2020 Summer Sleeper: New England Patriots

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.

As a team, the Patriots have the second-worst ADP (using DLF’s data) with an average ADP of 169.9. Only Washington as a team is worse with an average ADP of 170.3. Clearly, the Patriots are nothing but a team of “sleepers”.

Sony Michel, N'Keal Harry, and an aging Julian Edelman get most of the attention as fantasy-relevant players. Damien Harris will gain some attention as a sleeper with a June ADP of 168.

However, in this article, I will go into the super deep sleeper category with a player who holds an ADP of 232. He is likely available in many 12-team leagues with 20-man rosters, and in rookie drafts, he holds that value of a fifth-round pick, making him mostly undrafted and available on waivers.