I Kid You Not: reviewing last year's sleepers and snoozers

I said Jason Campbell would have a good season last year. Well, I got other things right, anyway.

It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong.
But I happen to be of the opinion that it takes an even bigger man to publish an article outlining some of the ways in which he was wrong, as long as such an article was really just part of an elaborate plan to also point out some of the ways in which he was exceedingly right, and therefore awesome.
I am talking, of course, about my fantasy football sleepers and snoozers predictions from last year, an article highlighting some of the players I thought you should target in your draft and others I thought you should avoid.
I went into some detail about why I thought what I thought about each player, and backed it up to some degree by drafting my two fantasy football teams last season with those thoughts in mind.
This year, I figured it could be fun to look back and see how my predictions panned out. It turns out I was right on some, wrong on some, and pretty close on the rest—which is about average for any of the national fantasy football writers who get paid to dissect football statistics and then graciously walk us through the results of their predictions from the past year.
We’ll look at what I said, whether or not it came true, and what the overall result of the prediction was. And for the specific numbers (points, rankings, etc.) I’m going by my ESPN.com fantasy football leagues, which have 12 teams each but only have a couple of minor variations from standard scoring.
So let’s get started—here are my sleepers and snoozers from last year, and the results of their fantasy football seasons.

Sleepers
Quarterbacks
Jason Campbell, Oakland Raiders
I predicted: He’d be better than Jamarcus Russell (true), he’d be accurate (kind of true), that the Raiders would not win the Super Bowl (definitely true) and that he’d put up solid numbers (not entirely true).
He finished the season ranked as the No. 25 quarterback in scoring with 146 points (nearly 200 behind No. 1 QB Tom Brady’s 343) and got benched in favor of Bruce Gradkowski—but in the 11 games he started and finished, he averaged almost 13.3 points per game, which would have made him the No. 15 QB for the season. Not great, but not terrible.
Result: Close, but no cigar

Matthew Stafford, Detroit Lions
I predicted: We would see more than just glimpses of his tremendous ability (true) and that his toughness would get him through a healthy season (not true). Also, that he wouldn’t win the MVP (true) but that you could do a lot worse in the late rounds (definitely true).
He finished in a tie with Rex Grossman as the No. 37 QB last season, but it was definitely due to injury. He only played in three games last year because of a shoulder injury, but in the two he completed, he scored 31 and 26 points against the Redskins and Jets, respectively.
Result: Would have been right if he’d been healthy. And somewhere, Chad Pennington is nodding sadly.

Running Backs
Ronnie Brown, Miami Dolphins
I predicted: That I’m biased when it comes to Miami Dolphins players (oh heavens yes that’s true), that Brown had a chance of getting hurt during the season (he played in all but one game) and that he’d be a better pick in the fourth round than Justin Forsett (yep) or Jerome Harrison (double yep).
Brown was the No.31-ranked RB in the league last year with 128.5 points, well short of No. 1 Arian Foster’s 356. Brown did have big weeks against the Bills in week one (15 points), the Ravens in week nine (17.5 points) and the Bills again in week 15 (9.5 points), but he was frustratingly inconsistent, and was summarily released in the off-season. He’ll be a nice backup for LeSean McCoy in Philadelphia this year, but I doubt he’ll have much fantasy relevance.
Result: Not really even close on this one. Allegiance to a team is a dangerous thing in fantasy sports.

Cadillac Williams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
I predicted: Nobody on the Tampa offense would be great (wrong-o), that Caddy would show some promise when he made it on the field (correct, but he didn’t get much time) and that nobody had ever made a car-related joke when talking about a guy with the nickname “Cadillac” (pretty sure that one’s still good).
He finished in the top 40 running backs, but his name falls into the space between fellow backups C.J. Spiller and Jason Snelling, so he really wasn’t worth drafting. Meanwhile, rookie LeGarrette Blount came out of nowhere to become another one of the exciting young stars on the Buccaneer offense, essentially relegating Cadillac to the garage (didn’t see that one coming, did you?).
Result: Yeah, let’s just move on.

Wide Receivers
Chris Chambers, Kansas City Chiefs
I predicted: That there wouldn’t be much excitement from the Chiefs’ offense (false), the receivers would struggle (to the tune of Dwayne Bowe finishing as the No. 3 WR in the league—safe to say I missed that one), and that Chambers would get his fair share of chances in the passing game (fair is a relative term, so—oh who am I kidding, I was way off).
Chambers didn’t even make it into the top 100 receivers last year, so it’s safe to say that he shouldn’t have even sniffed a chance at your starting lineup.
Result: I apologize profusely.

