The concept of a “sleeper” in fantasy football is one of my favorite subjects. That term can have a wide ranging application in this space, but in this article I am going to get into 5 different players – 2 running backs, 2 wide receivers and 1 tight end – all going after pick 140 in current drafts on sites like Underdog and DrafKings that I’d classify the market as “sleeping on”.
There is a wide range of options, some closer to that pick 140 marker and even one who goes completely un-drafted on all platforms, but the goal is to identify players who have a path to helping define the season, especially in Best Ball tournaments like we focus on here.
Let’s dive in.
Running Backs
Keaton Mitchell
I’m not sure you could dream up a better player-team fit for a free agent this offseason than Keaton Mitchell. Just 24 years old entering his 4th NFL season, Mitchell has been stuck behind bruising, physical backs in Baltimore for the entirety of his career (most recently Derrick Henry), but he has flashed the game breaking upside we crave when given opportunities.
He has averaged 6.3 YPC over 121 career carries, and he’s added 9.7 YPR on 19 receptions (24) targets over his 3 seasons in Baltimore. It’s clear the speedster with 4.37 wheels can hit home runs anytime he touches the ball, and now he’s paired up with the perfect offensive mind with the Chargers – Mike McDaniel.
McDaniel may not have worked out as an NFL Head Coach in Miami, but there’s no denying his offensive prowess during his time in both San Francisco and Miami. Most importantly, he has specifically turned these speed backs into higher level fantasy producers than almost any other NFL coach. Raheem Mostert was a 30 year old back who had never eclipsed 137 carries in a season prior to reuniting with McDaniel in Miami, despite consistently breaking in-game sprint speed records. Then, in his first two seasons with the Dolphins, he averaged 232 opportunities (carries + targets) per year across 31 total games.
De’Von Achane (9 months older than Mitchell) came into the league with game breaking speed, but he had similar concerns about his ability to handle significant volume in the NFL due to his slight, 5’9 190 pound frame. With McDaniel, Achane has accumulated 753 opportunities across 44 games in 3 seasons, and he’s been a 2nd round fantasy pick each of the last two seasons.
Mitchell has real competition in LA with Omarion Hampton and Kimani Vidal, and he certainly isn’t going to come out of the gates handling all the backfield work. But McDaniel notably pounded the table for the Chargers to sign Mitchell in free agency, indicating he has real plans to use Mitchell more than the Ravens seemed to care for.
It’s unclear how the backfield will shake out with the Chargers, but they have a high QB, depth of weaponry and a strong offensive line that makes the RB room very appealing. Mitchell certainly has the ability to give us strong games on efficiency alone with the combination of his talent and the Chargers situation, but he also held up to massive volume in college (eerily similar to the aforementioned Achane) despite his 5’8 190 pound frame. He has the perfect combination of standalone and contingent value of a mid-to-late round RB pick, and every situational indicator points to game changing upside, especially in best ball formats where we don’t have to decide when to start him.
Ray Davis
Contingent value running backs are generally some of the toughest players to figure out in fantasy football every year, but that also often leads to that cohort producing some of the best picks on the board each season. Davis in particular has a few different feathers in his cap that makes him stand out above the rest, and he’s priced near the last round of drafts.
The 3rd year, former 4th round pick has a unique setup in Buffalo that gives him a sort of double contingent value. The clear and obvious upside case is the scenario in which something happens to James Cook. Granted, two of the games were in Week 18, but Davis has played in 4 games over 2 seasons with the Bills where James Cook was either out or limited due to game script. Here were Davis’ box scores in those games:
- 2024, Week 6, Cook OUT – 20 carries for 97 yards, 3 targets/3 receptions for 55 yards (Ty Johnson just 4 carries & zero targets)
- 2024, Week 13, Blowout – 11 carries, 63 yards, 1 TD (Ty Johnson 5 carries)
- 2024, Week 18, Cook 15 snaps – 15 carries, 64 yards, 3 targets (Ty Johnson 2 carries, 2 targets)
- 2025, Week 18, Cook 2 snaps – 21 carries, 151 yards, 2 targets, 22 yards, 1 TD (Ty Johnson 15 opportunities)
What you see in these games is that Ray Davis is next man up after James Cook, the Bills are not shy about loading him up with volume and he has been very productive in that role. Admittedly, I liked Davis as a prospect coming out of college, but the Bills element is most critical here. Even if Davis is not a real life star, the nature of playing RB for the Bills (assuming Cook is out or limited) behind one of the very best offensive lines in football with Josh Allen at the helm leads to Davis becoming a projectable fantasy RB1 if things shake out his way. The Bills had the 6th highest graded run blocking offensive line in 2025, and we know rushing QBs like Allen help the efficiency of their run games.
