Wide Open

Jake Long. Matt Ryan. Chris Long.

At some positions in this year’s draft there are clear-cut No. 1 guys. And at others there has been so much movement you’d think the draft board was studying the Kama Sutra. One of those latter positions is wide receiver, due to a variety of interesting reasons.

During the college football season, it was widely believed that Limas Sweed of Texas was the top player in this year’s class. Sweed stands at almost 6-4 and is a polished route runner. However, he is now labeled as injury prone because of a wrist problem which has caused his value to fall. It has actually fallen too far, in my opinion, and whichever team ends up with him in late first round (or even early second) will be getting a potential No. 1 at a nice discount. The best case scenario for him might be to land with Dallas, where he could get his feet wet under T.O. and Patrick Crayton. And when TO moves on, Sweed and Crayton could constitute a formidable one-two punch themselves.

After Sweed’s injury caused his stock to sour, Cal’s DeSean Jackson briefly emerged as the top receiver. Not only did he have a big junior season in 2006, but he is also considered the best return man in the draft. However, those return skills won’t really help your fantasy team and Jackson’s production took a step back last season. Imagine him as a light version of Ted Ginn Jr., which means he’s probably on the three-year plan to fantasy relevance.

That led us to the Malcolm Kelly era of the draft. From around the combine until very recently, Kelly was the consensus top receiver and frequently prognosticated to join the Bills via the 11th pick of the draft. Kelly’s star began to lose its shine when he tested poorly at the combine and then again at the Oklahoma Pro Day. That has opened the door for Michigan State’s Devin Thomas, who has good size and is a playmaker with the ball, to become the popular pick to be the first wideout off the board on Saturday despite a college resume that isn’t exactly eye-popping.

Of course, the biggest reason why scouts haven’t been able to settle on which receiver is this year’s cream of the crop is because each one is tragically flawed. In the end, I expect this year’s draft class to look very much like the 2002 draft, which saw no wideout taken among the top 10 picks and only three go in the first round. And the biggest problem for fantasy owners is that they can’t really count on any of these guys to contribute much early in their careers, and especially in their rookie season.