Josh Morgan, San Francisco 49ers
I predicted: Pretty much the same things I said about Chambers (none of which came true) and I implied that Morgan’s quarterback, Alex Smith, would be better since he actually played in college (he did play in college, unlike Kansas City quarterback Matt Cassel—but Cassel definitely outplayed Smith last year).
Morgan finished with a grand total of 98 fantasy points, a far cry from No. 1 WR Roddy White and his 256.
Result: So much for going with my gut feelings.

Derrick Mason, Baltimore Ravens
I predicted: That everybody would be “all ga-ga” for Mason’s teammate, Anquan Boldin (true), but that Mason would actually get more open looks because of all the attention on the offense’s other stars (kind of true). Also, that he would be a great pick in the sixth of seventh round (definitely true).
Mason was decent—like I said then, not a top WR or anything, but a guy you could use with a solid degree of confidence. He finished with 148.5 points, good for the No. 32 WR spot, just one behind Boldin (who finished with 151 points).
Result: Things are starting to pick up—I think that one counts as a “correct” prediction.

Tight End
Jermichael Finley, Green Bay Packers
I predicted: That I agreed with most experts on Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers having a monster year (understatement of the year), and that Finley would be the recipient of lots of touchdowns (
Finley battled a few injuries, but for the most part, he was nearly unstoppable. The Packers put up one of the best statistical seasons on offense and hoisted the Lombardi Trophy when all was said and done. Finley played a key role and made lots of fantasy owners very happy in the process.
Result: Nailed it.

Snoozers
Quarterback
Donovan McNabb, Washington Redskins
I predicted: That he would struggle in a new system with a new team (correct) and that he’d end up with a decent season, but nothing to write home about (also correct).
McNabb finished as the No. 23-ranked QB last year, totaling 160 points, which was six fewer points than the incomparable Jon Kitna. That’s never a good sign.
Result: Right on the money.

Carson Palmer, Cincinnati Bengals
I predicted: Despite how great the Cincinnati offense looked on paper going into the season, I said Palmer would struggle against tough defenses like Pittsburgh and Baltimore (true) and that the overall health of the team would suffer because of the hotshot wide receivers he had to deal with (also true).
Palmer finished as the No. 12 QB with 246 points, behind Matt Cassel but ahead of Joe Flacco. He was decent, but struggled mightily against the Ravens (five points), the Jets (four points), the Steelers (four points again) and the Browns of all teams (eight points). When the season ended, he made it clear that he no longer wished to play for the Bengals, so he followed through on his threat to retire when the team refused to trade or release him. Somewhere, Terrell Owens is doing situps in his driveway and nodding proudly.
Result: Decent doesn’t win championships, so we’re counting this one correct.

Running Back
C.J. Spiller, Buffalo Bills
I predicted: People, especially in the greater Buffalo area, would be excited about Spiller’s speed (and they were), but Spiller himself would have trouble getting on the field with Marshawn Lynch and Fred Jackson ahead of him on the depth chart (true, even after Lynch got traded to Seattle).
Spiller showed that he’s talented, but couldn’t do anything special enough to unseat Jackson, the team’s rushing leader from the prior season. His 109 fantasy points ranked him No. 38, ahead of the aforementioned Cadillac Williams and just behind fellow backup Tim Hightower.
Result: Correct, with bonus points for giving Bills fans one more reason to feel sad.

Joseph Addai, Indianapolis Colts
I predicted: His age, the competition of a younger back and the lack of rushing attempts included in the Indianapolis attack would leave him without much to work with (somewhat true).
Addai started strong, with nine points or more in five of his first six games (including a 20-point performance against Jacksonville), but suffered a neck injury that kept him off the field for eight weeks. His average for the eight games he did play was a reasonable 10.9 points, but with the nagging injuries, the lack of breakaway speed and the pass-heavy offense he toils in, he didn’t have much upside.
Result: The long absence due to injury left us with a small sample size, but that alone kind of proves what I was getting at. We’ll call it mostly correct.

Wide Receiver
Chad Ochocinco, Cincinnati Bengals
I predicted: Much of the same as what I predicted for his quarterback, Carson Palmer, along with Ochocinco’s advanced age, narcissism and easily frustrated nature combining to make it a rough year for the former Mr. Johnson (all true).
Ochocinco looked like he’d rather be playing soccer, or learning how to dance, or riding a rodeo bull—all things he found time to do during the lockout this year, rather than, you know, practicing football—than having to gator-arm another floater from Palmer on a crossing pattern. His 135.5 points placed him at No. 38 for the WR position, while his teammate, Terrell Owens, posted a very respectable 188 points, good for the No. 16 spot.
Result: Apparently guys who change their last names to match their jersey numbers don’t think ahead very much. Also, I got this one exactly right.

