Four Sneaky Fantasy Football Picks for your 2021 Draft

The NFL season is rapidly approaching, and that means that draft season is as well. We want to get you up to speed on some sleepers that you should be targeting in your season-long fantasy football drafts.

Darnell Mooney

Mooney is a player that had a very successful rookie season for his notoriety going in, but he was not given the best chance to succeed with the combination of Nick Foles and Mitch Trubisky at the helm. Mooney is a receiver out of Tulane who ran very, very well at the combine and really impressed the Bears throughout the season. It took only one game for Mooney to become the clear WR2 on a roster with star Allen Robinson on the other side. Bears GM Ryan Pace even told the press that Darnell Mooney is the reason Bears fans should have hope. 

Mooney was open all the time last season, but his QBs were very, very bad. Mooney only caught 7 of 23 deep balls last season because of the bad accuracy of the Chicago QBs. Now, with the draft pick of notably accurate downfield passer Justin Fields and the signing of former Bengals starter Andy Dalton, we should expect Mooney to excel this season. That doesn't even mention the fact that Mooney gets his first real NFL offseason and was a player that was asked to run a limited route tree in an option offense.

Tyler Boyd

The Bengals are looking to explode offensively with the addition of Ja'Marr Chase and the return of #1 overall pick Joe Burrow. I love the Bengals offense in fantasy this season, and we know the targets on this offense. The defense is still lacking behind in terms of talent, and this team is more than willing to throw a lot of passes as they did with Burrow last season.

Boyd is the cheapest featured option in this offense, and I don't think that is very valid, especially when we talk about the gap between Boyd, Chase, and Higgins. Tee Higgins is coming off of an elite rookie season when Burrow was the QB, but Boyd is still the reliable, short-yardage target on this roster, and that hasn't changed. Boyd should be in for a massive year in a fun and young offense.

Baker Mayfield

When I am drafting QBs this season, I love going with a rookie like Justin Fields or Trey Lance, but this also means we need to take a more surefire veteran QB that will start each game barring injury. Baker Mayfield is one of my favorite guys to pair with these rookies because we have seen big games from Baker, and we should see the best Browns offense and team that we have seen in a very long time. Baker should provide upside and safety that is valuable when taking a risk on one of these rookie QBs.

Michael Carter

The unknowns of rookies and uncertain situations are often a good spot to target in season-long fantasy because they provide upside and often get better as the season goes along, heading into the playoffs. Michael Carter wasn't a first-round RB, but he might as well have been when we hear about his usage at the Jets' off-season workouts. Carter is not the only RB on the roster by any means, but they are treating the rookie as a starter right now. This is a great sign, and I think we could look back on Carter as having rookie seasons similar to much higher picks Javonte Williams and Travis Etienne.