Golden Tate should have the most immediate fantasy impact since he’ll almost certainly start the year as either a WR2 or slot receiver for Seattle. He’s already NFL ready and should form chemistry with Hasselbeck quickly. Aurelius Benn should also get a chance to strut his stuff early but TB isn’t exactly a team with a pass to WR success. Demaryius Thomas also has a great opportunity to succeed but he’ll likely be seeing a lot of coverage as Denver’s only real WR threat. Unless Gaffney or Royal step their games up, I see Thomas being far too well covered success and with Orton still being the QB, he won’t have the talent throwing to him that Dez Bryant or Golden Tate will have.
In the end, even though Dez Bryant is injured, I think he will do the best of the rookie WRs. Word is it he should be back as early as week one and the team already loves him. Look for him to end up as WR2 in a very good Dallas passing game by season’s end.
In terms of fantasy, almost all of the rookie WRs seem to be going too early to me. I see Tate and Thomas as the only worthwhile draft picks because they are going after round 10. No rookie WR being taken in the top 35 WRs has ever outperformed his ADP. In addition, traditionally only WRs taken in the first 12 picks of the NFL draft perform better than their ADP. Thus, Bryant, Thomas, Benn and Tate are the only rookie WRs with any chance of real impact. Since Bryant is going so early, it’s unlikely he’ll outperform his draft position. Thus, Thomas, Tate and Benn are the only real options in a draft. Personally, I’d only draft them in the deepest leagues due to their lack of corresponding QB talent. Denver, TB and Seattle all look to be running oriented teams for 2010. If you decide to take any of the rookie Wrs, I’d suggest taking only Golden Tate or Benn since they have the best risk reward ratio of the group and are going late enough in drafts to not be a liability.
Golden Tate’s the guy I love the most. It may be because I saw him play more than the others, but every time I watched him his speed and athleticism always made me shake my head. He has a reputation for toughness and is known for fighting for balls in the air, which he’ll need to keep up. He’s also likely to be the #2 guy behind Houshmandzadeh, who is coming off a very disappointing season. If he can develop something with Hasselbeck (for as long as Matt has the job) he can put up the biggest numbers of any rookie WR, even better than Bryant.
