Most Frustrating Fantasy Players to Own-  08/20/12

Most Frustrating Fantasy Players to Own

Houdini's Least Favorite Guys...

Mike Vick – Vick is a player who I have never had and never want on my team.  I really can’t understand what the fascination is with Vick.  He has never been a great fantasy quarterback.  He has only thrown for more than 3,000 yards twice in his career.  His career best in TD is only 21 throwing the ball.  I understand that he runs the ball and can score a lot of TD running like he did in 2010 when had 9.  To me he is also a quarterback with a career completion rate of 56%.  All of that to me adds up to an injury risk for a guy who can put up some highlight plays, but one who will never be the cornerstone to a winning fantasy season.

Jahvid Best – Best is a dynamic player who can score from anywhere on the field.  He is also one of the most concussion prone players in the NFL.  There is no denying his potential to score points in Lion’s high flying offense.  Best is a threat on the ground and through the air, but the fact is he has suffered multiple concussions and even if he is cleared to play he is a major risk.  Best is going to be concerned about the concussions when he does get on the field and that in turn could affect the way he approaches running the ball.  There is always the threat that the next concussion could be the one that puts him out all together, Merrill Hodge.  One of the first rules to building a successful fantasy team is having a team of healthy players.  There are many players with injury red flags on them, but Jahvid Best has an injury red billboard.

DeSean Jackson – Jackson is a player who burned me badly last year.  His last 11 games of the season failed to produce even one 100 yard game, not to mention that he only posted 4 TD’s all season.  The mistake I made with Jackson is that I believed that he could be a #1 WR in Fantasy, which he can’t.  He is more of a specialist and a deep threat but I am not going to make the mistake this year thinking he is anything more than that.  He will have the opportunity to win a week or two for your team, but he will more likely be a guy who comes up just short when you need him the most.

Andre Johnson – I was still into his hype last season and boy did I pay the price.  I will be fair to Johnson because his first 3 weeks of the season he had me feeling pretty good, until his injuries caught up to him and he missed 9 of the final 12 games of the season.  The fact is as great as Johnson has been in his career he will still never be the TD beast you need him to be, as he still has yet to break double digits in TD.  This year with he is at the advanced age of 31 and the fact that he had another knee surgery in May have him off my radar this year.  Johnson is the easy rule of being a player that will get over drafted due to his past performance and name recognition. 

Greg Jennings – Jennings is a player that had a couple of great seasons and the thought was that with Aaron Rodgers throwing him the ball his numbers would take a big jump.  The numbers did jump…off a cliff.  The fact that Rodgers is his QB actually worked against him, because Rodgers will throw the ball to the open receiver and Jennings was seeing a lot more double coverage due to his past performance.  The fact is that Rodgers spreads the ball to just about everyone on the Packers offense and the players who are in single coverage are going to get the ball.  For me Jennings has too many other players on the same field with him to make plays that he is going to be a great team player, but I am not going to make him a #1 WR on my fantasy team. 

d-Rx®'s most bitch slappable players...

Josh Freeman –  I want to start this by saying, I bet Josh is a sweet kid and a hard worker, and I guarantee he will be better this season than he was last year. But, until further notice, I’m not drafting this player anymore. In 2010 he was a high value darling pick when he tallied a 25 TD season and had 5 TDs in the championship game for owners that had the balls to start him in such a huge game. Last year, he had just 4 games with more TDs than interceptions.  Rex Grossman and Matt Moore had as many TDs as Josh (16). His pass attempts went over 500 for the first time in his career, but that was about the lone positive thing that the 24 year old Tampa Bay QB did last year. Greg Schiano doesn’t want the Bucs to rely on Josh throwing them to victories, and the addition of rookie RB Doug Martin finally gives them a chance to use a balanced attack. Josh will be better, but he’s not a fantasy starter IMO. 

Hakeem Nicks – Let me start by saying as a fantasy owner of Hakeem Nicks last year you didn’t get to count the 28 catches for 444 yards and 4 TDs in the Giants Super Bowl run in last year’s playoffs. He looked like the guy that I drafted with the first pick of the 3^rd round in the post season when it didn’t do anything for my fantasy squad. Besides 2 huge games and another couple solid outings, during the regular season, he was as painful a player to own as I can ever remember. In my fantasy football Super Bowl he had 1 catch for 20 yards – barf! Don’t get me wrong, Nicks is a baller, but he’s always banged up. He’ll play in the game, but he’s never 100%. He’s out right now with a broken foot, and he’ll be hobbling on the field of week 1 and get the start, but he’ll be a fraction of his healthy self, it’s always the same. Until he can stay healthy for 5 straight games, I’m staying away.

Santonio Holmes –  Santonio is currently my least favorite player in the league. Even now with T.O. signing with the Seahawks, Holmes is still be my #1 most hated guy in the NFL. He’s over-rated, he’s a punk, he’s over-paid, he plays on my least favorite team and that’s just a few of the things that have come to my mind. In his first 6 NFL season, Holmes has only one season where he has caught more than 55 balls (79 catches in 2009). In those 6 seasons, he only has one with over 1,000 yards. He always goes high in fantasy drafts and never produces. Last year, Holmes finish 30^th in fantasy points for WRs, that is lower than Nate Washington and Jabbar Gaffney. For some reason, the Jets decided to pay him like a top 10 wide out, but don’t buy into stupidity yourself, stay away from the ex-captain of the Jets - #10.  

