In The Ultimate 2020 Fantasy Football Sleepers List – Running Backs, Curtis Patrick shares his top late-round targets who could pop this NFL Season if everything falls just right. These are players going so late they’re nearly free.
It’s the final round of your 2020 fantasy draft and you’ve been crushing every round. Maybe you already successfully landed one of my must-draft running backs for 2020 in the middle rounds. Your positional starters and flex spots are full, and depending on what your league settings are, you’ve probably got four or five backups already in-hand.
What now? Where do you go?
One way to give your lineup the juice it needs to win a title at the end of the year is to already have the hot waiver wire guys on your bench. You won’t have to claim them (so you can keep streaming QBs and team DEF with your waiver priority and/or waiver cash), your opponents won’t be able to claim them (keep-away can prove to be a legitimate tactic, especially late in the season), and of course, you’ll have the option of starting them. In best ball formats, these are players you can load up on if you want to try out some unconventional RB builds (see Shawn Siegele’s Best Ball Workshop Series). In dynasty, these guys might be available on your waiver wire, or they might just be rotting at the end of somebody’s bench, waiting to be added as a “throw-in” in the next trade offer you make.
Back to redraft.
It can feel weird to select true sleepers in a fantasy draft. The players might be a reach. You might get laughed at. Some of these guys are barely even ranked (or not ranked at all this early in the season) on the free mega cheat sheets because their touch counts just don’t seem very projectable. This is because typically something has to happen to wake a sleeper up from his virtual fantasy slumber. It’s usually an injury, but sometimes as the year marches on what began as a complementary role can grow into more (see 2019 Boston Scott).
My top sleeper for 2020 is a player with final-round ADP who I think will have weekly fantasy value as early as September. The other three guys have enough situational appeal that I think one of them will probably be the hot “run to your waiver wire in week 12” player that everyone in the industry is endorsing when he fills in for an injured starter or breaks a big play in garbage time the week prior.
Before I give you my running back sleepers list, let me share how I’m defining running back sleeper so we can be on the same page. These are deep sleepers, not trendy pseudo-sleepers that aren’t even really sleepers at all anymore because they’re being drafted in the 8th round or are being mentioned by 90% of analysts. The criteria:
- must have an overall ADP outside the top-180
- must have a positional ADP outside the top-60
These criteria typically go hand in hand, but listing them both makes me feel extra sure we’re on the same page.
Outside the top-180 status is going to put us past the 15th round of a typical 12-team draft. In many popular formats there are only 16 rounds in a draft, so we’re talking about guys that you’re considering as your final selection. These players are being drafted as RB6s at best. Also, this isn’t one of those articles where I’m going to add 20 names at the end of the article without any context and say “other guys I like” just so I can say I mentioned them and victory lap at the end of the year. These are the specific guys who meet the above criteria who I’m targeting late in drafts. I’ve got four of them for you. Here we go … it’s time for my Ultimate 2020 Fantasy Football Sleepers List at the RB position.
