Fantasy Football 2006: Draft Tip #7

The Rookies:

The top rookies for this year are.... Never mind. We already know their names. The question is not how they rank by potential, but how they will actually perform. It seems every season there are two or three can't misses that end up in NFL obscurity.

You may recall last year all the talk about J.P. Losman. To listen to some of the "experts" as well as many of the Bill's fans, Losman was the second coming of, well, fill in your own great QB name.

We warned you about picking Losman. We told you that even the greatest QBs spoke of how difficult the game is as a rookie. We watched Losman in a preseason scrimmage against Green Bay and saw a game full of "deer in the headlights" plays from him. We even went so far as to tell you not to pick up Losman because by mid-season Kelly Holcomb would be starting.

What did we get back? Angry comments from those poor deluded individuals who actually believed all the Losman hype.

The final 2005 count? Losman: 1340 passing yards, 8 TDs; Holcomb: 1509 passing yards, 10 TDs.

Now, it's not that we didn't believe that Losman might some day be a good or even great QB, just not as a rookie. That brings us to the point of this post. Don't expect miracles from rookies. The game is different from college. Occasionally, one or two will emerge, but generally most of them are drafted to develop into great players, not to be instant an success.

What does this mean for your draft day?

Use care in determining how high a draft pic you want to use on a rookie, no matter how good he is supposed to be and no matter what the "experts" say about him. In most cases he will still have to get past or share time with one or two established starters.

For example:

A lot of "experts" are pushing Reggie Bush as a Second Round Fantasy Football choice. Yet with projections of somewhere around 1200 total yards, he barely makes the top 20 Running backs. Plus, because of his size, we expect Deuce McAllister to get more than his share of the Saint's goal line carries, taking points away from Bush.

Now we think Bush will be a good pick this year, but you need to ask yourself do you really want to risk a second round choice on a largely unknown quantity?

By the way, we'll have commentary on many of the rookies available as part of our pre-season draft package coming up soon.

Next Up: Some Sleepers