Stay Woke: 2017 Wide Receiver Sleepers
Part I: Pre-NFL Draft Edition

Identifying sleepers can be a key to a successful fantasy campaign. Sometimes fantasy owners hit pay dirt in the draft, winning the proverbial lottery with a flier pick — owners that drafted Michael Thomas in the later rounds last year (ADP of 140+) found themselves a weekly starter from Week 1. Other times, players will emerge just in time to save your season — Tyreek Hill and Davante Adams come to mind. And sometimes yet, on the rarest of occasions, high-end players can be considered sleepers:

Corey Coleman | Browns

Corey Coleman wrapped up by defender in a 23–10 loss to the Bengals.

Last year wasn’t great. After starting out looking like the Top Rookie WR he was drafted as, Coleman caught a case of the Browns after a great (100 yard/2 TD) Week 2 performance. A broken hand coming into Week 3 forced Corey to miss the next 6 weeks. A wide receiver breaking his hand is never good, but mix in the Browns lack of anything resembling a quarterback and Coleman never had a chance to regain the momentum he had coming out of Week 2.

This made it easy to write off Coleman as a bust. But not so fast, my friend. As mentioned above, CC was at the top of a very, very good WR class — Michael Thomas, Tyreek Hill, Sterling Shephard (all drafted behind Coleman in the NFL Draft, all finished higher in fantasy leagues). With last season being a complete wash for not only the Browns, but Coleman, it’s almost as if he’ll be a rookie all over again. While we have no clue who the QB will be, whatever hype there was about Coleman last year should very much be there this season.

With the replacement of Terrelle Pryor (a nice little sleeper in his own right last year) with Kenny Britt, I expect Coleman to be the focus of the passing offense. Britt had a career year last season, I’m not a fan of his chances to repeat that in Brown and Orange. Coleman is by far the superior athlete of the two and has a much higher upside.

While I like Coleman in the late-late rounds (maybe as a team’s 4th or 5th receiver), I would not hate to reach a round or two early — it is never a bad idea to have a team’s WR1 on your squad, even if that team is the Browns. Do not wait for his first 20 point game (only took 2 weeks last year) to get on board. Keep him on your bench and hope he has the chance to let the skills that got him drafted as the #1 Receiver last year shine, you very well could be getting a solid flex/WR2 for peanuts.

https://medium.com/ffcircus/stay-woke-2017-wide-receiver-sleepers-599efd333d9d