32 Teams, 32 Sleepers: NFC South (Fantasy Football)

Chris got ragged on a little bit for selecting Steven Jackson as a “sleeper”, but he was right in doing so. So I’m going to take a page from his book. I’m not going to make up some reason why you should draft Michael Jenkins. Really, I don’t see the Falcons throwing the ball much more than they did in 2008 and Tony Gonzalez is going to cut into Jenkins’ production, rather than opening up opportunities for him. I’m not going to make a case for Jerious Norwood. He isn’t going to get much playing time. So instead, I’m going to discuss my love of Roddy White.

A fun fact about me is that I hated Michael Vick before it was cool. Vick loyalists insisted that he actually wasn’t disgustingly terrible and that he just had horrible WRs and TEs and so forth. Roddy White single-handedly proved them wrong (and proved me right) by putting up 1202 yards and 6 TDs with “luminaries” like Byron Leftwich, Joey Harrington and Chris Redman hurling the rock. He followed that up with another great season in 2008, totaling 1382 yards and 7 TDs, while also gaining serious rep points among fantasy writers.

White is an all-around WR, with speed, athleticism, big play ability and the hands of a fresh Gummy Bear. He has good chemistry with Matt Ryan, and will probably benefit from the presence of Tony Gonzalez, especially in the red zone. He should be tiered together with the likes of Steve Smith, Greg Jennings and Anquan Boldin and can be confidently drafted as a WR1 on your fantasy team.

The Carolina Panthers went from the middle of the NFL pack to being one of the most fearsome teams in the NFC last year. The Carolina management determined that the offense was good as-is, signing Jake Delhomme to a puzzlingly long extension, not adding any depth at WR and pushing their lethal duo of halfbacks. What Carolina didn’t think was good enough, though, was their defense. While the non-violent resistance of Julius Peppers was the major story of Carolina’s offseason, what wasn’t covered quite as much was Carolina’s scooping up defensive players with its first three picks in the Draft (Everette Brown, DE, at 43rd overall, Sherrod Martin, DB, at 59th and Corvey Irvin, DT, at 93rd), and the eight undrafted free agents brought in to fight for a spot on their defense. Carolina was 12th best in points allowed last season and has some very exploitable matchups. The Panthers defense, in all honesty, could end up being a top ten unit. If you’re like me and you’re not willing to buy high on the Steelers, Titans or Ravens, these guys should be on your list. When you consider the Packers, Jets, Redskins, Buccaneers and Dolphins are going ahead of them, there’s serious value here.

In 2006 and 2007, the New Orleans WR situation was best described as Marques Colston playing the role of a lion feasting upon a gazelle while Lance Moore, Devery Henderson, Robert Meachem and David Patten were the jackals waiting for the leftovers. While Colston sat out a good part of 2008 with a host of injuries, Lance Moore got his shot at the top of the food chain, and did fairly well, tallying 30 catches, 324 yards and 2 TDs. Even though Colston came back and promptly reasserted his dominance, Moore picked up the pace in the second half of the season, with 41 catches for 497 yards and 7 TDs from weeks 10-17 (11.5 ppg in standard scoring leagues).

While Moore is another guy who isn’t really a sleeper, he’s actually a strikingly strong value pick. Going around pick #87 in fantasy drafts, this mix of Hines Ward and Wes Welker is inexplicably being passed on for question-marks like Santana Moss, Donnie Avery and Jerricho Cotchery in fantasy drafts and is just barely ahead of Ted Ginn, Kevin Walter and Devin Hester. Moore is honest-to-goodness PPR gold, and is actually a decent WR2 or strong WR3 in such formats. He’s also an incredible buy-low, sell-high candidate for all you finance majors out there, with a mouth-watering first four weeks that include games against the Lions, Jets and Bills. Draft him.

You know what? Derrick Ward isn’t so good that he’s going to make Earnest Graham obsolete. Why Ward is going pick #68 on average while Graham is all the way down at #125, I’ll never know. But here we are. Earnest Graham averaged 4.3 ypc in 2008 and has hands soft enough to tally up some decent receiving stats. More importantly than anything else, you’ve got to think about the Tampa Bay offense. Jeff Garcia and Brian Griese actually tossed 560 passes last year. Think about that. They threw the ball more than Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Phil Rivers. This will not happen again. Even the biggest fan of Byron Leftwich and Luke McCown will agree.

So how about I pull out the calculator and come up with some estimates? The Bucs passed 562 times and ran 451 times in 2007. Let’s assume the Tampa QBs total 478 pass attempts (the same number of passes thrown by the run-first San Diego offense in 2008), which would add 82 rushing attempts to 2007’s total (that’s 533 rushes), assuming the same number of total offensive snaps. Warrick Dunn, Earnest Graham and Carnell Williams split 381 total rushing attempts in 2008. Let’s say there are 463 carries in 2009, split 45:45:10 between Graham, Ward and whoever ends up as the third RB. That would give Ward 217 carries. If he continues his career clip (4.1 ypc), that would give him a grand total of 891 yards rushing. Doing the same with receiving yards for RBs of the swashbuckling variety plays out to the tune of 246 yards receiving. By my calculations, that would work out to 1137 total yards. The TD breakdown is, obviously, far more difficult to calculate, but simply consider that TB has had Graham as its primary red zone halfback in the last two years when available.

Now, this is by no means a seriously reliable tally, and it assumes…well…a whole lot of stuff. Nonetheless, the potential is there for 1000 total yards and several TDs which is not a bad total for somebody available in the twelfth round. Consider him a solid matchup/bye week play in 2009, or a decent RB3 in deeper leagues.