Summer Sleeper: Philadelphia Eagles

In our annual 32-part Summer Sleeper series, 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, 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 Adam Thielen 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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Mack Hollins, WR

Category: Super Deep Sleeper

Despite averaging over 20 yards per reception for his career and playing with this year’s second overall pick, Mitchell Trubisky, Hollins’ selection drew a symphonic “who” from the audience as his name was called in the fourth round of this year’s draft. Very few fans knew who he was. Even fewer saw a role for Hollins in the Eagles’ offense.

True, the receiver position in Philly was an albatross in 2016. Tight end Zach Ertz led the team in receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns with just a 78/816/4 stat line. Jordan Matthews was the top wide receiver, posting a 74/803/3 line, hardly the stuff of fantasy legends.

This off-season, the team signed Alshon Jeffery, and Torrey Smith in free agency, then drafted Hollins, and West Virginia speedster Shelton Gibson, in April. They jettisoned disappointing third-year wideout Dorial Green-Beckham after he picked up in OTAs right where he left off last season — dropping passes and suffering concentration lapses.

The additions of Jeffery and Smith to a group of pass catchers which already included Ertz, Matthews, Darren Sproles, Nelson Agholor and Trey Burton, creates a lot a hungry mouths for quarterback Carson Wentz to feed, which seemingly leaves very little opportunity for a rookie like Hollins to find a niche.

Yet, from the onset of the Eagles’ off-season activities, Hollins’ name has been echoed by beat reporters as one of the most impressive players on the roster in practice. He’s currently the WR5 on the depth chart, but the receiving hierarchy in Philadelphia may be more fluid than anyone realizes at this point.

If you asked me my early #EaglesCamp standouts, in order: Mack Hollins, Rasul Douglas, Corey Clement, Greg Ward and Donnel Pumphrey. #Eagles

— Matt Lombardo (@MattLombardoPHL) July 25, 2017

Mack Hollins checked in with a TD catch on an in breaking route. Got inside Rasul Douglas and by the LB that was supposed to pick him up.

— TURRON DAVENPORT (@TDavenport_NFL) July 25, 2017

Matthews is in the final season of his rookie deal. There’s been no talk of an extension to this point, even though he’s quietly been one of the most successful wideouts of the stellar 2014 draft class over his first three years in the NFL. Consider the following excerpt from a story by Brandon Lee Gowton, of Bleeding Green Nation, debating whether it’s in the Eagles’ best interest to resign Matthews:

“Since being drafted in 2014, Matthews has racked up 225 receptions for 2,673 yards and 19 touchdowns. Since 1920, only 41 wide receivers have posted better numbers in their first three seasons.”

Then, there’s Agholor, who by all accounts, has had an impressive offseason, himself. Still, the former-first rounder has yet to live up to the expectations which accompany his draft position, with a 59/648/3 statline over his two NFL seasons combined.

Matthews and Agholor figure to be the third and fourth receivers on the depth chart, respectively. Yet, the Eagles have needs all over the defensive side of the football. They also suddenly have a wealth of interesting young receiving prospects filling out the back half of their roster, leaving both players rumored as possible trade chips should the Eagles decide they can spare a wideout to acquire, say… a solid young cornerback in return.

Report from Pro-Football-Reference.com.

As for the top of the rotation, Jeffery and Smith are each effectively playing on one-year deals. Smith signed a three-year pact with the club, but is owed a mere $500,000 in guarantees, making his contract easily voidable should he fail to live up to expectations. Philadelphia has high hopes Jeffery can become the No.1 wideout they’ve lacked since Terrell Owens fell out of favor with the organization, way back in 2005. Jeffery’s standing in the league’s PED program, however, remains a lingering shadow on his long term viability — and that’s before we even begin to discuss the cost, or likelihood of negotiating an extension with the team next offseason.

After we’ve digested all of the uncertainty atop the depth chart, we can begin talking about Hollins — one of the most underappreciated receiving talents in the 2017 draft class. Hollins has everything you want to see from a big-play receiver — speed, length, huge hands and a gritty on-field demeanor.

NFL Network’s Mike Mayock compared Hollins to a “poor man’s Mike Evans.” Hollins has all the physical ability which made DGB such a hopeful prospect. Yet, he brandishes a work ethic several times more intense than Green-Beckham ever displayed. This is a player who’s yet to scratch the surface of his talent.