Lastly, there’s the sort of double contingent value Davis possesses. Ty Johnson actually plays the passing down, long down & distance role in the backfield, subbing in for Cook on obvious passing downs. But when Ty Johnson was injured for the Bills playoff games last year, it was not Cook who inherited more passing down work… it was Davis. He played 32% and 35% of snaps in the two Bills playoff games without Johnson, filling in as the passing down back.
Did I mention he plays the lowly Dolphins in the Week 17 fantasy championship this year?
Wide Receivers
Ryan Flournoy
There are a couple things that generally drive prices up on cheaper players in fantasy football.
One is an established, projectable role on an elite offense. “We” have been paying laughable prices for just about any player dawning a Kansas City Chiefs jersey for the last 5 years, for instance. The Cowboys are surely an elite offense heading into 2026, fresh off accumulating the 2nd most yards in the NFL in 2025 paired with the 7th most points. They were 2nd in passing yards and 3rd in pass attempts. Flournoy also has cemented a projectable role as the WR3 after a mini breakout in his second NFL season in 2025. The team let Jalen Tolbert walk after Flournoy took his job partway through last season.
Two is the breakout, or even hint of one, that happened with Flournoy last year. Despite playing alongside CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens for most of 2025, Flournoy finished 32nd among all NFL WRs (min 50 targets) in yards per route run at 1.74. For reference, that ranks ahead of players like Mike Evans, Ricky Pearsall, Tee Higgins, Ladd McConkey, Brian Thomas Jr., Courtland Sutton and Xavier Worthy.
Flournoy has the perfect combination of floor and ceiling that we crave in cheap WRs. He was an intriguing prospect with 2.67 career YPRR while drawing a target on 30% of his routes at Southeast Missouri State, and legitimate talent upside in year two of his NFL career. He produced alongside CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens last year, including his best game in Week 14 against the Lions, where he went 9/115/1 on 13 targets on 37 routes.
But he also has rare contingent value at the WR position, as he displayed last season. Without CeeDee Lamb in Week 5, Flournoy earned 9 targets on 28 team pass attempts, doubling up the next highest Cowboys receiver with 114 yards on 6 catches.
Devontez Walker
One of the most important aspects of young players in fantasy football that I constantly try to remind myself is that growth is not linear. We want every player to come in the league right away and produce, or at least show a steady level of improvement that we can directly point to as an indicator of an incoming breakout. But, as we saw with Parker Washington in 2025, that’s just not how these things always go.
And If I had to pick a “who is this year’s Parker Washington?” candidate, it would be Devontez Walker.
Let’s start with the Ravens piece of this. It’s clear the Ravens are one of the better offenses in the NFL. But they are also making a pretty seismic shift this offseason in their philosophy. Enter new OC Declan Doyle, and out go the plethora of TEs and fullbacks the Ravens have been using for years. No more dusty veteran types at WR like DeAndre Hopkins. They did add WRs in rounds 3 and 4 of this year’s NFL draft, but Rashod Bateman is also back after a disappointing season.
