WHY I WILL NOT BE DRAFTING ANY CARDINDALS THI SEASON
The 2012 Arizona Cardinals are joining 5 other teams that I will
not be drafting a single player from in fantasy football this season. I have been writing that the easiest way to
clean up your draft sheets this season is by completely eliminating players
from certain teams. Reasons may be
because of injury, expectations, personnel changes around them or current
rankings and average draft position. It
is still early in the season and I am certainly not etching this strategy in
stone, but come draft time I will likely not have a single player from the
49ers, Jets, Rams, Jaguars, Redskins and now the Cardinals on my fantasy teams. You can read back through the Gator Blog on
detailed explanations why each team has appeared in this series to date, but
now I am focusing on Arizona. I am also
basing my assumptions in this article on re-draft, 10 team, standard scoring
leagues. As always I will say I do not
endorse this as the best format for the fantasy football enthusiast, just that
this is the most common format played today.
When looking at the Cardinals the two big names that come to
mind for fantasy purposes are Larry Fitzgerald and Beanie Wells. Ryan Williams and Michael Floyd are likely
the only other considerations on this team but I will quickly discount each of
them. Williams missed the entire 2011
campaign due to injury and I am not about to take a speculative pick on
essentially a rookie coming off injury on a team where I don’t even like the
starter at RB. Guys like Blount and
Daniel Thomas are being drafted after Williams and I would actually even take
Pierre Thomas four rounds later over Williams at this point. Floyd is a rookie this season on a team that
is not settled at QB. Mainly though he
is coming off the board as the 47th WR and I don’t see myself drafting
five WRs on many team this season. You
can easily grab 3 solid WRs in round 3 – 6 this season and feel pretty good
about putting them in your lineup each week.
Add one more WR a little later and that will be it for me. Grabbing more RBs with speculative picks will
likely be more important and a focus in the later rounds.
So I will circle back to Fitzgerald. Last season, in spite of what was going on at
the QB position, Fitz checked in as the 5th best WR with 1,400 yards and 8
TDs. Producing this same line again this
season is probably about right and he likely will be a top 5 WR again. The main problem I see with him though is
that if you want him you need to grab him by the middle of the 2nd
round. His current ADP is 16, with only
Calvin being chosen ahead of him in mock drafts to date. The RB position is considerably more shallow
than wide receiver this season, so I do not like spending a 2nd
round selection on a position that I believe has great value in the following
four rounds. Even guys like Julio Jones,
Dez Bryant or Marques Colston (all being taken in the 4th – 6th
rounds of drafts) could match or come close to Fitz’s numbers this year so I don’t
want to overpay too early and end up starting Frank Gore at RB (particularly
since I should have already scratched him off my draft sheets). So with Fitzgerald it is not about doubting
his ability to put up great fantasy numbers this season, it is that I believe
there are too many other guys who can come close to delivering those same numbers
that I can draft a couple rounds later.
Beanie Wells was a little more difficult for me to
gauge. For a guy who finished as the 15th
best RB in fantasy last season, drafting him at the end of the 7th
round as the 27th RB off the board appears to be a steal. There are three main factors that came into
my reasoning for removing him from my draft sheets in July: injuries, stats and
schedule. Wells has already had multiple
surgeries on his knees and mainly refuses to play unless the questionable tag
is applied at all times. With Beanie you
are constantly checking injury reports up until game time to decide whether he
is going to play or not. The problem is
that even if he does play, he might not be playing that well do to bad knees
and constant injuries. That leads my
into stats. Last season Wells
accumulated 74 fantasy points in the first 5 games of the season even though he
only played in four. The last 10 games
of the season (he did not play in Week 17) he managed only 85 fantasy points
combined. So his average fantasy points
per game dropped from 18.5 to 8.5 as the season wore on. He lost more than 3 attempts per game as well
after the first five games of the season and that was without any kind of
suitable backup to take some of the pressure away. He also scored only 4 TDs in the last 10
games and if you remove one massive outing against the Rams in week 12, Wells
averaged just under 50 yards rushing per game after Week 6. Finally there is the schedule to
consider. I do not put all my stock in
strength of schedule, but all the rankings I have seen show the Cardinals
having around the 5th hardest schedule for RBs. They play the NFC North and the AFC East this
season so outside of getting to play the Rams twice, they are either playing
tough run defenses or teams that will likely put them in a 3 touchdown hole before
half time. Either way the running game
does not look to be a bright spot on this team.
You can grab a guy like James Starks a couple spots behind Beanie or
wait more than a round later and start picking up guys like Hillis, Tate,
Ridley or Jonathan Stewart and feel better about your RB position.
Keep checking back to see which team is next on my hit list
in fantasy football drafts this season and as always feedback and opinions are
welcomed.
Luke Wetta
Fantasy Football Aggregator
luke@ffgator.com
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