Fantasy Football Draft Sleepers: Pat Freiermuth & Deshaun Watson (2024)

Thankfully, the 2024 fantasy football season is just around the corner. Each year, fantasy players want to construct their team with a proper mix of good-value players and upside sleepers while avoiding players with high bust potential.

In the second part of an eight-part series, I identified two fantasy football ADP values, two likely-to-bust candidates, and two potential sleepers from the AFC North. We dive into a few notable picks below.

Fantasy Football Draft Sleepers

ADP via FantasyPros

Fantasy Football Sleepers to Target

Pat Freiermuth (PIT): ADP 136.3 | TE16

The 2023 season was one to forget for Freiermuth and fantasy players with him on their team. The third-year player was a popular mid-round tight end draft pick. Unfortunately, he missed five games and struggled when playing. Freiermuth saw his targets (36.1%) and receiving yards per game (43.9%) significantly drop from 2022 to last year. However, fantasy players should give him another shot after Pittsburgh swapped out Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky for Russell Wilson and Justin Fields in the offseason.

Furthermore, Arthur Smith taking over as the team’s offensive coordinator is excellent news for Freiermuth. The Atlanta Falcons tight ends averaged a 31.7% overall target share and a 29.3% red zone target share in 2023. With Diontae Johnson in Carolina, Freiermuth should be the No. 2 option in the passing game and see the volume needed for a breakout season in the final year of his rookie contract. He is my favorite tight end to draft outside the top nine guys.

Deshaun Watson (CLE): ADP 163.3 | QB23

While Watson’s time with the Browns has been a disaster for the team and fantasy players, the veteran quarterback was once one of the best players in the NFL. He averaged 20.7 or more fantasy points per game in each of his first four seasons before trade demands, off-the-field issues, and injuries limited Watson to only 12 games over the past three years. Yet, fantasy players in superflex leagues should make the former superstar one of their QB2 targets.

Watson averaged 17.7 fantasy points per game in the five contests he played at least half of the snaps last season. That average would have made him the QB13 on a points-per-game basis. More importantly, the veteran will have his best receiving core since joining the Browns after the team added Jerry Jeudy in the offseason. Don’t be surprised if Watson has a career year with the team having a limited running game until Nick Chubb is 100% healthy.