Miles Austin, Dallas Cowboys
I predicted: A similar fate for the latest ex-boyfriend of Kim Kardashian as I saw for McNabb—that he wouldn’t be terrible, but that he’d have trouble living up to the considerable hype around him (arguably true).
And he wasn’t terrible. He finished with 191.5 points, good for No. 15 on the WR list, and put up some incredible games early in the season. The problem was that his starting quarterback broke a collarbone in week seven, and that Kitna guy we talked about earlier was trying to heave the ball in his general direction. He got the job done, which is about what I thought would happen, but if he’d had the luxury of a legitimate QB for an entire season, he would have been pretty good.
Result: Only by luck did I end up seeming even a little bit correct.

Any Receivers From The Pittsburgh Steelers
I predicted: That the six-game suspension of Fatty McFatterson (or as you know him, Ben Roethlisberger—my wife is from Seattle, so we don’t really have flattering nicknames for the Steelers in our home) and the porous offensive line would mean few opportunities for the Pittsburgh wideouts (sadly, not true at all).
Hines Ward had some really good games, putting up 129.5 points, good for No. 44 on the list, in the process. But the breakout star was Mike Wallace (I still get a mental image of the guy from 60 Minutes running around on the field), who racked up 222 points and finished as the No. 7 receiver last year.
Result: In the same way that loyalty to a team can get you into fantasy trouble, hating a team too much can also blind you to the reality of the situation. Not that I’ll ever be a fan of Mr. McFatterson.

Tight End
Greg Olsen, Chicago Bears
I predicted: His quarterback would have trouble distinguishing his team from his opponents (to the tune of 16 interceptions) and the offensive system of Mike Martz would prevent the tight end from seeing much of the ball (Greg Olsen, meet Roland Williams).
Olsen had his good weeks (14.5 points against the Packers in week three) and his bad weeks (zeroes in weeks five and six, and only half a point each in weeks 13, 14 and 16), but the bad definitely outweighed the good. He didn’t produce more than 4.5 points in any week after week 12, and when you’re trying to make your league’s playoffs, that is incredibly frustrating.
Result: Correct, and I didn’t even have to drag Ernie Conwell into it.
* * *
I hope you enjoyed breaking down last year’s successes and failures with me, and I hope we all learned something about fantasy football. Namely, that nobody really knows what’s going to happen, so the best thing you can do is watch the games, read the analysis and come up with your own opinions on what you think gives you the best chance to win.
And if you want one more opinion, here’s a short list of players I would like on my team this year and players who I want to avoid.

Players I want—QB: Michael Vick, Josh Freeman; RB: Jamaal Charles, LeSean McCoy, LeGarrette Blount, Daniel Thomas, Tim Hightower; WR: Calvin Johnson, Vincent Jackson, Pierre Garcon, Danny Amendola, Jacoby Ford; TE: Antonio Gates (enough to spend a third round pick), Jimmy Graham, Brandon Pettigrew, Visanthe Shiancoe.

Players I’ll try to avoid—QB: Matt Schaub, Jay Cutler, David Garrard, Kyle Orton; RB: Chris Johnson, Frank Gore, Ryan Mathews, anyone on the Panthers, anyone on the Patriots; WR: Dez Bryant, Jeremy Maclin, Brandon Lloyd, Steve Johnson, Brandon Marshall; TE: Owen Daniels, Marcedes Lewis, Zach Miller, Tony Gonzalez.

If you agree or disagree and you’d like to tell me why, send me an e-mail to sports@valleycenter.com anytime and I’d be happy to discuss your thoughts on the matter.
And like I told you last year—take this advice, go forth, and dominate your league.
Or wonder whether or not I gave you a bunch of false leads just to throw off any of the other owners in my league who might be reading this column. Maybe I’m giving good advice, or maybe I’m watching out for my own interests. I will let you decide.

I Kid You Not--fantasty football draft strategy

Should you grab quarterback Michael Vick with your first pick? Depends on your strategy...

