2020 Summer Sleeper: Los Angeles Rams

AJ Fernandez Posted On August 11, 2020

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.

The Los Angeles Rams had a tumultuous season in 2019. Attrition on the offensive line, Todd Gurley’s mysterious knees and regression for Jared Goff caused their follow up to their Super Bowl campaign to fizzle out before the playoffs.

One bright spot was Tyler Higbee’s sensational breakout towards the end of the season when he went over 100 receiving yards in four straight games and capped the year with an 8-84-1 line in week 17. Those outrageous numbers have his ADP in the ninth round per our DLF ADP app. Higbee’s finish was great, but it would be foolish to forget how good his teammate was before getting injured…

Gerald Everett, TE

Category: Deep Sleeper

Everett originally attended the University of Alabama-Birmingham but transferred to South Alabama for his final two years. He ended a great college career with 107 receptions for 1,584 yards and 13 touchdowns and in his senior season he earned over 20% of South Alabama’s receptions and receiving yards. All of his stats are well above the college production threshold shared by top-five NFL fantasy tight ends since 2003.

In contrast to wide receivers, athleticism is correlated with NFL success for tight ends. While analysts may roll their eyes at the combine for some positions, tight ends that are bigger and faster than their peers produce more often. As shown below, Everett stood out at his combine.

When comparing these numbers to historical top-five fantasy tight ends, Everett checks the boxes I care about with a 29.9 BMI, vertical jump >35” and forty time <4.65 seconds. His three-cone drill was also exceptional. He was a very good tight end prospect.

Everett was taken in the second round in 2017 with Sean McVay’s first-ever draft pick as a head coach. He has developed slowly as most tight ends do, but he performed admirably in limited action. This brings us to what happened in 2019.

Many drafters are excited about Tyler Higbee and with good reason due to his furious finish last season. However the discrepancy between draft values of Higbee (DLF ADP 103) and Everett (196) makes little sense when you look at 2019 as a whole. Everett was the clear starter through week ten, registering more snaps than his teammate.

screenshot 2020 08 11 at 09.26.50

When both players played last season, Higbee was on a TE12 pace of 57-533-3 on 4.6 targets per game. Meanwhile in that same time span, Everett was on a TE14 pace of 46-524-3 on 4.8 targets per game. Of course, once Everett went down with injury, Higbee assumed all the targets and exploded. Was it enough to relegate Everett to mop up duty in 2020?

A history of performance

Z-score shows the relationship to the average of a group of values that are measured in terms of standard deviations from the mean. In this case, the values are fantasy points and higher is better. Using DLFs z-score app, we can see that Everett has been a better fantasy player at each age compared to Higbee.

Z score
Player	Age 23	24	25	26
Gerald Everett	0.813	1.084	0.95	TBD
Tyler Higbee	0.394	0.826	0.641	1.43

I have established that Everett played more snaps and had better production than Higbee when both were healthy in 2019. I have also shown that while Higbee is a year older, Everett has produced better each year when adjusted for age.

All of this bodes very well for Everett and his future. He appears to be a steal at ADP in both redraft and dynasty leagues. He is about to come off his rookie contract in 2021 and many tight ends flourish once they land on their second team. I am shocked that with this history, he has been essentially left for the vultures.

It seems likely that with the departures of Todd Gurley and Brandin Cooks, the already pass-happy Rams should continue to throw often. If healthy, both tight ends should see enough targets to be a back end TE1 with multi-TD spike weeks. They were essentially giving equal production last year and can be counted on that same split in 2020.

Even if Higbee earned a bigger role with his late 2019 performance, his situation is likely to change in 2021 as the cap-strapped Rams can get out of his extension. If both players are going to be somewhere else next year I would much rather have the better performer at a much lower cost. Additionally, if fortunes are reversed and Higbee goes down, Everett will be an excellent play in all formats.

Closing argument

Gerald Everett was a fantastic tight end prospect by many important metrics, including the most important one which is high draft capital. Despite good age-adjusted performance, he has shared time with a decent veteran to this point. However, even earning split reps with an older player is a good sign for Everett. He is basically forgotten for 2020 and underdrafted in dynasty. Stash him now and he’ll be free in 2021 but you may not even have to wait that long.