2018 Summer Sleeper: Cleveland Browns

TJ Calkins Posted On July 11, 2018

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 to 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.

In a somewhat shocking turn of events, the Cleveland Browns have become a team that dynasty owners have become excited about. The Browns currently have the following in startup ADP:

A quarterback inside the top 160 players drafted and a second quarterback inside the top 265 in one quarterback ADP.
Three (!!) running backs inside the top 100 players drafted.
Four (!!) wide receivers inside the top 153 players drafted, including two inside the top 44 picks.
A second-year tight end being drafted in the top 71 picks.

With all of the above being the case, it makes the Browns the most difficult team to project a sleeper on, considering more than half of their final 53 skill position players are being drafted in the first 13 rounds of startup drafts.

The sheer amount of talent on the roster makes it that any relatively unknown player will simply not have the glimmer of daylight to break through, so I’m going to the latest drafted of the four wide receivers, and the one whose ability is far beyond the draft capital invested in him.

[am4show have=’g1;’ guest_error=’sub_message’ user_error=’sub_message’ ]

Antonio Callaway, WR

Category: Sleeper

5’11”, 200 lbs
4.41-second 40-yard dash
34-inch vertical
121-inch broad jump

Flashback to April 26, 2018.

We’re entering day three of the NFL Draft and seasoned-but-first-year general manager John Dorsey had to be feeling very good about himself after the haul he’d gathered in the first two days (albeit courtesy of the embarrassment of draft pick riches left behind by fired predecessor Sashi Brown).

Dorsey had the night to sleep on what he would do with the fifth selection of day three, and clearly landed on taking the player with the highest ceiling within his range of outcomes. He chose to select Florida Gators wide receiver Antonio Callaway, a player with off-field issues but who scouts were on record saying would have been a top-20 selection had he kept his nose clean during his collegiate career. For a frame of reference, that would have made him the first wide receiver drafted in the class.

Let’s explore the path that brought Callaway to where he is today, beginning in Gainesville, FL. He had at least three run-ins with authority in his college days. The most major of which, a sexual assault allegation, he was later cleared of. He was also charged with felonies on a credit card scam and has documented illegal use of marijuana.

These transgressions cost Callaway his entire 2017 (junior) season, and rather than return to the place and people that plagued him, he opted to enter the NFL draft. The past still pushed him down the board but he found a team in Cleveland. There was enough draft capital invested that it’s not prudent to come anywhere near writing off a player of his ability level.

Callaway is a hyper risk/reward case, and as mentioned above, he’s walking into a very crowded wide receiver room, which may prove to be as much as an obstacle as walking the straight and narrow path. To address the latter, an NFL.com story by Edward Lewis documents Callaway becoming a father as his main motivation to turn his life around. The story also touches on how rival Pittsburgh Steelers’ all-world wide receiver Antonio Brown has taken Callaway under his wing in an attempt to guide him down the proper path. The future is unknowable in this regard but it does leave positive indicators.

Equally and constantly pressing, the in-house competition issue is not an issue that will go away quietly, especially for the 2018 season. Also present are elite players, starting with Josh Gordon, a freakish but more proven mass of ability and physical imposition, who has one year remaining on his contract before becoming a restricted free agent. Then there is Jarvis Landry, who was brought in on a five-year, 75 million dollar deal just this off-season, and won’t be going anywhere.

The last player present worth mentioning is former first round pick Corey Coleman, who by any measure, has been a bust. The height of Coleman’s NFL success has been one shining game where he burned the human turnstile Shareece Wright for a couple of touchdowns, and it is his job opposite Gordon that is the goal for Callaway in 2018. Coleman is very much a trade candidate as he was an investment made by a previous regime and is likely to be immediately outshined by Callaway.

From a dynasty perspective, he’s very much worth a rookie pick at the second and third round turn. No other player in this range offers the high end outcome. As you can see on his ADP chart, he went from being an afterthought to sky-rocketing once the Browns invested in him.

callaway

From my personal memory, he looked like the most smooth and effortless player on the field watching the Combine, and it left me wanting to see more of him. I’ve personally drafted him on well over half my teams and this is the type of lottery ticket I can’t get enough of on my rosters!!

[/am4show]