You’ve enjoyed your summer.
You’ve eaten your hot dogs at family picnics, you’ve gone to the beach, and you’ve even found the time to avoid doing anything resembling hard work.
But now that August is here again, it’s time to shift our collective minds back into gear to tackle the really important things once again.
And obviously, that begins with preparing for your fantasy football draft.
In years past, I’ve shared my thoughts about sleepers and snoozers—or if you prefer layman’s terms, guys you want and guys you don’t.
This year, in part because of the recently-resolved NFL lockout, and in even larger part because of the aforementioned summer plans of eating hot dogs and avoiding hard work, I’m not going to do that.
Instead, I’ve decided to help you tackle your overall draft strategy. In the end, it kind of doesn’t matter what players you have—so much of the game is luck, plus you can easily go to about 84 different places online to get “expert” advice, and part of what makes fantasy football fun is rooting for the guys you like, so go ahead and draft the guys you like—so instead of talking about specific players, let’s look at some options for how your team could look once the drafting is over.
It never hurts to have a plan, especially when you come to the sudden realization that you’re the only guy (or girl!) in your league who doesn’t have one, and you start re-thinking that decision to draft T.J. Houshmandzadeh last year (even though you just couldn’t resist quoting that ESPN commercial).
All slight variations aside, there are five directions you can take your fantasy football team on draft day, and it pretty much comes down to what you do with your first three or four picks. Let’s dive in and see what we can discover.

Quarterback
The strategy here is to grab a quarterback with your first pick, no matter who else is on the board. If you’re picking in the top five, you can land Michael Vick and simultaneously bookmark WebMD so you know exactly how serious every tweaked ankle really is. If you’re outside the top five, you can hope Aaron Rodgers didn’t just have the best season of his life last year, or that Drew Brees plays better than his haircut makes him look.
Pros: My favorite sportswriter, Bill Simmons, once said that having a crappy fantasy QB is like driving a four-cylinder car. Yeah, it works, but it just isn’t a whole lot of fun. And if you’re into having fun with your fantasy football team, then you should probably help the rest of us convince that one guy in every league who takes it way too seriously. You know—the guy who writes about fantasy football for the local newspaper every summer. Oh wait…
Plus, if you look at the statistics (always dangerous, I know), you can see that the difference between a great QB and a mediocre QB is bigger than the difference between the top players at other positions and their mediocre counterparts. If math is your thing, this might be something to pay attention to.
Cons: If your fun, six-cylinder QB tweaks an ankle, bruises a shoulder, gets his head slammed into the turf, or just flat-out stinks like a redneck barbecue, you’re stuck with a nightmare all season. A lot of pressure gets packed into that one pick.
Plus, you almost have to tag-team this strategy with the “make sure you get the best tight end available” strategy so you can maximize the whole point-differential thing. And unless you want to draft a tight end with your third pick, that might be difficult.

Running Back
A strategy as old as the game itself—running backs win fantasy football championships. The strategy is to grab a stud RB who can carry your team to the title.
Pros: Running backs get the ball consistently, which is what you want in fantasy sports. There’s nothing worse than suffering through a feast-or-famine-that’s-mostly-famine season with a streaky QB or WR threatening to obliterate your lineup every Sunday. Well, that redneck barbecue might be worse, but let’s just move on.
Cons: The days of Earl Campbell, Eric Dickerson, Emmitt Smith, Curtis Martin, Marshall Faulk, Priest Holmes, Jamal Lewis and LaDanian Tomlinson are well behind us, no matter what Tomlinson fans try to tell you this year. Coaches these days worry about running backs like they’re used cars—nobody wants to have to get a new one when the old one breaks down. So a stud running back gets maybe 80% of his team’s carries, while a decent running back gets maybe 70% of the action. Not to mention the trend of more passing in the game than ever before.

Wide Receivers
The NFL is a passing league! Run-heavy offenses died out with Curly Lambeau and the leather helmet! Airing it out not only wins games, it keeps the crowds coming back! Exclamation points are great for emphasizing a point!
This strategy involves going after wide receivers with your first two picks, then worrying about everything else. If you have a mid- to late-round pick, this could be intriguing.
Pros: You lock up studs at one position, hopefully avoiding injuries and essentially forgetting about those two slots in your lineup for the rest of the year. Not bad for those who like some degree of peace of mind.
Plus, there are always players who make surprise leaps to fantasy relevance every year, so when you lose your first three matchups, you have the waiver priority to snatch up this year’s steals.
Cons: The rest of your team is awful, and you find yourself asking questions like, “Who sees more third-down action for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Deji Karim or Greg Jones?” And that, I assure you, is not a place you want to be in December.

One Of Each
The thought here is to spread the wealth—grab a running back, then a quarterback, then a receiver, then a tight end, then running backs and receivers until the last two rounds.
Pros: It evens out your team a little bit and doesn’t leave big gaps. This is a nice strategy for people who like folding laundry and alphabetizing bookshelves in their spare time.
Cons: You can’t cover all the gaps, and if you follow a pattern too closely, you miss out on chances to snag a sleeper that other owners either forget about or don’t have room for.

