2020 Summer Sleeper: New York Giants

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.

Despite the myriad of injuries suffered across literally every skill position, the 2019 rendition of the New York Football Giants proved to be fertile grounds for fantasy production. To that point, the offense included the QB12 (by average points) in Daniel Jones (three games missed), the overall PPR RB10 in Saquon Barkley (three games missed), and a trio of PPR top-50 receivers in Darius Slayton, Golden Tate and Sterling Shepard (13 combined games missed). Even tight end Evan Engram managed to finish as a mid-range PPR TE2 (overall TE18) despite playing literally half of the season, with the seventh-highest per-game average.

Unfortunately, missed time has been nothing new for the soon-to-be fourth-year tight end. In fact, he’s trending in the wrong direction, with one, five, and eight missed games successively over the last three seasons. Maladies incurred include a pair of concussions, bruised ribs, two MCL sprains, a pulled hamstring, and finally a sprained foot.

While none of these injuries appear to be inherently related, Engram’s gameday absences seem to have rankled the Giants’ front office. In March of this year, rumors were circulating that the former first-round pick would find his way onto the trading block, as “the Giants don’t believe he can ever stay healthy.” Should management tire of the talented but oft-sidelined tight end, or should he succumb to yet another visit to the training table, it might just open up the door for…