The Doyle addition could be sneaky huge for Walker, who has been a big play threat waiting to happen both during his college years and in a limited sample last year in the NFL. Doyle has come out and said he wants to “hunt explosives”:
“We’re going to hunt explosive plays. We’re hunting plays that are 12-plus yards in the run game, 16-plus yards in the passing game, and everything we do is built that way, where we’re creating explosive plays. We’re trying to obviously score as many points as we possibly can. Physical, detailed, and explosive is what we expect to see. Everything we do is pointed, it’s calculated, and is it designed to bend and stress the rules of the defense and so it’s really a relentless gameplan process to make sure what we’re putting on the sheet, what we’re calling, what we’re asking our players to do making sure what we’re doing going to ask from a structural standpoint fits, trying to create those explosive plays against a defense.”
In college, Walker averaged 16.8 yards per reception across 3 seasons at both Kent State and North Carolina, producing 1,744 yards and 19 TDs on 168 targets (2.52 YPRR). He has lid-lifting speed with his 4.36 40 at the NFL Combine. He also showed this big play upside in a limited sample with the Ravens last season. He only ran 61 routes, but he turned those routes into 6 catches for 136 yards and 3 TDs on 8 targets.
Clearly, there is competition here with Rashod Bateman, Elijah Sarratt and Ja’Kobi Lane, but it seems Tez is currently a front runner to, at least, be in that top 3 WR group, and he’s been standing out in a big way early on at OTAs. Here’s what Ravens writer Ryan Mink had to say after two weeks of OTAs:
“Walker was one of [Lamar] Jackson’s favorite targets during Wednesday’s practice, and he converted first downs on third-and-long. With Rashod Bateman not practicing early this week, Walker is getting his chance to show he’s ready for a bigger role. In addition to his speed, Walker is showing he can stretch the field horizontally.”
Even if one of the rookies for the Ravens steps up, Tez has an alternative path to snaps, and that’s Rashod Bateman’s falloff. In 2025, Bateman ran 319 routes in 13 games. He earned just 35 targets, turning them into just 19 catches for 225 yards with minimal target competition other than Zay Flowers in the Ravens passing game. Among all WRs with at least 30 targets, Bateman was 108th in yards per route run. This puts him behind the likes of Jalen Tolbert, Tyler Lockett, Adam Thielen, Olamide Zaccheaus, Dyami Brown and Sterling Shepard. All while playing with a 2 time MVP at QB.
I can’t say for sure that Bateman is cooked, and one of the rookies could certainly step up, but the stars are aligning for Tez to earn the exact role his new OC thinks is a top priority while catching passes from Lamar Jackson in a high scoring offense, and he doesn’t even get drafted in any best ball draft right now.
Tight End
Pat Freiermuth
Pat Freiermuth had a lot of hype coming into the NFL, and while he hasn’t quite lived up to his supporters’ lofty hopes, he has finally become really undervalued in 2026 with the market seemingly giving up on him. There’s no denying that the Steelers don’t present a tremendous amount of excitement as an NFL offense, but the shift to Mike McCarthy as head coach should give the offense a little more upside than the Mike Tomlin/Arthur Smith duo of last year.
And while Freiermuth hasn’t been great in recent seasons, he likely wasn’t as bad as you think. Among all NFL TEs with at least 25 targets in 2024, Muth finished 21st in yards per route run. This was ahead of the likes of Jake Ferguson, Hunter Henry, Kyle Pitts, Cade Otton and Chig Okonkwo. In 2025, he finished 24th in that same metric. This time he was ahead of Dallas Goedert, Isaiah Likely, Chig Okonkwo, Jake Ferguson, TJ Hockenson and Mark Andrews.
That route efficiency is important for a couple reasons. In 2024, he was still competent despite catching passes from Justin Fields and Russell Wilson. In 2025, Aaron Rodgers offered some improvement there, but he ran fewer routes due to the presence of Jonnu Smith in the TE room. Hs routes dipped from 470 in 2024 to 357 in 2025, which naturally hurt the counting stats for fantasy.
But Jonnu Smith is no longer a Steeler (or even on an NFL team), and he ran 318 routes last season, despite one of the most woeful efficiency seasons I’ve ever seen at 0.69 YPRR. That should open up a more full time role for Muth, and the efficiency has been strong enough that a volume increase would make him a significant different maker at his price in fantasy.
It doesn’t hurt that Aaron Rodgers may never hand the ball off near the end zone during his retirement tour.
