2021 Summer Sleeper: Green Bay Packers

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 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 James Robinson 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.
Last season lay to waste the narrative that Aaron Rodgers hates tight ends. Robert Tonyan came out of nowhere (TE18) to finish as the TE6 in points per game scoring, and third overall in scoring. His success has led to him being drafted as a back-end TE1 (TE12 to be exact) and takes him out of the running for any sleeper articles you might read.
AJ Dillon coming off the board as the RB35 is certainly intriguing, but again I don’t think any would categorize Dillon as a sleeper in dynasty leagues.
Jordan Love being drafted as the QB36 is also a little mystifying, but I wanted to dig just a tad lower into the ADP to see who might be a great sleeper from the Packers for the 2021 season…
Allen Lazard, WR (ADP: WR84, 228.25 Overall)
Category: Deep Sleeper
Though he had a young breakout age at Iowa State and exceeded the market share of receiving yardage threshold, Lazard went undrafted in the 2018 NFL Draft.
Lazard signed with the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent but played in just one game during his rookie season. His sophomore year didn’t start off very promising as he was inactive for the first five games of the 2019 season. After being activated in week five, and scoring 16.5 fantasy points, he ended up putting up three top-19 scoring weeks in the ten games he played. That is not a bad return on investment considering he went undrafted in 2019 DLF mock drafts.
Lazard was drafted as the WR71 in June 2020 DLF mock drafts, which looked like a steal after the first three weeks of the 2020 season. He finished as the WR16 in week one, and as the WR6 in week three. Unfortunately, Lazard suffered a core muscle injury during that week three contest against New Orleans, that ended up needing surgery. He was forced to miss the Packers’ next seven games. Lazard struggled to make much of an impact during the rest of the regular season after returning to the field in week 11. His best scoring finish of the rest of the regular season came the following week against the Chicago Bears when he finished as the WR34.
In fairness to Lazard, attempting to play wide receiver after having stomach surgery is not the easiest thing to do, and he was never completely healed during the regular season. He did make a significant impact in the Packers’ two playoff games with 14 targets, seven receptions for 158 yards, and a touchdown.
Despite Lazard’s severe injury last year, he still set career highs in targets, receptions, and receiving yards per game. He also set career highs in catch rate, yards per reception, and games started. Per Fantasydata.com, Lazard’s 2.13 fantasy points per target ranked 16th at the wide receiver position, edging players like DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, Stefon Diggs, and Chase Claypool.
Even with his strong playoff performance, Lazard has seen his ADP fall from last year at this time, and is now the WR84 in DLF superflex mock drafts. This is certainly due in part to the uncertainty of the Aaron Rodgers situation, as well as the addition of Amari Rodgers in the third round of this year’s NFL Draft. Aaron Rodgers did not opt-out before the deadline and if he does so now, he’d have to repay Green Bay millions of dollars. Amari Rodgers is an intriguing player in his own right, but won’t directly compete with Lazard as their games are vastly different.
Lazard’s current ADP also ignores the fact that his 4.6 targets per game were good enough for second on the team last year. While that only works out to 78 targets over a 17-game schedule, Lazard averaged 15.2 yards per catch in 2020 (15th highest at the position) so he doesn’t need a ton of targets to score fantasy points.
His ceiling is limited and there is absolutely no chance he ever passes Davante Adams on the target hierarchy, but there’s no reason to believe he can’t hold onto the WR2 role on the team. He has yet to be able to put together a full season, either due to being inactive to start the 2019 season, or due to the injury in 2020, but has shown to be a valuable piece of the offense both years.
Where Lazard is being drafted is the area of the draft where you take shots on upside players. Chris Herndon, Dawson Knox, Pooka Williams Jr, are all being drafted over Lazard, which is a mistake. Players like this have limited upside and bottomless floors. Lazard has been able to produce multiple top-36 scoring weeks, including a top-six week just last year, and is an excellent player to stash on your bench.
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