FanHouse Jackie Battle

There wasn't any beer on sale at the Meadowlands during today's overtime Jets win. That meant 65 minutes of the Herman Edwards Bowl had to be witnessed stone cold sober by the hardy souls who braved a rainy, miserable day in New York just to watch their team try to win a meaningless game.

That's just not right. It took me a fifth of scotch, two 40s of OE and a polo mallet just to make it to halftime. By the time Mike Nugent made two field goals, one was negated by penalty, to win the game 13-10 in the extra period I was on a morphine drip, scraping every drop of Sterno out of a can and grinding up bumblebees to snort.

God knows I wasn't playing this one naked. There were 18 punts, 35 incomplete passes, 13 penalties and the teams combined to convert 6-of-32 third downs. There weren't even any turnovers to make things interesting, just inept offenses running a few plays before sending a guy in to punt. That 18 number doesn't even include a roughing the kicker penalty or Jon McGraw's fake of a K.C. punt. That means there were 20 times teams were in a punt formation. Not that I was counting or anything.

I love draft sleepers, the kind of guys who are unheralded now, but turn into stars--like Willie Parker who went from unheralded free agent to Pro Bowler.

Now of course, the problem with sleepers is that not many of them turn out to be successes--after all, if it was easy to spot 'em, they wouldn't be sleepers. But if the Steelers are going back to the sleeper running back pool this year, here's someone to keep an eye on. If you look at ESPN.com's rankings, he rates as the 258th best player in the draft. Pro Football Weekly has him rated as the 206th best prospect, which puts him somewhere around a sixth to seventh rounder. This isn't a guy who is going to cost a second-round pick.

But if you look at his size, speed and athleticism, Houston's Jackie Battle rates as a guy I'd love to see end up on the Steelers. At 6-foot-1, 238 pounds, he's got the size to pound between the tackles. But he's not a plodder. At Houston's Pro Day, he ran a 4.42 40-yard dash--faster than most running backs 20 or 30 pounds lighter than him. But he's not just a straight line speedster--he also showed off a 41-inch vertical leap (better than any running back did at the combine), a 10.11 short shuttle (better than all but one back at the combine) and a 6.53 cone drill (faster than any back at the combine).