Fantasy News
We had a set of "named" Speed Bump polls last year including Wes Welker who successfully defeated Brandon Marshall and Marques Colston, Kurt Warner in his final season playing in the NFL and Santonio Holmes, then coming off a Super Bowl MVP. This year we'll award Steve Smith with a poll - now Steve Smith I or Stevonne Smith with the emergence of the "other Steve Smith" in New York. Consider it a lifetime achievement for the great Stevonne Smith, now 31 years old heading into 2010. We'll pit Smith against three likely secondary options for their respective teams in Percy Harvin, Jeremy Maclin and Robert Meachem. With this 11th poll the chances of getting all correct has now surpassed one in a million, exactly at 1 in 1,658,880 to be precise (in terms of the number of combination of answers thus far).
Inevitably some big-named star will get injured during the off-season, be it high-profile motorcycle accidents, knee ligament tears at OTAs or hamstring pulls at camp. One of this year's marquee injuries has been to the Panthers' Steve Smith who broke his right arm on June 19th playing flag football (Smith had been recovering from breaking his left arm in week 16 of the season). The broken arm last year left Smith 18 yards shy of his 5th straight 1,000-yard receiving season. Smith's magnum opus season was in 2005 when a then-26-year-old Smith dominated fantasy football with a 103-1,563-12 TD season as the #1 receiver in fantasy football and winning the "triple crown" of receiver statistics – he led the NFL in receptions, receiving yards and receiving TDs (he tied with Marvin Harrison for the receiving TD lead). Smith became the first player since Art Monk in 1984 to lead the NFL in receptions for a team that ran more often than it passed. Smith had his 2nd-best season last year tallying over 1,400 yards receiving despite missing two games (suspended by the team to start the year for punching teammate Ken Lucas) and catching passes from a dreadful Jake Delhomme (who posted a 62 QB rating) and then Matt Moore who stepped in cold to take over starting from week 13 on. Smith averaged over 100 yards receiving per game despite the Panthers rushing 53% of the time (the 2nd highest rushing ratio in the NFL last year) and having no other weapons in the passing game. In one of the more amazing stats you will see, he Panthers passed for just 2,418 yards in the 14 games Smith played last year – and 59% of those yards went Steve Smith's way! Although Smith likely won't get any or much pre-season action the early reports are he will be able to play in week one.
As mentioned above, Steve Smith plays in an offense that doesn't pass much but when it does it often goes his way. Conversely his competition in this poll are three receivers who are not likely to be their team's #1 option although who play in top passing attacks. Each of these receivers played in a Top 10 passing offenses last year that each produced over 4,000 yards passing (50% more on average than the Panthers, 4,200 passing yards on average versus 2,799 for the Panthers). First up is 2009 Offensive Rookie of the Year Percy Harvin. Despite only starting 8 games last year (Harvin often came in to play out of the slot) Harvin collected 925 yards of offense (790 thru the air and 135 rushing) to finish as the #24 WR in PPR rankings with 188.50 fantasy points (Steve Smith finished #21 playing in 14 games with 208.40 PPR fantasy points). Harvin and the rest of the Minnesota receivers were buoyed by the amazing season Brett Favre put together at age 40 despite coming to a new team with nearly no camp time. Of the three WRs competing against Steve Smith in this poll Harvin ranks the highest by a slim margin (Harvin is the #20 WR in ADP rankings, with Jeremy Maclin at #25 and Robert Meachem at #29, while Harvin is the #22 WR in magazines on average with Maclin at #25 and Meachem at #27).
Joining Harvin in this poll in what will be likely become a truly legendary and historic draft class for receivers is Philadelphia's Jeremy Maclin. Taken three spots ahead of Harvin in the NFL Draft last year at 1.19 Maclin tallied 773 receiving yards on 56 receptions as a rookie after an injury to Kevin Curtis opened the door for him to move into the starting spot for the rest of the season. Along the way Maclin set the Philadelphia Eagle franchise record for receiving yards in a playoff game with 146. Maclin was quick to get involved in the passing game - after the team's week 4 bye week Maclin tied DeSean Jackson with 50 receptions from weeks 5-17. In remains to be seen of course how Maclin and new starting QB Kevin Kolb will gel. Granted it was weeks 2 and 3 of Maclin's NFL career but when Kolb got two starts last year (and posted 718 yards passing) Maclin had just 6 receptions for 45 in those two games, while Brent Celek exploded for 16 catches for 208 yards as did DeSean Jackson with 10 catches for 250 yards.
In true "3rd-year WR" breakout form, New Orleans' Robert Meachem posted a career-best 722 receiving yards (up from 289 in his sophomore season) and exploded for 9 TDs last season, including a string of games from weeks 9 thru 13 where he scored in five straight games collecting six of his nine scores. In fact, while Meachem cooled in the playoffs, in the second half of the season (weeks 9 - 17), Meachem bested Marques Colston in receptions (37 to 34), yards (524 to 523) and TDs (7 to 3). On 57 career receptions Meachem averages a beefy 17.7 yards per reception and offers a tantalizing combination of size (6'2", 210 lbs.) and speed (sub 4-40 speed in the 40-yard dash). Last year Meachem had 11.5 yards per target - the highest of any receiver in the league. Meachem underwent toe surgery on May 11th to repair torn cartilage on the second toe of his left foot causing him to miss off-season workouts to date and he started camp on physically unable to perform list along with Marques Colston but Meachem is in the final stages of rehabbing and this isn't supposed to be a huge deal.
Vote in the official Dynasty Rogues Speed Bump Challenge: http://www.dynastyrogues.com/roguebits/detail?id=4030
Speed Bump 1 - Best vs Grant vs Thomas
Speed Bump 2 - 2009 AFC Breakout WR Battle
Speed Bump 3 – NY Giant vs. Oakland RBs
Speed Bump 4 – The Eli Manning Poll
Speed Bump 5 – Santana Mosstrap
Speed Bump 6 - Running Back Value Pile
Speed Bump 7 - Short and Speedy WRs
Speed Bump 8 - Pick Your Favorite Bears WR/TE
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