Fantasy Football

For a team regarded as a potential dark horse, they’re really a popular choice to make the playoffs. This tends to happen just about every year, usually with one team from each conference. The difference being –and I think this is a good sign for Chiefs fans– the only people I hear with higher than usual expectations for a team coming off a 2-14 season tend to be people who watch the NFL for a living.

I can definitely see where they’re coming from, but I also think it’s shortsighted. This is a team that traded away what most would consider a top ten defensive player (Jared Allen) which they turned into several draft picks. At the moment, their first overall pick from that draft (Glenn Dorsey), isn’t looking too impressive, as in his first season he looked slow, weak and out of place. Usually trading for picks is commendable and advantageous, you generally want to substitute older talent with younger talent in this league, but there are exceptions and this is almost undoubtedly one of them. Allen was just entering the prime of his career, was a proven commodity and almost definitively has close to a decade left of playing at a pro-bowl level. It’s tough to argue trading him for some unknown draft picks.

Not much else to post for the Chiefs 2008 season.

Still, while the defense has toiled away and is completely ineffectual, they haven’t been terribly impressive on the offensive side, either. With the exception of the home run pick in Dwayne Bowe (you could tell he would be a top ten receiver just from his Hard Knocks footage), they haven’t really drafted any top-tier offensive talent. It seems abundantly clear that replacing Larry Johnson is becoming more and more imperative, whom just two years ago was considered a top three fantasy pick along with Shaun Alexander and LaDainian Tomlinson (guess what all of them have in common).

They started on their way to doing this, getting Matt Cassel out of New England in what looks like a gift-wrapped package to the Chiefs for their old employee now Chiefs GM, Scott Pioli. Combined with Bowe, young upstart Mark Bradley and newly acquired vet Bobby Engram, we could be looking at a lethal passing game assuming Cassel’s improvement last season wasn’t solely the work of Bill Belichick and the weapons made available to him in New England.

Can’t Miss (for what one could reasonably expect): Dwayne Bowe. I really think this guy is well on his way to being a top five receiver, with the addition of a reliable quarterback his productivity is only going to go up. Speaking of which, Cassel really should be a safe bet. I mean, I would feel a little trepidation about relying on him if I were a Chiefs fan, but for fantasy purposes, there should be little to no drop off.

Tread Lightly: Larry Johnson. Lets face it, this guy was washed up in the same season he was considered a top three pick. He’s been living off a season and a half of remarkable play for about five years now, and I think it’s time we all moved on, including the Chiefs.

Dark Horses: Mark Bradley, Bobby Engram, Brad Cottam & Jamaal Charles. The first three because the passing game should be the best this team has to offer, and I don’t know who is going to be prioritized for what. Cottam, by the way, is Tony Gonzalez’s replacement. Gonzo is an extraordinary talent but my guess is the Chiefs offense designed a lot of plays of the tight end, we get to see if that was specific to the player they had at their disposal or if they relished in the deceptiveness of targeting the tight end. Charles is on there solely because of what I just said about Larry Johnson, and someone has to help keep defenses honest.

There’s still the issue of the defense potentially being a disaster, as it was last season (third worst in the league behind the worst I’ve ever seen and the first ever 0-16 team in NFL history). But I think this team is undoubtedly heading in the right direction. If they can get more production out of that newly minted defense they can make a serious push for the playoffs. If not, expect them to finish around 7-9 and second in the division. Progress!

Tomorrow we break into the NFC with the New York Giants.