Fantasy football impact: Can the Titans make up their lost scoring?

Okay, I have to build to my “team’s interesting tidbit” in today’s piece with a story.

When my grandfather was dying (glioblastoma), money became an issue. They started taking a collection from any extended family members who could/would help, just to get through some of the non-covered stuff. My cousin, Zach, gave $1,000. My sister, Jen, gave $100. Everyone marveled and gushed about my cousin’s generosity.

Now, don’t get me wrong. A thousand bucks was great. It certainly was generous. But my cousin was a very successful investment consultant in Manhattan. Dude makes eight figures. Penthouse. All that jazz. Meanwhile, my sister, at the time, was barely making ends meet in vet school. She was several years away from having any real money.

Both were generous. But when the time came for praise, it always bugged me that Zach got so many more plaudits than Jen. She was the one who had to make sacrifices to give what she gave.

It is largely irrelevant if the Titans lost the most fantasy points. Running through a list of “who lost the most fantasy points from 2013” would have been like running a list of which family members gave the most money. Potentially informative, mostly unhelpful. It’s not even about percentage. For Zack to have given a percentage equivalent to Jen’s $100, he’d have had to donate something like two million bucks. Percentages are meaningless when the denominators are orders of magnitude apart.

So, instead of a simple “who lost the most fantasy points from 2013” chart, today I’m looking at the poverty-stricken teams. There are 12 teams to return fewer than 1,000 fantasy points from their 2013 performers. Of those 12, no team lost as many 2013 fantasy points as the Titans, and it wasn’t even close.

Yes, the Titans didn’t lose many of their players. Of those who had impact, the only guys who are gone are Fitzpatrick (who wasn’t supposed to be a key contributor anyways) and CJ2K. Still, for a team that wasn’t an offensive juggernaut to begin with, that’s a lot of production to replace.

In one of the league’s weaker divisions, can the Titans overcome their fantasy-production losses? Let’s look:

As far as the Titans’ real-football fortunes go, no player on the roster is more make-or-break than Locker. Now, it’s not exactly an insight to say a team’s quarterback is of paramount importance, but still. In Locker’s three seasons, he has only played in 23 games. In his two years as the team’s starter, he ha played in only 18 of a possible 32 games.

Locker started out well enough last year. After an awful Week 1, he averaged almost 20 points a game in Weeks 2-4, topping out at 27 in Week 3. He missed a couple games, then came back with 21 fantasy points in Week 7. He was done for the year by Week 10, though, with a Lisfranc injury to his right foot. All told, Locker played seven games and threw for 1,256 yards, with eight touchdowns and four interceptions. He added 155 rushing yards and two rushing touchdowns.

With Fitzpatrick gone, the Titans have only Whitehurst, Tyler Wilson, and sixth-round draft pick Zach Mettenberger as backup quarterbacks. Fitzpatrick has never been a world-beating quarterback, but he’s still a tier or three above anyone in that group right now.

Locker could, at his peak, have a higher upside than guys like Chad Henne, Matt Schaub, or even Eli Manning. However, his injury history and thus-far lack of performance means it is patently impossible to rely on him in any but the absolute deepest fantasy leagues. I rank him as my No. 32 quarterback entering the season, just behind, ahem, Ryan Fitzpatrick.

The Titans didn’t let Chris Johnson go because Shonn Greene was a super-stud running back or because they had the Bishop Sankey draft pick primed and ready. They cut Johnson, who signed with the Jets, because his performance no longer came anywhere close to matching his price tag. It was almost certainly the right business decision. Of course, the right business decision -- letting a too-expensive asset go -- doesn’t always lead to the greatest football outcome, and the Titans don’t have anyone of Johnson’s ability on the roster.

Sankey, out of Washington, was the first running back to go in May’s draft. He was also, famously, the latest “first running back off the board” in the NFL Draft’s history. Equating every “first running back off the board” as similar, of course, is like equating the best actor from Fargo with the best actor from Girl Meets World. Sankey is talented, but being the first running back off the board isn’t necessarily high praise.

That said, he’s almost certainly going to have opportunity. His running mates (Shonn Greene and Jackie Battle) are not exactly known as fantasy stalwarts. Greene had moments in his Jets days, but he was always more of a quantity-over-quality guy, with only one 50-plus-yard run in his entire career. Battle, meanwhile, has even less of a resume. If the Titans hadn’t drafted Sankey, and Greene had been the starter, he’d have been fantasy relevant because any starting running back is fantasy relevant. But they didn’t, and he isn’t.

We don’t know for sure how Sankey will do or whether he’ll hold the gig. For that reason, Greene is worth a look later in drafts, around other handcuffs, in the mid-to-late 40s among running backs, but that’s about it. Battle, meanwhile, doesn’t offer any fantasy value.

There are four different receivers with the Titans who at least warrant discussion, and the four could scarcely have different resumes. Let’s run through them:

The takeaway from that list is that the Titans have a bunch of lower-tier players to catch passes next season. There’s no current superstar (and no likely future superstar) among the crop, but there’s a whole host of guys who could do something. Wright, the one who got the most looks last year and the one with a first-round pick pedigree, has to be the first Titans receiver off the board in fantasy drafts. However, I would have a hard time taking him in the top 35 at the position with his lack of explosiveness and red zone targets. Hunter would go just behind him with the knowledge that he could easily jump ahead of Wright without much surprise.

I would take Wright in the late 30s among wide receivers, with Hunter in the early-to-mid 40s. Washington and McCluster will have their moments, and both could theoretically be those bye-week/injury fill-ins again, but you can’t burn a draft pick on either. If it’s deep, I’d probably take McCluster over Washington, but it would have to be super deep.

I never really bought in on Delanie Walker last year. To me, it seemed like he lucked into the end zone without enough looks/touches to justify consistency. He caught 10 passes in one game, eight in another, but never topped five otherwise and he only had one game with more than 62 receiving yards. Six touchdowns in a season meant he had some relevance, and he finished 12^th among tight ends in fantasy scoring, but there wasn’t enough there for me to buy in going forward.

I would take Walker in the early 20s among tight ends. I’ve seen him ranked much higher than that in some places, but the reasons I note above just don’t inspire me. He’d be someone I would gladly let someone else draft instead of me.