Welcome back to Lucid Streams. Our goal here is to help you find emergency help that’s potentially available on the waiver wire or on the back of your bench when you’re scrambling for options due to injuries or plain old poor drafting at wide receiver and tight end. We also want to equip you with the tools to go out on your own and find the best options in case the options listed here each week aren’t available to you. Our goal is to find fantasy sleepers at WR who have at least a reasonable chance to contribute 10+ PPR points to your lineup this week and TEs who can chip in 7+ points in PPR.
PlayerProfiler is home to the award winning redraft rankings and tools. Our Player Rankings are second to none, and the World Famous Draft Kit contains detailed player write ups and cheat sheets to help You dominate fantasy drafts! Check it out.
The Process
What we are looking for each week is to find the players most likely to pop for one of several reasons. They may have an increased role in the offense due to the misfortune of a player ahead of them on the depth chart or they may be facing a defense which will have trouble defending them due to a positional mismatch. Maybe that’s a chronic problem of the defense or maybe it’s due to injuries in the coverage units which will allow a unique opportunity for success by our streamer. At the intersection of high opportunity and low ownership is where we want to pan for gold in the stream.
We’ll use a variety of tools to help us, including schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to the WR or TE positions. If you’re not familiar with this metric, it removes the variance that can skew fantasy-points-allowed by a defense due to the quality of the passing attacks they’ve faced. For example, if Defense A has faced four top tier passing offenses in the first four weeks while Defense B has faced only weak passing offenses over that same period, it could appear that Defense B is better at defending WRs than Defense A. In reality, Defense A might be the tougher matchup.
The further we get into the season, the more relevance this analysis will have. To start the season, we’ll be using data from 2023 which may or may not continue to be accurate for 2024, but it’s better to at least know where a defense left off at the end of last season than to know nothing at all. This helps us identify fantasy sleepers to add to our teams!
Let’s get to it!
Wide Receivers
DeMarcus Robinson
He made last week’s Lucid Streams article as well, rewarding us with seven targets. He didn’t quite get to our 10-point threshold, but if he continues to be targeted this heavily, he’ll get there more often than not. Now that Puka Nacua is on IR, we can expect the good times to keep rolling for Robinson. In most reasonably deep leagues, that also means this is likely the last week you’ll be able to add him to your squad.
Greg Dortch
Dortch is another repeat entry from last week. Would you have believed it if I’d told you last week that he would have nearly three times as many targets as Marvin Harrison Jr. and that he’d more than triple MHJ’s PPR output? Frankly, I wouldn’t have believed it either, yet here we are. I do NOT expect Dortch to continue this target domination indefinitely, but the takeaway we all care about is that Kyler Murray trusts him and looks his way often, especially if under duress.
Last week he got 11.1 PPR points without scoring a TD, so we’re going to continue to ride the hot hand until either his rostership gets so high that we can no longer include him, or his targets start to dip into the range of 4-6 per game. Dortch is at the top of the list of fantasy sleepers at WR.
Allen Lazard
If they ever do a remake of Entourage, Aaron Rodgers can play the role of Vince, as he’s made every effort to surround himself with familiar players over the past few seasons. Lazard certainly qualifies, having been kept afloat by relentless targets from Rodgers, primarily due to his knack for turning catches into touchdowns. Monday night, Rodgers looked his way nine times. Lazard turned them into six catches for 89 yards and two touchdowns. Yes, that was enough to vault Lazard to the No. 3 overall WR for the week. What that means to us is, if you want him on your team, you’re going to have plenty of competition to get him. But he might be worth it, as Mike Williams is still working his way back from a torn ACL, and the Jets’ WR room is otherwise bereft of talent, experience, or both.
Devaughn Vele
I know, I know. Who??? You might as well get to know the name because he and Josh Reynolds have put the much more highly-touted Marvin Mims and Troy Franklin on milk cartons all over the Denver metropolitan area. Vele racked up eight targets as the primary slot receiver for rookie QB Bo Nix who never met a target near the line of scrimmage that he didn’t want to pepper with targets. Let’s keep leaning into Nix’s checkdown ways until he proves us wrong for doing so.
Honorable Mentions/Other Options
Quentin Johnston – He’s starting for the Chargers until DJ Chark returns from injury
Jalen Nailor – If Jordan Addison is unable to suit up Sunday, he could have a large role
Josh Reynolds – He joined Devaughn Vele in getting 8 targets from Nix in Week 1
Tyler Johnson – Another candidate to chip in to replace Puka Nacua, he got 7 targets vs Detroit
Andrei Iosivas – He didn’t do much with them but he got 6 targets last week and if Higgins is out he’ll continue to get looks
Tight Ends
Colby Parkinson
He’s the starting TE on a Rams offense that loves to throw the ball and is missing Puka Nacua. Last week he turned five targets into 4-47-0 which is about all we can reasonably ask from a streamer TE who fails to crack the end zone. Like DeMarcus Robinson, you may have to fight other managers for his services, but he can put at least a temporary patch on any ugly TE situation at which you may be staring. Parkinson is among the top of fantasy sleepers at tight end.
Jordan Akins
When David Njoku exited the game with a high ankle sprain, Akins nearly immediately entered into Deshaun Watson‘s circle of trust for the rest of the game to the tune of four targets over the second half of the game. Watson is familiar with him from their shared time in Houston.
Akins was often the most trusted option in those days as well. It feels gross to recommend him, and it will feel gross to play him, but there’s a good chance some PPR deodorant will make it more palatable. Akins is worth rostering as one of those fantasy sleepers that is flying under the radar.
Hayden Hurst
He’s the primary pass-catching TE in an offensive scheme that’s both starved for competent receivers and that often features the TE anyway. Last week he only got three targets. However, if you’re desperate, I think that’s his weekly floor.
Theo Johnson
Nobody loves a Daniel Jones target, but at least Theo Johnson got four of them last week and had a 76-percent route participation, showing he’s the preferred receiving option at TE over Daniel Bellinger. He’s a rookie with good athleticism who’s quickly ascended the depth chart. TEs like Johnson often turn into quality options as the year goes on and they gain experience. Johnson’s a guy I’d be happy to stick on the end of my bench even if I didn’t need him in my lineup, just to see how he develops. Johnson is one of those fantasy sleepers at TE to stash.
Honorable Mentions/Other Options
Mike Gesicki – Corralled 3 of 4 targets last week (albeit for only 18 yards) and Tee Higgins might still be out for week 2
Austin Hooper – He out-targeted Hunter Henry with 4 targets last week in a game where the Patriots barely needed to throw
Foster Moreau – Surprisingly more productive than Juwan Johnson, with a 4-44-1 line on 4 targets, good for TE2 overall
For more articles, check out the PlayerProfiler Fantasy Home Page – NFL Fantasy | PlayerProfiler – Fantasy Football News & Media
