My Actual Fantasy Football Sleepers: Quarterbacks

Now that my three drafts in six days fantasy football season is over, and my league mates in all of those endeavors have already seen my act, it's time to share my sleepers with the world. Draft these guys, and you'll be guaranteed to have a fantasy football team. Whether it's any good or not is another matter. I'm going to split these out into separate posts just to make it easier to identify my mistakes later.

It's a deep year for quarterbacks, in that if you don't get one of the top 3 to 5 players, you can pretty much take your pick of reasonable gambles. Here's the guys that I'd be going after if I'm playing quarterback roulette.

Donovan McNabb, Philadelphia Eagles. It's the second year back from the knee injury, with a fourth-place schedule, and a defense and special teams that looks to have added playmakers. As a bonus, you also get his starting wideouts (Curtis and Brown) being nicked up at the start of the year, which will make some shy away from him. If you aren't playing with Eagles homers, I think you'll be able to get him cheap, and for the first time in years, I think you'll be thrilled at the end of the year with the results.

Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers. I've seen him go undrafted in some leagues, which I think is kind of criminal. If you draft him, you'll need to have some good early-season options to wait out his growing pains, but with his weapons, offensive line and defense, he's not going to have to be that good to help you. A lot.

Vince Young, Houston Texans. Do you really want to watch this? Hell no. But at the end of the day, you'll be looking at 200 yards and a couple of touchdowns (probably as many with his feet as his arm) for a guy that might be available in your free agent pool. Compare and contrast that with, say, Eli Manning or Jon Kitna, and you'll see there's no real difference. There is also the chance that he's actually better than this, the Texans will surprise with Chris Johnson, and his defense will give him a lot of short fields to work with. Besides, it isn't possible that he gets worse than he showed last year.

J.T. O'Sullivan, San Francisco 49ers. OK, his team sucks, he's a career nobody, and he's got a name that sounds like a place where the waitresses are all oversized and pushing the jalopeno poppers. But on the plus side, his division is terrible, he's in a chuck and duck Mike Martz system, and he'll throw it 50 to 60 times a game. Let's say he completes 60% of those for 7 yards a completion, with a ton of garbage time prevent defense yards. What do you have? 250 yards a game, or nearly 4000 yards for the season, and some of them have to be for touchdowns. He's young enough to survive the battering he'll get, and the Niners really aren't all that interested in seeing more of Alex Smith.

Kurt Warner, Arizona Cardinals. While you weren't noticing last year, the ancient Quarterback of Jebus had 27 touchdowns and 3400 yards, and that was with the usual musical chairs routine at quarterback. He's always going to turn the ball over (17 picks and 8 fumbles last year), but he's also just plain accurate, and you can usually ride the matchups with him to good advantage. Especially early in the season (that opening week agains the Niners looks quite tasty), there's money to be made here.

Matt Schaub, Houston Texans. The schedule won't help much here, and the division is the best in football. But he's also good, has more weapons this year (see the running back post, a healthier Andre Johnson, and a more established Owen Daniels), and has exceptional accuracy to go with a quick release. If you own him, you'll need another quarterback for the weeks where the schedule is ruinous, but in the weeks that he's good, he'll be very good indeed.