Fantasy Football By The Numbers: Preseason Predictions Shot Down

(Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Fantasy football owners and pundits, including this one who fits in both categories, sometimes make mistakes.

Fantasy football owners get ideas in their heads. The ideas make sense on paper. They sound good in theory. But things do not always play out like you would expect in the NFL.

So which players have not been following the fantasy script during the opening weeks of the season? Here is the list.

Prediction – The Dallas defense/special teams was going to be one of the top 10 to own in fantasy football, if not one of the top five best.

After being one of the premier fantasy defenses in 2008, thanks to leading the league in sacks, the Cowboys added linebacker Keith Brooking and defensive tackle Igor Olshansky in the offseason, so it was generally assumed they would remain an above-average defense in 2009.

Yet in the first two games Dallas’ defense is the only unit to have zero sacks, zero interceptions, and zero fumble recoveries. And you thought the only zeroes in Dallas were in the check owner Jerry Jones wrote to build his new scoreboard.

Some of the Dallas D highlight

1. Allowing New York Giants receivers Steve Smith and Mario Manningham, not exactly the next coming of Swann and Stallworth, to both catch 10 passes against them in Week 2.

2. Letting injury-prone Byron Leftwich riddle them for 276 passing yards and a touchdown toss and Carnell "Cadillac" Williams run for 97 yards and a score in Week 1 when they played at Tampa Bay.

DeMarcus Ware, Terence Newman, and Jay Ratliff have been quieter than the crowd at a Jacksonville Jaguars game. For a defense with so much talent and so much money invested in it, you would think an occasional sack and turnover could be created.

The good news is the schedule makers set up Dallas with back-to-back-to-back games against Carolina, Denver, and Kansas City in the next three weeks, so the sack and turnover shutout should end quickly, probably as soon as Jake Delhomme drops back for his first pass on Monday night.

Prediction – Berrian was primed for the first 1,000-yard year of his career.

If Berrian can post back-to-back 900-yard seasons with erratic arms like Rex Grossman and Tarvaris Jackson throwing to him, he should be able to reach the 1,000-yard plateau with Brett Favre at quarterback, right? It sounded believable to me, but I thought Erik Estrada really did have his own line of sunglasses, too.

But while Berrian was a long-range threat last season—20.1 yards per catch—this season he is no threat at all. Berrian went catchless in Minnesota’s first game and had six receptions for just 46 yards (7.7 ypc for those scoring at home).

What’s the cause of this? The first is Favre. He has been reduced to a dinker-and-dunker thanks to his shoulder problem and old age. So it is hard for Berrian to average 20 yards a catch when Favre has trouble throwing the ball 20 yards.

The second is rookie Percy Harvin, who seems to fly on Favre’s radar more than Berrian. Harvin has touchdowns in each of the first two games, and even though his other numbers are not all that and a bag of chips (eight receptions for 77 yards), they are better than Berrian’s.

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