2019 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.
Here’s my argument for Arizona’s ‘Summer Sleeper’: It’s not perfect, but “almost” at the tight end position is often as good as it gets.
Even with the open trash fire that was the Arizona offense last year, there is now hope a new coaching staff, quarterback and an offensive outlook can turn it around. We expect more passing volume, and more success per target. It’s all projection based on logic, however, and the NFL often isn’t logical.
There is renewed interest in every player on the depth chart from David Johnson to Larry Fitzgerald, and second-year wide receiver Christian Kirk.
There is so much hope floating around the Cardinals that everyone from their rookie QB to their WR4 has jumped up the draft board and most are harder to acquire now than they were before the end of 2018.
My sleeper choice, however, currently has an ADP of 235 – barely drafted. He could be a cheap ticket to a good show if half of the promises made about the team come through.
Ricky Seals-Jones, TE
Category: Deep Sleeper
I’m not normally one to argue that a player’s size has much of a bearing on their fantasy production. However, at the tight end position, being over 240 pounds has been a very common threshold. Not many, outside of Evan Engram, have managed to overcome being below it. What’s more, since good tight ends convert to the position late, or play in college very little before going to the NFL, it’s hard to find much else to like outside of draft capital and size and/or athleticism.
RSJ played as a wide receiver in college and converted to tight end for the draft. He has the size and athleticism (just about) to make the jump. However, even compared to tight ends he was woefully underproductive in college. Let’s compare him to some of the best prospects to come out of college in recent years.
*Picture from my own “Market Share” Database that uses Sports-Refence.com data. “MS Rec Yards” refers to the percentage of the team’s receiving yards the player produced at each age in college.
My “Production Score” metric takes players’ percentage of team receiving yards and multiplies it by how predictive it is for fantasy points per game in the NFL, giving it a natural weighting, by age. As you can see from Rob Gronkowski to Hunter Henry being three percent over the average for their entire career, being above average is a good thing. However, even some of the best players like Travis Kelce, and Jimmy Graham played so little that they did not meet that mark. In this way, RSJ’s production can be overlooked. However, they all did have top three round draft capital.
Why does draft capital matter? I think draft capital’s main purpose is to provide players opportunity in the NFL. If a team invests a top-three round pick in a player, they are more likely to give them a chance to play – or at least pay more attention to them in camp to see if they are displaying the skills necessary to get on the field. Therefore if an undrafted free agent gets an opportunity, he has overcome some of the stigma/problem of with having no draft investment.
Since entering the NFL, RSJ already seems to have caught the notice of his team and earned an opportunity. Over the first two years of his career, he has earned 97 targets, ranking him 25th overall in tight ends drafted since 2008. In 2018, he held a 14% share of his team’s targets, the NFL average for top 12 tight ends is 18%.
*Image from Pro-Football-Reference.com.
Targets are one of the best indications of more targets to follow. If the passing volume does increase, it’s not crazy to think Seals-Jones could see a significant enough bump to at least make him more relevant.
It’s not perfect, but for a late-round flyer, it’s pretty good. He also has a streamable floor based on his 2018 season. Last year, he scored ten or more PPR fantasy points in 20% of his games. That’s about the same as Dallas Goedert, Austin Sefarian-Jenkins, Cameron Brate, and Vance McDonald. All are drafted higher right now in fantasy because he lacked the 15-point games they enjoyed in 2018. But more targets on a better offense would be a great way to get some of those.
* Image from my own database that uses 4for4.com data
It’s far from perfect, but it’s not bad either. He’s 24 years old, has experience in the NFL level, and has earned decent opportunities in the NFL – especially compared to his lack of draft capital. Plus, he’s on a team we think could expand its passing game next season.
Ricky Seals-Jones has real appeal as a tight end dart throw right now. At worst, I think his floor is a couple of useable weeks, and that’s just about all we can hope for from players some are drafting rounds earlier. In dynasty, if he can improve his target share at all and produce any 15-point games, he should easily see a value increase during the season.
UDFA's matter | British ex-pat | Writer of things
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