Anquan Boldin – Boldin is a beast. He’s one of my favorite players of the ‘00s in the NFL. But his best days are far behind him. Flacco is progressing nicely, and Quan will benefit because of it, but he’s not the same route runner he used to be. Like Holmes and Nicks before him, Boldin is a nicked up WR. He’ll always play, but he’s hurting your fantasy squad and his own team many times doing so. Boldin played in 14 games last season and finished #37 in fantasy points for wide receivers with 106.7 points. He seems to go ahead of guys that have superior upside, and the same will happen again this year – I’d rather have a guy that can explode than have Anquan Boldin, who isn’t top 15 anymore even if he has his finest year as a Raven. I learned my lesson on his first year as a Raven, and I’ve been smart enough to stay away ever since, the fact is Quan Boldin is the new Derrick Mason. 

Vernon Davis – Vernon is the least exciting top 10 TE around. Other than that playoff game sideline cry fest, he didn’t get it done last year. 6 TDs last year are the norm, but he’s never had a 1,000 yard season. With Manningham and Moss in the mix, and Crabtree looking ready to arrive along with Alex Smith, it’s questionable where Vernon will fit in this mix, it’s either big time, and beast of burden. I’m not into him this year at all, but that is because he’s been on my team a few times over the years and I have never had a solid thing to say about the experience. He’s a likeable guy and I root for him and the 49ers, but he’s a really let down in the boxscores on Sundays. He shouldn’t be, but believe me, he’ll score just around 120 fantasy points this year, good for 7.5 points a week. Snoozetown at a position that is peaking at the moment.  

Dawgmaticå has no place for these guys...

Tony Romo – Don’t get me wrong, as Romo has indeed been a Top-10 fantasy quarterback for the past six seasons, but to me, the guy is easily the most frustrating of the five players I have listed here. Every pre-season I have to hear the same old song and dance about how Romo will “break into the Top-5 this season” or how “the Cowboys offense is so stacked!” or “look at all the weapons Romo has to throw to” and all that crap. Each year, so many fantasy owners go into their drafts with their minds set on snagging Bunch-o’-Baloney Tony and usually do so earlier than they should for fear he’ll slip away. At the end of the season, those same fantasy owners look at the final stats and see Romo once again sitting down towards the bottom of the Top-10 QBs while failing to improve on his overall points-per-game average in the slightest bit. I was fooled by the hype one time a few years back, but I quickly learned that Tony Romo is what he is and no matter who the Cowboys surround him with; he’ll disappoint/fail to live up to expectations every time.

Steven Jackson – The frustration that lies in Steven Jackson as a fantasy player can be summed up in a single word—Touchdowns. For the bulk of the eight seasons Jackson has been in the league, he’s been considered by many to be amongst the Top-5 RBs in the league in terms of overall talent. However, his unlimited capabilities as a running back have really only come across in his fantasy statistics just once—back in 2006 when he put up 1,528 rushing yards and 13 rushing TDs to go along with his 90 catches for 806 yards and three TDs. Since then (2007-11), he’s averaged a mere 5.4 rushing TDs per year despite going over 1,000 yards in each of those seasons. The yardage is understandably intriguing and forces you to think about grabbing him in case he finally DOES break out of his Touchdown Slump, but I won’t be the one to do it. He’s not a bad RB2 as he’s finished between 9^th and 15^th in fantasy points the last five years, but I usually try to reserve that spot for a guy with upside…which I just don’t see in an aging S-Jax.

Shonn Greene – In his rookie season back in 2009, Shonn Greene had three 100-yard games with two of them coming in the playoffs. With all the inherent pressure of playoff football, one had to surmise that Greene was destined for quite a nice fantasy career. Oh how we fantasy owners are SO quick to judge when searching for that next big thing. In the 31 games he’s played in SINCE those two playoffs games, Greene has merely matched his rookie-season total by putting up just three more 100-yard games (none of which were over 129 yards) with only one of them including a touchdown. Talk about fantasy frustration! (More like suicide-inducing fantasy failure) And as long as it was mentioned, Greene also has a miniscule 10 total touchdowns during his three-year career, BY FAR the fewest number of TDs out of the 23 running backs who have had 500+ rushes during that span (the next lowest is Steven Jackson—mentioned above—with 16).

Michael Crabtree – The top-rate talent is there—we all saw it back when he playing at Texas Tech. The measurables/intangibles are all there as he stands nearly 6’2”, 214-pounds with some of the best hands in the game along with being a great route-runner with above-average speed. What we HAVEN’T seen yet are the statistics to back it all up. Part of his inability to live up to the hype as of yet can be blamed on the 49ers heavy run-based offensive system, but not all of it. He would never admit it (which is part of the problem), but Crabtree is one of the biggest WR Divas in the game today and it has thus far translated onto the field. 2012 will mark his fourth season in the league, yet KingCrab15 still hasn’t seen a pre-season snap due to a variety of diva-like symptoms. I DO believe that in one of these fantasy years, Crabtree will break out of his own self-created mold and become the stud he was predicted to be coming out of college, but unless it’s in a round somewhere in the double-digits, my fantasy picks are all way too valuable to waste on a hope and a prayer.

Jermichael Finley – The Packers coaching staff, players, and even Jermichael Finley himself have all predicted a breakout season for him the past few years, but for assorted reasons, it just hasn’t happened. In 2010, it was injury. Last season, from what has been circulated, he simply wasn’t in sync with quarterback Aaron Rodgers from the get-go after not having an offseason to prepare. He also had a lingering case of the drop-sies, which may or may not continue into the future. His talent is undeniable, and like with Crabtree above, I DO believe he’ll rise into fantasy stardom one of these years. All the same, with the plethora of gifted options at Rodgers’ disposal within that Packers offense, the week-to-week inconsistency that will accompany Finley would frustrate me too much to take a chance at guessing which year his breakout will be.

by Houdini, Dawgmaticå & d-Rx®

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- 08/20/12