At 6-foot-4, 221 pounds, he ran a 4.53 second 40-yard dash at the Combine, a time which would have been a few ticks faster had Hollins not popped his hamstring in final five yards. The injury forced him to miss the remainder of the testing in Indy.

In 2016, Trubisky garnered much of the attention in his only season at the helm of the Tar Heels attack. Hollins remained an under the radar weapon on a team with a strong group of NFL-bound skill players. Sharing the rock with the likes of Ryan Switzer, Bug Howard, T.J. Logan, and Elijah Hood suppressed Hollins’ output – he caught just 16 balls, for 304 yards and four scores before breaking his collarbone in game seven.

Still, he was the second member of that offense to hear his name called in the draft, after the quarterback came off the board in round one. The most often referred to trait when speaking on Hollins ability is special teams. He was captain of the Tar Heels third unit, for which Mayock also referred to him as, “the best special teams coverage guy in the draft.”

There’s nothing Mack Hollins can’t do. https://t.co/E8a5akgqT4

— Brandon Lee Gowton (@BrandonGowton) July 25, 2017

A cool stat: #Eagles WR Mack Hollins scored a touchdown 25% of the time he caught a ball at UNC. pic.twitter.com/340koqk3vX

— Brendan Walker (@BWalkerNFL) July 20, 2017

Now in Philly, a team which has assembled some of the NFL’s best special teams units over the past few years, Hollins is a lock to not only make the 53-man roster, but more importantly — the gameday 46-man active roster. When searching out super deep sleepers in fantasy, the biggest problem is that many of these fringe roster players have a hard time getting activated on Sundays consistently. Hollins’ kick coverage skills will, at a minimum, ensure he’s in uniform every week of the coming season.

Finding him snaps on offense will be a more difficult proposition, yet not an impossible one. The biggest challenge will be the diversity of the Eagles’ offensive attack in 2017. Aside from the aforementioned wideouts, Philly has two tight ends, (in Ertz and Burton) and two running backs, (in Sproles and Donnel Pumphrey) who can all be effective splitting out wide and creating mismatches for the defense.

Wentz is likely to approach the 600 passing attempts he hoisted in 2016, yet the distribution of those passes is about to be completely scrambled. Alshon Jeffery is a shoe-in to see the most targets on the team. Yet, the system Doug Pederson brings with him from his years coaching under Andy Reid rarely generated more than one 100+ target receiver, and it was even more rare for that player to exceed 130 targets on the year.

At this point you’re probably saying, “There’s no chance this Hollins kid becomes a fantasy-worthy player in 2017” and you might be right. But we own dynasty teams, and the best of us make moves which benefit our teams beyond the current league-year.

In 2017, Hollins’ production will be a slow-boil. He’ll see limited looks in redzone situations, aside from his duties as a core special teamer. As the season progresses, injury and, or the inevitable movement of one of the wideouts ahead of him on the depth chart will create more playing time for the rookie.

Between Jeffery, Smith, Matthews, and Agholor — there’s a good chance the Eagles will move on from one, if not two of these players by 2018. Should Hollins start to show the type of ability folks around the Eagles expect him to, one of those players could very well be Matthews.

Given the recent multi-year contracts handed out to players like Pierre Garçon, DeSean Jackson, Kenny Britt and Robert Woods, Matthews’ camp is likely to push for a deal ranging between $8-11 million in average annual salary, with upwards of $15M guaranteed. This is money the Eagles are more likely to allocate to a player like Jeffery, so long as the former-Bear produces like the No.1 wideout he’s billed himself as. Once these shoes drop, Hollins is the player most likely to ascend the Eagles’ depth chart.

In 2016, ten players cracked the top-100 wideouts in PPR scoring on 50 or fewer targets. Hollins could see enough red zone opportunities to make a run at this threshold in 2017. By next season, however, he could rise to become an integral cog in an Eagles’ passing attack which is just learning to spread it’s wings.

A savvy dynasty owner would find a spot on their roster or taxi squad for him now, before his price starts to reflect the inevitable changes which will soon reshape Philly’s roster. At the moment, Hollins name is nowhere to be found on DLF’s Rookie ADP list. You can snatch and stash this guy in the final round of your draft.

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