Here at Footballguys.com, we have Spotlights and Faceoffs. Those features are fairly comprehensive, but they are limited to viewpoints from either one or two writers. Some players need a little more commentary. We have opened up the dialog and asked our staff to leave their thoughts on these players and what is expected from them in 2010. Here, discussion centers around WR Hakeem Nicks.

Sigmund Bloom: Nicks played most of last season with a broken toe. Go cue up some footage of him getting behind the defense, soaring for balls in the air, and running around and through defenders in the open field and keep that in mind. He is poised to become the #1 receiver in a passing offense on the rise, and no one should be surprised if he finishes as a top ten fantasy WR this year. He is one of the best upside picks in PPR leagues after the third round.

Will Grant: I love the upside of Nicks this season and tried to trade for him in several dynasty leagues during this offseason. It's almost impossible now that Hixon is gone for the season. Eli Manning had been flirting with the top ten for several seasons, and finally cracked it last year with his first 4,000-yard season. Nicks has an excellent chance for a 1,000-yard, 7-TD performance.

Bloom, you're a little more optimistic than I am, though: for Nicks to crack the top ten, he'll have to post 1,150 yards and 10 TDs. The Giants run the ball too much and have too many other receiving options for Nicks to hit those type of numbers.

Sigmund Bloom: Nicks had 790/6 in a season when he was the starter for less than half the season on a broken toe, missed two games, and got only 74 targets. I think 1,150/10 is well within his reach with good health, 16 games, and a starter's share of targets, it might even end up being a conservative estimation of his ceiling.

Andy Hicks: There is no doubting that Nicks is one of the best prospects from the WR class of 2009 and has top ten potential. Is that this year? As Will said, that is a tall order, but I see the Giants as transitioning from a run-orientated offense to a more balanced offense. Eli Manning is not at the same level as Rodgers, Brees, or his brother Payton, but the Giants have splendidly upgraded their WR unit over the last few years. Nicks figures to be the cream of the crop, but Steve Smith and Mario Manningham are excellent as the number two and number three receivers. (Ramses Barden, with a 6'6", 227-pound frame is also in the mix.) Nicks looked like one of the better WR prospects in recent years with almost 800 yards, 6 TDs and a very impressive 16.4 yards a catch. The key thing with Nicks is that he has to improve if he's going to be a fantasy steal, and we've seen many second-year WRs fail to do that. For that reason alone, I have him as a mid-range WR2. The Giants have options if he fails to progress, but if he manages that leap then we'll all be talking about him as a WR1 in 2011.

Jeff Pasquino: WR19 seems like a bit high for me to get a second-year wide receiver for a team that could easily be trying to re-establish their ground game. Eli Manning has had his ups and downs in the past, but Nicks and Steve Smith should be getting plenty of targets. Nicks does have big-play upside, but the question will be how well he adapts to extra attention from opposing secondaries. The Nicks-Smith combo is the classic deep threat with speed (Nicks) with the possession guy as a strong compliment (Smith). The concerns are Nicks' high yards per catch (over 16 YPC last year) and relatively high touchdown numbers (six last season on limited targets). All four of our projectors have him with close to that YPC number and at least seven touchdowns. Can he get that? I think so, but I'm not in the same boat as Bloom in saying he has a ceiling of ten scores. The schedule is tougher this year and defenses will be putting a safety over the top of him with few other options for the Giants to stretch the field. Nick should still see plenty of targets with Hixon gone for the season (knee). I see him more as a lower end WR2, at least, with high WR2 upside. I don't know if the light has gone on enough for him to put up consistent numbers and attain WR1 levels.

Sigmund Bloom: Why are Nicks' high YPC and TD numbers a concern? Could it just mean that he is a top talent who will do damage deep and in the red zone with frequency? Should we feel better if Nicks had a lower YPC and only scored 4 touchdowns in limited time last year?

I think its very unwise to let schedule factor into analysis at all in the preseason. Are we also knocking down NFC East WRs like DeSean Jackson and Miles Austin, who have an even tougher schedule than Nicks?

What signs are there that "the light hasn't gone on enough" for him?

Jeff Pasquino: Any WR who had an above-average YPC in a limited sample last season is a concern if you are counting on a similar performance this year for the full season. Either you can justify it ("he's just that good") or you are concerned that a few big plays boosted his numbers and a regression to the mean is likely. For Nicks, 12 of his 47 catches were for 20+ yards. If you think Nicks will get 15-16 YPC and get around 1,150 yards, that's 75 catches. At a similar pace to what he had last year (12 of 47 catches for 20+ yards), that would mean he would need 18-19 catches for 20+ yards. Only nine WRs last year had 18 or more 20+ yard receptions - and just one of them (DeSean Jackson) had fewer than 70 catches. Most of them had 79+ with just Colston (70) and DeSean (62) under that mark. I don't put Eli-to-Nicks in the same category as Brees-to-Colston, and I also think it will be hard for DeSean to put up those kinds of numbers as well.

