2018 Summer Sleeper: Arizona Cardinals
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.
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Chad Williams, WR
Category: Deep Sleeper
There are several elements to a good sleeper, and I’m going to ignore some of them. I just want to put that up front. This sleeper isn’t necessarily the best candidate for 2018 league-winning potential, nor even the most likely to become top 24 at his position.
Instead, it’s the other type of sleeper, the one people have forgotten was a promising prospect last year, and is still a promising prospect this year. There are always a few sleepers that have become better values than their counterpoints in the current year, and in 2018, I think that’s Chad Williams.
The element I’m ignoring most is past NFL production, because Williams doesn’t have any. He had a grand total of three receptions for 31 yards last year despite running a route on 24% of the Cardinals’ snaps in 2017.
This time last year, he was valued at an ADP of 163.3. He recorded a 4.37 40-yard-dash at his pro day and at 6-foot tall and 204 pounds, he has a speed score above the 80th percentile. His College Dominator came out at 46% College Dominator Rating in my database based on his last and best seasons in Market Share yards and touchdowns.
True, he has an age-20 College Breakout Age, which is a problem, but in the balance of his complete profile, he came out above 33% in my hit rate model for NFL potential, similar to Kenny Golladay, and above Dede Westbrook and Keelan Cole – which is about how we viewed him collectively when he was drafted.
People were excited about Williams’ potential, and rightly so. But now he’s dropped a full 74 picks to 237. The reason? This third-round pick didn’t break out in his rookie year while sharing the depth chart with Larry Fitzgerald, who had a 27% target share, and suffering a quarterback carousel of Carson Palmer (seven games), Blaine Gabbert (five games), and Drew Stanton (five games).
*Graph from DLF’s own Player Page
This off-season the following has happened to the Arizona Cardinals:
– John Brown, Adrian Peterson, Andre Ellington, Chris Johnson (and a host of other lower depth chart players) left the team
-Their quarterback, Carson Palmer, retired
-Their head Coach (and spirit animal) Bruce Arians, also retired
-A new quarterback – with league-leading completion percentage upside – Sam Bradford, was signed
-Another quarterback, Josh Rosen, was drafted with the tenth overall pick in the 2018 NFL draft (a player with a promising prospect profile, who some had faded because he’s not a generation older, from what I can tell… which is weird)
-They signed new running back, offensive line, and tight ends coaches
-They installed a new head coach and offensive coordinator
In short, if you think you know who the Arizona Cardinals are as a team, you are probably wrong. The team has undergone a large-scale personal and coaching change. Their new head coach and offensive coordinator have relatively small sample sizes in their roles and using a weighted average of their play calling – substituting the league average when they weren’t in those jobs over the last three years – projects the Cardinals to finish 16th (middle of the pack) in passing attempts. In short, their projected usage and passing volume in 2018 is a Shrug emoji followed by a Meh face.
In terms of volume, the end result is a huge loss from 2017. They have lost the third most targets in the NFL this off-season.
*This table and the data in it is how I’ve tracked the roster changes this off-season. I based it on data from pro-football-reference.com, fantasyadhd.com, and ffstatistics.com.
You can see the whole table here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IoJxSTgJ5VhT0E9xJeNWrG2rWCl-PebURhXD1P7m2ao/edit?usp=sharing
Obviously, we expect a healthy return for David Johnson who will take up the rushing attempts (310) and a decent chunk of the targets (248.) Christian Kirk, drafted in the second round, could also soak up targets along with J.J. Nelson, and Ricky Seals-Jones (Jermaine Gresham?).
But even after all this is accounted for, as well as a reasonable league average target share for positions and the plethora of “other” targets we don’t pay attention to in fantasy, I still find a decent path to targets.
In terms of projections, what I did with the majority of those targets was spread them out. It’s the most reasonable solution for a team no history to draw on. But I think it’s relatively easy to find a path to at least 50 targets for Chad Williams.
To be clear, I’m saying that a mediocre breakout in 2018 season is easy to find for Williams. Think Kenny Golladay in 2017: not great for redraft, but he becomes more interesting in dynasty. That’s with Kirk still being a solid rookie with promise, Fitzgerald maintaining a 24-27% target share, and Johnson reclaiming an elite three-down back workload.
If Bradford or Rosen struggle, or if Fitzgerald goes nuts and claims a 30% target share, or Ricky Seals-Jones becomes a top-five tight end, then the opportunity slims. But I think those things are less likely than the idea that Chad Williams can catch passes in the NFL.
And that’s the worst case path for the sophomore. If this path happens, he will be a value grab where he’s going right now. But, there’s upside in these numbers to.
If Kirk struggles in his rookie year (which is common for rookies), if Bradford or Rosen excel, or if the wide-receiver-convert – with a poor history of college production – Ricky Seals-Jones fails to become a top-twelve tight end, then Williams could get closer to 90 targets.
The balance between Williams’s potential floor and ceiling in 2018 is also interesting as well. I think it’s a lot closer to that of Sterling Shepard than his ADP suggests. Right now, he’s being drafted behind players who are fifth and sixth options on their depth chart if they make the team this off-season.
*Table from DLF’s player page
In short, Chad Williams is the sleeper you can actually draft late in fantasy football this year. His later college breakout scares me. His lack of production despite his high field presence in 2017, was confusing. But he has a potential wealth of opportunity in front of him, and a very uncertain depth chart and target distribution. He’s a skilled athlete with great size and decent draft capital, not to mention a year of experience in the NFL.
Now, what if Christian Kirk, who I do like, doesn’t fire very much in his first year? Or what if, as I think’s very possible, Ricky Seals-Jones doesn’t demand a significant share of targets? What if J.J. Nelson maintains his previous volume… actually, scratch that, I don’t’ think anyone believes he’ll exceed his 61 targets from last year. So that’s already locked in.
If those things – or something like them – happen, then the 50 targets is conservative.
We don’t have to make any unreasonable assumptions to find a path to targets for Chad Williams. So the question becomes: can he take advantage of them? A year ago, we thought he could. Now, “we” don’t. So, I guess the only difference is, a year ago, everyone else was listening to the hype around the draft.
This year we can get him for a lot less. With the exact same potential. And similar, if not better, opportunity… So, that’s nice.
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UDFA's matter | British ex-pat | Writer of things
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