Best Available
This is almost an actual NFL draft strategy, in that NFL owners throw around the “he was the best guy available” excuse when they don’t know what they’re doing and just grab the first name they find under the empty pizza boxes in the draft room.
Pros: You’re getting the best player available at any given moment. It never hurts to have good players.
Cons: You might end up with seven good wide receivers and a headache trying to figure out which ones to start each week. And when the later rounds start whizzing by, it gets harder and harder to know who the best player actually is, so there’s kind of a lot of guesswork that I don’t think any of us is qualified to do.
* * *
Hopefully this helps you make up your mind about how to strategize for your fantasy football draft this year.
Because if you don’t spend the time thinking about this stuff now, then you’ll probably end up actually getting something productive done, and we definitely can’t have that.
And be sure to share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment or sending me an e-mail to sports@valleycenter.com.

VC Grad James Johnson Ready For Sophomore Season At University Of Washington

Heading into his sophomore year at the University of Washington, Valley Center High School graduate James Johnson has plenty to be excited about this football season.
Johnson was named The Roadrunner’s Newsmaker of the Year in 2008 after a stellar senior season at VCHS, in which he caught 57 passes for 1,261 yards and 17 touchdowns. As a Jaguar, Johnson broke the CIF San Diego Section record for most receiving yards in a high school career with 2,930 in four years as a varsity starter.
In his first season with the Huskies, Johnson made 39 receptions for 422 yards and three touchdowns, including a 17-yard touchdown on his first collegiate reception. He also helped Washington to a thrilling 16-13 win over No. 3-ranked USC last season by hauling in seven catches for 72 yards, and was named to the All-Pac 10 Freshman team for his outstanding first season.
This year, Johnson says he learned a lot from his freshman season, and that it has helped him gain a deeper understanding of the game.
“I’ve learned a lot about the business aspect of the game,” he says. “What I mean by that is that I see the way the coaches constantly stress competition at each position to make everyone better. In college, everyone’s much more equal that way. And you have to have a lot more mental toughness at this level—a lot more than in high school.”
Along with the mental toughness, Johnson will need physical toughness to bounce back from an ankle injury that kept him out of preseason mini camps, and allowed him to return to practice only recently.
“I missed a couple of weeks; it was a pretty bad strain,” he says. “But I’m back at practice and getting back in the mix of things, trying to get back to one hundred percent.”
Even though he’s not sure he’ll be fully healed in time for this Saturday’s game at Brigham Young University (BYU), Johnson says he’s looking forward to how the team is coming together this season.
“I’m really excited about our team chemistry this year,” he says. “We have a real sense of camaraderie that’s better than it was last year. We only won five games last season, but I can tell we’re going to win a lot more than that this year.”
One reason the Huskies are looking so good heading into the season is senior quarterback Jake Locker, who threw for 2,800 yards and 21 touchdowns last season, and is an extremely likely candidate to become the No. 1 overall pick in next year’s NFL draft.
“It’s just a blessing from God to be able to play with a guy like Jake,” Johnson says of his quarterback. “He’s a great guy on and off the field, he’s always studying the game, and he’s a tremendous leader. It’s a great opportunity for me as a wide receiver to play with such a great quarterback.”
And even as the college football season gets underway this weekend, Johnson hasn’t forgotten the Jaguars and their upcoming season opener on Friday night.
“I would just tell them to enjoy the game and have fun out there,” he says about the Jaguars. “You only get to be in high school once, so take advantage of the time you have there. I love being here in Washington, but I miss Valley Center too. There’s nothing like those Friday nights out there on the football field.”
Johnson and the Huskies start the season on Saturday at BYU at 4 p.m. PST. Two of Washington’s games are scheduled to be televised nationally: a home game against No. 3 Nebraska on Sept. 18 is set to be shown on ABC at 12:30 p.m. PST, then the Huskies’ home game against UCLA on Nov. 18 will be shown on ESPN and online on ESPN3.com at 5 p.m. PST.

James Johnson Earns Starting WR Spot

Freshman wideout and Valley Center alum James Johnson (No. 3 in the above photo) is at it again, earning a starting spot for the Washington Huskies in their season opener against Louisiana State (LSU) on Saturday.

Johnson told me he's "excited" about the opportunity, and that he's been preparing for this "since I got off the plane." As always, he sounded cool and confident when I talked to him on Monday, but I imagine there will be a few butterflies when Saturday evening rolls around. Not that it will affect how he plays, because in all the big games he played at Valley Center, he always seemed to step up the biggest when the pressure was at its greatest.

Be sure to watch the Huskies play the LSU Tigers on Saturday at 7:30 pm PST. The game will be shown on ESPN and online on ESPN 360.

Go Huskies!