Romofan
Footballguy
At first I was going to post this in the Assistant Coach forum because in a very shallow league I'm thinking of dropping Santana Moss for Wallace but I wanted to create some more in-depth discussion around Mike Wallace and why I think he'll outperform his current top 200 rest of the way ranking. (And yeah yeah I'm in a shallow league this year for the first time in about 10 years but you could easily just replace "drop" and "pick up" with "trade for".)
There are a number of reasons why there should be supreme optimism around Mike Wallace's chances to produce as a top 10-15 the rest of the year. Obviously first and foremost is the return of Big Ben. He is twice to three time the QB that Batch/Dixon is so obviously we should expect more targets and more receptions and TD's - that's a given. Ben has a cannon of an arm and has been practicing for 2 weeks and looks in mid season form.
Secondly we haven't yet seen what Wallace can do WITH Big Ben WITHOUT Santonio Holmes....we should probably project somewhere inbetween his and Holmes ydg stats for last year for a guesstimate...which would put him at 1000 yds rec (and 1200+ upside if he puts up Homes stats - obviously this is assuming a full 16 game schedule with Big Ben - I am talking stats per game here) ...also if you take half of Holmes TD's last year that adds 2 to his 6 giving him 8TD's. Not bad. 1000/8td's That would put him around the top 15.
Other reasons to project him even higher than that. He is second in the league with a 23.4 ypc avg - I think the general perception in preseason was that he would run a lot of shorter routes with Dixon/Batch - well he is still going long. Wallace is FASTER than Holmes and combine that with a QB that can throw the ball 60 yds on the run and you can easily get excited.
Defenses can't really decide to gameplan Mike Wallace like other WR1's with no complimentary receiver. Hines Ward's presence and a solid run game prevent that. Also a huge difference this year seems to be the improved O-Line play in pass protection. If Big Ben gets a little more time than last year - watch out - also Ben can roll out and throw deep on the run - something Batch and Dixon couldn't do as well.
A look even deeper in the game writeups shows that Wallace had a TD called back on a holding penalty in Game 2 and a long td where the ball was in his hands in the endzone but got knocked out on his way to the ground in game 4. I'm just pointing out that looking beyond the stats he could easily have 4 TD's in 4 games and a lot more ydg and we might be generally ranking him higher than he is now and looking at him with even more upside than we are now.
Much like everyone hyping up another 2nd year receiver...Hakeem Hicks in the preseason (Kudos to the FBG staff and Shark Pool btw!) and projecting his numbers into the top 15 I believe Wallace deserves a serious look as someone who could really break out due to the expanded role without Holmes, QB1 with a cannon arm, and a great surrounding cast of characters.
There are a number of reasons why there should be supreme optimism around Mike Wallace's chances to produce as a top 10-15 the rest of the year. Obviously first and foremost is the return of Big Ben. He is twice to three time the QB that Batch/Dixon is so obviously we should expect more targets and more receptions and TD's - that's a given. Ben has a cannon of an arm and has been practicing for 2 weeks and looks in mid season form.
Secondly we haven't yet seen what Wallace can do WITH Big Ben WITHOUT Santonio Holmes....we should probably project somewhere inbetween his and Holmes ydg stats for last year for a guesstimate...which would put him at 1000 yds rec (and 1200+ upside if he puts up Homes stats - obviously this is assuming a full 16 game schedule with Big Ben - I am talking stats per game here) ...also if you take half of Holmes TD's last year that adds 2 to his 6 giving him 8TD's. Not bad. 1000/8td's That would put him around the top 15.
Other reasons to project him even higher than that. He is second in the league with a 23.4 ypc avg - I think the general perception in preseason was that he would run a lot of shorter routes with Dixon/Batch - well he is still going long. Wallace is FASTER than Holmes and combine that with a QB that can throw the ball 60 yds on the run and you can easily get excited.
Defenses can't really decide to gameplan Mike Wallace like other WR1's with no complimentary receiver. Hines Ward's presence and a solid run game prevent that. Also a huge difference this year seems to be the improved O-Line play in pass protection. If Big Ben gets a little more time than last year - watch out - also Ben can roll out and throw deep on the run - something Batch and Dixon couldn't do as well.
A look even deeper in the game writeups shows that Wallace had a TD called back on a holding penalty in Game 2 and a long td where the ball was in his hands in the endzone but got knocked out on his way to the ground in game 4. I'm just pointing out that looking beyond the stats he could easily have 4 TD's in 4 games and a lot more ydg and we might be generally ranking him higher than he is now and looking at him with even more upside than we are now.
Much like everyone hyping up another 2nd year receiver...Hakeem Hicks in the preseason (Kudos to the FBG staff and Shark Pool btw!) and projecting his numbers into the top 15 I believe Wallace deserves a serious look as someone who could really break out due to the expanded role without Holmes, QB1 with a cannon arm, and a great surrounding cast of characters.
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