FanHouse HarryDouglas

It happens every year at training camp, yet every year seems worse than the ones that preceded it: players get injured, sometimes seriously, and an offseason worth of plans suddenly become meaningless.

The Eagles will be without middle linebacker Stewart Bradley for the season, and things aren't looking good for Falcons wide receiver Harry Douglas (and this is while the club tries to negotiate an extension with Roddy White).

And on Sunday, the Ravens' No. 2 wideout, Mark Clayton, strained a hamstring that will keep him out 2-3 preseason games. Compared to Bradley or Douglas, that's good news, but Baltimore also doesn't have much depth at receiver. More than that, quarterback Joe Flacco is just in his second season. Spreading the offensive burden seems like the best strategy to build on the success he had last year, but that becomes problematic if Flacco doesn't have anybody to throw to. Or maybe it doesn't.

One of the lesser noticed aspects of the Falcons success this year has been the team's special teams play. Harry Douglas has proven to be a solid punt returner, while Jerious Norwood's speed make him a threat every time he returns a punt. And Jason Elam has missed only two field goals all season.

But the one you'll likely hear the most about this weekend is whenever the Falcons line up to punt, you'll hear the commentators mention how the Falcons gave up an NFL record 49 yards on punt returns all season. In 16 games, the Falcons allowed a total of 49 yards in punt returns. No opposing returner ever ripped off a return longer than 12 yards.To put it in perspective, there were 28 punt returns of 40+ yards this year and 119 punt returns of 20 yards or more. Atlanta allowed none of them. A league high 27 of Michael Koenen's 47 punts were fair caught.

But while all of that is true, this is truly a case of a junk stat. There's some value in the fact that Koenen's high arcing punts ensured that no team ever got a game-changing return. But at the same time, Koenen was only averaging 40.7 yards per punt, which was 34th out of the 35 NFL punters with 20 or more boots. His net average of 37.5 is 20th in the league.

So there are a lot of things to be impressed with about the Falcons special teams, but if you hear television commentators talk about how great their punting is, don't believe it. It's consistent, but the Falcons aren't winning the battle of field position.

First, a disclaimer. This list is not necessarily a go pick this guy up right now type deal. If you play in an 8-12 team league and you don't have injury or ineffectiveness issues, this list is not for you. If you, however, play in a 16 or more team league with a deep bench, and you have been sitting there waiting on Willis McGahee to show up with a pulse for the past couple weeks, well, I may have something for you.

We call them "Hail Mary" choices because picking up some of these guys would be like throwing a Hail Mary pass. The odds of it winding up helping your team are slim, but there's enough of a chance FTW to hurl it up there. If you have dead weight on your deep bench, let us consider the following dudes.

I've attempted to list them in the order of their likelihood at helping you.

And, actually, the top guy is a sleeper is most leagues for this week ...

Maurice "MoMo" Morris, Seahawks
He's overtaken Julius Jones in the Seahawks backfield. Sure, he's done very little all season -- save for a 100-yard game in Week 12 -- but he gets the hapless Rams in Week 15. You could do worse.

Each week in the NFL, there are players that impress and players that distress. One week a certain quarterback might toss four touchdowns and run around with his finger in the air while the next he's laying on his back, holding his facemask as the other team returns one of his three interceptions for the game-winning score. With that in mind, here's Studs and Duds.

Here's Week 12 at a glance, where we point out the horses destined for the Kentucky Derby and jeer those headed to the glue factory.

Studs

Matt Cassel and Randy Moss, New England (8 connections, 125 yards, 3 TDs) -- This team is starting to look a lot like 2007 if you ask me. Cassel has become comfortable, and is riding the huge wave named confidence to victory after dominating victory. Moss put out 100 percent on his routes, caught some beautiful passes from No. 16, who had himself a pretty decent game. Cassel has thrown for 815 yards and six touchdowns, and ran for one, in the last two weeks. I know Varsity Blues is a movie but if Gisele ends up leaving Tom Brady for the USC product I wouldn't be the least surprised. "Hey Tom ... I don't want, your life."

The Panthers have seen enough of the Falcons to know that they're more than a fluke.

And they surely came into Sunday knowing they'd have to figure out a way to slow down tailback Michael Turner and outstanding rookie quarterback Matt Ryan, and their offensive line would have to be on top of its game to handle John Abraham.

But there is no way that they could have known about Harry Douglas.

Douglas came into the game with eight catches, a couple of OK punt returns (he'd just replaced Adam Jennings in the role four games ago) and an occasional reverse. But even if Turner scored four TDs to make all of his fantasy owners happy, it was Douglas who beat the Panthers.

I did this last year, so it seems only fitting that I would do it again.

And it wasn't even close. Louisville had five players drafted, while Pitt and West Virginia had three apiece. Rutgers, South Florida, Cincinnati, and Connecticut had two each. And for the first time since 1975, Syracuse did not have anyone selected.

That's 19 players drafted. And any way I slice it, that's just not all that good for a BCS conference. Looking at the distribution of what rounds the players were taken, it was pretty well spread out over the entire draft for the Big East. But that doesn't make it feel any better. It's especially bad if you look at a team like West Virginia that has had three 11 win seasons in a row along with three straight top ten finishes. They've had exactly four players drafted in the last three years. And Chris Henry and Pac Man Jones the year before that. So we won't even go there.

The ACC? Yeah, that conference we've been quietly laughing at after Miami, Va. Tech, and Boston College left. Yeah, they had 33 players drafted this past weekend. The coaching must really suck over there or something.

Pac 10? Oh, they had 37 players drafted. SEC? 35. Big 10? 28. Big 12? 27. Hell, C-USA had 11 players drafted! Patriot League? Never mind.

Even more upsetting for West Virginia fans, two players left early for the NFL and weren't drafted. Those two being Darius Reynaud and Johnny Dingle. Yeah, sorry folks. Those Dingle-Berry photo's won't be happening anymore. Those are definitely two players the Mountaineers could have used this year, though. I'm not saying that their stock would go up any with one more year of college. But it sure wouldn't go down.

Louisville will have the most holes to fill as well. You don't replace Brian Brohm, Harry Douglas, and Art Carmody. I know there are others, but those three were special at their positions. West Virginia won't be far behind with the loss of Slaton and most of the secondary and defensive line. Rutgers, well we don't know how bad it is because we haven't seen anyone but Ray Rice run the ball. The rest of the conference should be fine. And that's not a good thing if you think about it.

For a conference that was on the verge of losing their BCS status in the court of public opinion at the end of the 2004 season, things have definitely changed in the past couple years. While no one is ready to mention the Big East in the same breath as the SEC, no one is talking about taking away their BCS status either. Thanks in no small part to the emergence of the Louisville and West Virginia programs. Not to mention the season Rutgers put in last year. Actually, if you were a Big East team in a bowl game last year, go ahead and pat yourself on the back for helping the conference to go 5-0.

Great seasons and great teams don't happen without great players. I was thinking about skipping the big names in the conference and going into some of the lesser known players before I wrote this. But after going over some of the numbers, that just wouldn't be right. The Big East has four legitimate Heisman candidates going into this season. Four players that should be on the lips of everyone in the country. Four players on three teams that should all be looking to get into a BCS bowl game if not the title game this year.

Follow me after the jump to take a look at the top five players in the Big East in no particular order that will offend any West Virginia fans