Let's look at his YPC from another direction. Nicks had a 16.8 YPC average last year. Only two receivers had 50+ catches and a YPC at that level or better in 2009 - Vincent Jackson and DeSean Jackson. Expanding it to 16.0 and you include the likes of only two more - Greg Jennings and Miles Austin. That's not an indictment of Nicks' talent; just evidence of any NFL WR to top 16.0 YPC and reel in 60+ balls is very, very, very hard.

As for the touchdowns, Bloom's ceiling of 10 TDs is attainable but also very tough. In the past 10 seasons, only 65 WRs have caught 10 or more touchdown passes. Last year it was just six - Austin, Larry Fitzgerald, Brandon Marshall, Randy Moss, Reggie Wayne and Roddy White. Again, it's not impossible, but to say that he can get there is asking him to put up Pro Bowl caliber numbers. That's a tall order.

External influences should be taken into account as well: schedule, ground game, quarterback, stadium, weather, etc. It all factors in.

As for the "light going on," 12 of his 47 catches were deep balls. How is his route running? How does he do against different coverage schemes? Forty-seven catches on 74 targets doesn't scream "total package" to me. Is there upside there? Yes. Is a "regression to the mean" likely? I think so. I think it would be a bit presumptuous to put 16+ YPC and/or 10 TDs in his realistic range for 2010.

Sigmund Bloom: I just don't believe in holding a player's quality play against him. Outliers at TD% and YPC should be seen as a fluke only when the player has a long history of mediocrity, or there are other external factors that clearly point to a fluke (a few massive games that skew numbers, a perfect storm of efficiency in the surrounding offense, etc), which I believe are not present in Nicks' case. If anything, the fact that he put up such excellent numbers with a limited opportunity while playing on a broken toe means that the extraordinary numbers indicate an extraordinary talent. Being ahead of the curve in recognizing that talent can make all the difference to a fantasy football owner. Nicks attacks the DB in his routes, he attacks the ball in the air, and he attacks the would-be tackler in the open field - everything about his performance last year screams "special player in the making" to me.

Jeff Pasquino: I agree that Nicks' extraordinary numbers might be signs of extraordinary talent. But still, most players who put up extraordinary numbers over a limited sample of plays do not maintain those numbers over the long run. That's essentially what “regression to the mean" means.

Sigmund Bloom: Regression to the mean stands for the idea that average players in the league will tend to put up league-average numbers. So when a player has numbers high above the league average for a season, but other evidence tells us that he is average, we should proceed with caution when importing too much meaning into their performance in the previous season. However, numbers high above the league average can actually be an indicator in the exact opposite direction, that the player really is a rare talent that is most definitely above average - especially when that is all that is contained in their track record, such as with Nicks, or Michael Turner when he was a backup RB. "Regression to the mean" should be applied only to players whose talent is close to the mean. If it is applied to all players equally, as if every player in the NFL is average, that will cause many breakout players to be missed. The numbers of young players who excel in limited opportunity will be taken as an indicator to stay away, when actually it should be an indicator to push your chips in! Finding breakout players before the breakout is one of the most crucial skills in fantasy football, and I think "regression to the mean" can short circuit that effort when it is misapplied.

Maurile Tremblay: My take on regression to the mean is that if a player's recent performance has exceeded our previous expectations for him, his true ability is probably somewhere between our previous expectations and his performance since then.

If heading into last year, we had Nicks pegged as a 14 YPC receiver, and he actually got 16 YPC, we should update our view of his true YPC ability to be somewhere above 14 but below 16. (Exactly where within that range - whether closer to 14 or to 16 - depends on factors like how much info our previous expectations were based on, how many receptions his actual YPC was based on, etc.)

Insofar as the idea applies to football players at all, it applies to superstars as well as it does to average players.

Anthony Borbely: In some cases, the problem lies with the previous expectations. In the specific case of Nicks, after seeing him play last year, I'm not at all surprised by his high yards per reception last year. I did not expect those numbers prior to the season, but after watching him play, rather than saying he exceeded expectations, I think it is more accurate to say that my initial opinion of him was much too low and basically incorrect. Frankly, I did not realize just how explosive he was and how good of a receiver he was.

Maurile Tremblay: Yes. Real life is often more complicated than math.

Or to put it more accurately, in most regression-to-the-mean scenarios, we are updating our expectations based only on observed results. In football, we are observing not only results, but also the underlying skills that produced those results. So while regression to the mean is broadly applicable to football players, in specific cases it may not be.

Jeff Pasquino: To me, regression to the mean doesn't mean a player is heading back to league averages. What it does give me is a league-wide perspective as to what is average, what is above average, and what is way above average. Expecting a player to be Top 5-8 in YPC and/or touchdowns is pushing the upper bounds. Is Nicks talented enough to reach it? Probably. Is he likely to reach it? Not really, unless you're pegging him as a Pro Bowl candidate this year. I vote no on that.