Atlanta Falcons - Joey Harrington and His Wide Receivers

With Michael Vick's plea, the Falcons have no choice but to turn over their offense to former Lions and Dolphins QB Joey Harrington. With the Falcons heavy reliance on the run under Michael Vick, his WRs could be given the benefit of the doubt for their atrocious production. Roddy White's 506 yards were the worst yardage total for the #1WRs by yardage, and Brian Finneran's 604 in 2005 was the thrid worst in the last two seasons. Now that the team is forced into a conventional offense, we will see whether these totals were Vick's fault or not.

To get an idea of what could be expected from the wide receivers under a Joey Harrington-led team, I looked at the previous yardage totals of his top targets. Michael Jenkins and Roddy White will check their stat sheets and think Vick is still throwing the ball despite everything their eye tell them. With veteran Joe Horn as the #1 receiver on the depth charts, there is nothing in Harrington's previous five seasons as a starter to make anyone believe he can make any WR a valuable fantasy player.

The big "winners" will be Harrington's TEs and RBs as he has consistently made those his top targets. This will be no different than what the Falcons receivers saw under Vick. The only question is whether Harrington will rely as heavily on TE Algee Crumpler as Vick did.

Of course, Harrington's avergae yards per game says he shouldn't be the QB on any team.