Faceoff - TE Randy McMichael, St. Louis Rams

Posted 7/26, exclusive to Footballguys.com

Upside - by Mike Brown

Randy McMichael finds himself in an ideal situation heading into this season. For one thing, he already knows the offense having played when Scott Linehan was the Miami offensive coordinator in 2005. That year, McMichael put up 582 yards and five touchdowns en route to a TE8 ranking.

That season marked the fourth consecutive season in which McMichael was a top ten tight end. Last year, he dipped a bit to number eleven. There are several factors for the drop-off, not the least of which was shoddy quarterback play. Yet this year, McMichael is ranked as the 14th tight end on average by our staff and is being selected as the TE12 on average. The only reason why his ranking would drop is if he were going to a less promising situation than the one he's currently in. But that is far from the case.

We've heard some thoughts about how the Rams haven't utilized the tight end position over the last decade or so. Well, part of that reason is that former offensive coordinator and head coach Mike Martz doesn't utilize the tight end in his offense. But he is gone now. So why didn't they use the TE last year, you may ask? That could have something to do with the fact that their tight ends were Joe Klopfenstein and Dominique Byrd -- not exactly the cream of the tight end crop. McMichael, on the other hand, is one of the league's better talents at the position.

There are some who are worried about how Linehan will use the tight end, since McMichael didn't put up huge stats for him back in 2005. Well, historically Linehan has used his tight ends -- a lot. He was the Vikings offensive coordinator from 2002-2004, and here are the cumulative stats for the tight ends in his seasons there.

• 2002: 75 receptions, 802 yards, 2 touchdowns
• 2003: 50 receptions, 427 yards, 4 touchdowns
• 2004: 90 receptions, 876 yards, 4 touchdowns.

The only one of those years that the tight ends didn't put up huge stats was in 2003, also known as Randy Moss's career year. So as long as we assume that Torry Holt isn't going to put up a legendary historic year, there's a good chance the tight ends will be very active.

The last positive point about McMichael's involvement actually comes from one of his detriments. He isn't that great of a blocker and is much more a receiving threat than anything. So if the Rams were simply looking for a big body to lay some hits on people, why would they splurge into the free agent market for a player known for his pass receiving skills? They could've saved a bundle of money and gotten themselves a blocking specialist. They didn't do that because they are looking for a playmaker.

Downside - by David Yudkin

The problem for Randy McMichael this year is that he's going from a team where he was consistently the number one or number two receiving option (Miami) to a team where he could very easily be the fifth receiving option (St. Louis). He may well be talented, gifted, sure-handed, highly skilled, and many other adjectives, but without targets and opportunities he won't be very productive.

The Rams have Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce, and Drew Bennett at wide receiver and Stephen Jackson out of the backfield, all of whom figure to see the ball more often than McMichael will. Over the past three seasons in the Florida sun, McMichael averaged 65 receptions a year. In that same time frame, Rams tight ends combined averaged 26 receptions per year. It's not inconceivable that the top three receivers and Jackson could see over 300 receptions (the top three receivers and Jackson did that last year), leaving very few receptions and table scraps left for McMichael.

His ADP is currently TE 12, which last year produced 81 fantasy points. The leading Rams' tight end the past three seasons has scored 28, 18, and 23 points. McMichael has averaged four receptions per game. Over the past three seasons, no Rams tight end has had more than four receptions in a game.

For McMichael to produce a ROI for where he's getting drafted, the Rams will have to reconfigure their offensive scheme with either of the following happening: (1) the team simply adds on his production to the bounty they produced last year (they ranked 10th in scoring and 4th in yards from scrimmage last year) or (2) McMichael will have to eat into the production of others, meaning that the other big names on the Rams are being projected too high. My money is on McMichael being the odd man out, as Bulger and the Rams have shown a propensity for ignoring the tight end in their offense and I doubt the new guy will be able to come in and displace the production of the established veteran players.