was Week 1 at Philadelphia, where he had 4 catches for 110 yards and two touchdowns and the other was Week 9 at the Bengals where he had a similar effort of 4 catches for 112 yards and two touchdowns.

His hands can be a bit suspect, as his catch percentage last season was right around the 50% mark (51 catches on 97 targets), with quite a few of those being drops for easy completions. He will need to improve his hands if he wants to improve his fantasy numbers. It has been reported that he attended Larry Fitzgerald’s receiving camp in the off-season, so perhaps he is already putting in that work.

He does have a penchant for big plays and if your league awards bonuses for long runs, Hurns is someone to keep an eye on. In 2014 he had four games with a reception of 40 yards or more.

Also, from the reports I read Hurns had a tendency to be inconsistent in games. He would have a big first half, then disappear in the second half. Of those four games with a 40-yard reception, all of them came within the first nine weeks of the season.

Since Jacksonville is such a young team, I would like to think there is plenty of potential for growth. If Hurns can find a way to consistently hang on to the football and even out his play (the rest of the team maturing as well will help with that), I think he has a chance to find hims as a low WR2, high WR3 in the near future.

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