Marc Bulger

The biggest high-risk/high-reward pick at QB this sea­son is not Car­son Palmer. It’s not Daunte Culpep­per, Dono­van McN­abb, or Ben Roeth­lis­berger. It’s Marc Bulger.

Through the first five games of the 2005 sea­son, Bul­ger had 1,648 yards, 10 TD’s, and 7 INT’s. Extrap­o­late those num­bers for a full sea­son and you get 5,273 yards, 32 TD’s, and 22 INT’s. Even if your league takes away points for INT’s, Bul­ger is most likely a top 5 QB with those num­bers. If your league doesn’t penal­ize QB’s for INT’s, those num­bers would have led your fan­tasy league.

So 2006 is around the cor­ner and a few things have changed since Bul­ger walked off the field after week 5 of last sea­son. The fol­low­ing week, Bul­ger threw an INT(surprise) and injured his throw­ing shoul­der attempt­ing to make the tackle. Bul­ger missed a cou­ple games, came back in week 7, suf­fered another shoul­der injury in week 8, and ulti­mately sat out the rest of the season.

Another change for the Rams is at the head coach spot. Scott Line­han takes over for Mike Martz(and Joe Vitt), but the offen­sive mind­set in St. Louis shouldn’t be altered all that dras­ti­cally. Line­han was offen­sive coor­di­na­tor for the Vikings between 2002–2004 and was OC of the Dol­phins last year. His teams have aver­aged 4,083 pass­ing yards and 28 pass­ing TD’s per year.

Of course this would all be moot if it weren’t for the tal­ent that sur­rounds Bul­ger. Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce, and Kevin Cur­tis are one of the bet­ter triple-threats at wide­out in the NFL.(Even if Bruce goes down, Cur­tis would be a fine #2 guy). Though Mar­shall Faulk’s absence in 2006 is a neg­a­tive, Stephen Jack­son per­formed well out of the back­field, catch­ing 43 balls for 320 yards and 3 TD’s.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Fan­tasy drafts are about value. Marc Bul­ger could be the key for own­ers who like to wait until the 2nd half of their draft to take a start­ing QB. In both 10 and 12 team leagues, he could drop into the 7th or 8th rounds, mak­ing him as good a value at QB in that spot as you can find.