Beanie Wells: Time to Jump Ship?

(Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

Going to the Wells too often would be a nice sight to see

Entering the 2009 fantasy football season, there were not a lot of rookies high on my cheat sheet. Unfortunately, Arizona Cardinals running back Chris Wells was one of them, and I snagged him as a RB3 or RB4 often.

Wells, with the help of the Bonini Curse (Madden and SI have nothing on me), has been a colossal bust.  So what’s a fantasy player to do?

Wells has rushed for 124 yards on 35 carries. He’s clicking along at 3.5 yards per attempt, and has one reception for seven yards. End zone trips equal a big, fat zero. Oh, and he has lost a fumble, too. He is on pace for about 400 yards rushing and no touchdowns!

For a guy drafted in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft , and a player that was expected to unseat Tim Hightower as the team’s feature back, there hasn’t been a lot for Wells to e-mail home about (hey, gotta change the old saying to keep up with the times). Blame a training camp injury if you desire, but the fact is, Wells is doing next to nothing for fantasy teams.

Hightower, on the other hand, has rushed for 158 yards on 51 carries (3.1 ypc) and three touchdowns. He also caught 29 balls for 228 yards. He hasn’t been special, but Wells hasn’t come close to pushing him for the starting job.

Hightower not being pushed for No. 1 job

In standard performance fantasy football scoring, Hightower ranks 21st overall (53 points), and Wells—if you can see far enough—ranks 71st with 10 points. He is surrounded by the likes of the great Garrett Wolfe (Chicago Bears ), Leonard Weaver (Philadelphia Eagles ) and Brian Leonard (Cincinnati Bengals ). Not really rushing out to pick up those other three backs, huh?

To make matters even worse, the oft-injured Wells is currently sporting a hip injury. While it isn’t believed to be serious, it’s just one more reason to have concerns.

So what do owners of Beanie, like myself, do?

Many fantasy football owners have already jumped ship. He’s owned in 31 percent of Yahoo! Sports leagues, 51.9 percent of ESPN leagues, and 56 percent of CBSSports.com leagues.

I reached out to our Arizona insider, who is also a fantasy football vet, to get his take on the situation. He, like many others, is sitting on Wells with hope of future growth within the offense.

Unfortunately, he feels it may not come until the final six weeks of the season.

The Cardinals may look to slowly work him into the mix at that time, much like they did with cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie . At that point, it may be too late if you’re currently struggling to find play-worthy running backs.

After seeing no more than seven carries during his first four games, the Cardinals fed him the rock 12 times during a Week Six thumping of the Seattle Seahawks . Unfortunately, he didn’t shine with his extra opportunities, as he had his second-worst yards-per-carry outing (2.4). Wells did see some touches early, so his extra carries were not purely to run out the clock.

Arizona Cardinals Schedule

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