Fantasy Football Breakdown: Predicting 2009 Overachievers

First and foremost, Happy Easter everyone! This is our special holiday edition, no contribution to your fantasy football fanaticism to give you an excuse to get away from carving the ham or your Easter Egg hunt and allow for you to have five minutes of fantasy bliss.

OK, I am getting ahead of myself here. I am not promising you the greatest fantasy article of all time. But what I am offering you is a chance, even though you are older, to be delivered a Bruno Boys Easter Basket of sorts. We will have all sorts of candy in there, some Sour, some Sweet, and some Marshmallowy.

This three-part column is a collection of my own personal opinions on who will be Sour (players that I feel will under-perform their draft position this year), who will be Sweet (players that I feel will play better than their draft position this year), and who will be marshallowy (players that I feel will bounce back from an unsatisfying 2008 campaign).

So go tell your parents, husband/wife, kids, or whomever to read some Bruno Boys Fantasy Football content before you enjoy the rest of your Easter Sunday. This won't take but a few minutes of your time and it should help give you some food for thought so you can keep preparing all year round for the 2009 fantasy football draft that will be sneaking up in four quick months.

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The Sweet – Dictionary.com definition of sweet is, “having the taste of flavor characteristic of sugar, honey, etc.” While that is true, I like to believe that the Bruno Boys definition would be more like, “a player having out-produced the predictions of many folks.”

There are a few players that jump out at me. Starting with the quarterback position, there are a few players that I really feel will out-produce their draft positions in rewarding ways.

The Lions' Daunte Culpepper will go late in 2009 fantasy football drafts or start the season as a free agent, yet he will have the potential to be a solid backup on any fantasy roster.

He has one of the main NFL targets in wide receiver Calvin Johnson, and he has management backing him, as it finally looks like they really do want to build the offensive line. Plus, Culpepper is teaming up once again with offensive coordinator Scott Linehan from his outstanding Minnesota Vikings days, so we know there could be some deep bombs to Megatron on the horizon.

On top of that, he has lost almost 30 pounds already from last year's playing weight and looks determined to come back and be a productive quarterback.

Another quarterback that I feel will far out-produce his draft position is quarterback Kyle Orton. Much like Culpepper, don't expect Orton to all of a sudden become a QB1 option, but he has the supporting cast to produce at a high level.

The wide receiver weapons lead by Brandon Marshall and Eddie Royal should give Orton the confidence needed to produce at a high level. Expect him to be able to finish with numbers that blow away his 2008 performance of 2,972 passing yards and 18 touchdowns.

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At the running back position, after a few down seasons because of injury, LaDainian Tomlinson is supposedly feeling better than he has in a few years health-wise and returns to a veteran-led team that will be able to keep the opposing defenses honest enough for Tomlinson to remind us how special he really can be.

He very well could be slipping into the later part of the RB1 tier, and my prediction here is that if he does so in your league, pounce on him.

Another one that I like at the running back position is Steven Jackson. He showed flashes last year of what he can do when healthy, but the problem is he also was banged up between those games.

After a few years being hindered by endless injuries, the Rams will need to replace the offense lost by star wide receiver Torry Holt. I have this gut feeling that the amount of screen passes coming to Jackson out of the back field will be plentiful, and if he stays injury free this will be his finest season in the NFL.

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For the wide receiver/tight end positions, the candidates that I feel should out-produce where they are drafted are Reggie Wayne, who very well could slip into lower-end WR1 territory. With the release of Marvin Harrison, the ball has to be flung somewhere, and Wayne should see an increase in targets from the 2008 season.

Randy Moss is another prime candidate to have a much better 2009 fantasy football campaign over 2008. It is hard to predict where he will be drafted, as Tom Brady is expected to be ready, which may possibly make Moss overvalued, but from where we are standing at this moment, he is a wide receiver that I definitely would keep my eye on.

As far as tight ends go, two injury bounce back possibilities are Jeremy Shockey and Kellen Winslow. Both have a track record of producing as a TE1 and my gut feeling is that at least one of these two, if not both, will rebound and help plenty of fantasy football squads out in 2009.

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