Sarge's Rap Sheet #14: Owen Daniels

Our first special request, a look at a TE that you never heard of until last year. Owen Daniels......under the radar TE prospect, or beneficiary of a few injuries. Who is this guy? Can you draft him later and depend on him? You be the judge

The Stats:

6-3, 246lbs. 3rd season of professional football, all with the Houston Texans. 2006 NFL All Rookie Team member, 2002 All Big Ten Academic.

The Early Years:

Born November 9, 1982 in Berwyn, Illinois, Owen Daniels attended Naperville Illinois Central High School. Playing QB, he led the Redhawks to an undefeated season (14-0) and the Illinois Class 6A state championship in 1999. He also earned varsity letters for Basketball and Track & Field. A well rounded, intelligent athlete, Daniels was heavily recruited by, and committed to Wisconsin.

College Career:

Daniels red-shirted his freshman year at the QB position. True to his multi - threat ability, Daniels was a back-up quarterback and played special teams, flanker, split end, and wingback.

Daniels size and speed eventually earned him the starting job at tight end for most of his final two seasons with the Badgers. During his career at Wisconsin, Daniels played in 43 games with 62 receptions for 852 yards (13.7 avg.) He earned the nickname, "The Weatherman" as he majored in meterology and appeared on the Madison area news delivering the local forecast. Daniels was a good, but not great TE. NFL scouts liked the skill set, but again were not "wowed" ala a Kellen Winslow when he came out.

2006 NFL Draft

Daniels ran a 4.65 in the 40 at the combine, not bad, but slower than several more hyped TEs like Vernon Davis, Tony Scheffler, and Leonard Pope. Daniels was selected in the 4th round, 98th overall by the Houston Texans.

Professional Career:

Daniels made an immediate impact in 2006, hauling in 34 catches for 352 yards and five touchdowns, including a single-game rookie TE receiving record 99 yards and 2 TDs on 9 catches against Tennessee. He played in 14 games that year, starting 12 and won NFL All Rookie Team honors. Hurting his value was of course being stuck with David Carr.

In 2007, Daniels started all 16 games at TE for the Texans. Daniels finished with 63 catches for 768 yards and three touchdowns, ranking sixth among NFL tight ends in both yards and catches. Daniels seemed to be a favorite target of Texans starter Matt Schaub, second of course to Andre Johnson.

2008 and beyond:

The jury is still out here. Daniels had several great games while having Schaub throwing to him. Looking at game splits, in the majority of games where Schaub was healthy, Daniels seemed to be a lock for a minimum of 4 catches and 40 yards. Daniels does not catch many TDs, which is of concern when your looking for an every game TE.

Another concern is you just dont know what your going to get yet. 2006, with Carr and Johnson, Daniels caught less than 40 balls. 2007, with a new QB and Johnson hurt, Daniels production went way up, but the TDs still were not there. In my opinion, the jury is still out. I would not hang your hat on Daniels, but he remains a servicable option in PPR leagues.

2008, with the hope that Houston has the offense together, and Schaub and Johnson good all year, will be much more indicative of what to expect from Daniels.

Sarge

First, I don't see any data that says you can expect AJ to last a whole season.
Second, Houston has done nothing to improve its Wr core.
Third, with Schaub at Qb, he readily targets and sees the TE.

The offense was not set up to use Daniels as a goal line target, it was Walters and AJ. They are working to change that.

Daniels is a solid pick, and will be in the top ten this year. Potentially top 5.

I agree with Phic. His ADP is the 14th TE taking and thats just crazy. I took him in every league I played in last year and will target him in every league again this year at that value. Looking at 80 catches for 850 yards and 7 TDS.

Thanks for the Rap Sheet, Sarge. Owens seems to be a great value in leagues I am drafting in right now. So I wanted to get an idea what others were thinking.

The potential is there, but I gotta see what the actual "intact" product will do on the field.

If you see it, don't blink, it won't last long.

AJ can't stay healthy, he just isn't capable of it. At least not lately.

Same for both starting running backs Green and Brown.

Quite honestly, it is due to that reason I am that much higher on daniels

You may be right, and as the sheet says, Schaub looked to him quite a bit, but your spot on with your assessment of the health of just about everyone else.

If AJ can't stay healthy, OD will just be depended on more. If AJ is healthy, OD will be more open.

I don't think you can put AJ in the same injury category as Green and Brown.

Unfortunately, for Johnson, he has spent most of his healthy career with David Carr throwing him the football. And he still made the Pro Bowl twice which means that he may be the most awesome guy ever because David Carr was able to even make Steve Smith suck.

AJ was practicing this week against New Orleans and abusing everybody, but they are trying to make sure he is perfect for the season.

I know he is one of the most fit players with the Texans--he has one of the lowest body fat totals on the team--as a muscular tall guy.

This is what I know about AJ's injury history in total:

He had a pain at the back of his left knee/calf in 2005 that made him miss three games.

He had a MCL/PCL sprain of the left knee last year after taking a shot to his leg during the Panther game last year. They didn't announce the extent of the injury because they wanted teams to prepare for AJ--they made it sound day to day for a while, even when he was obviously not doing squat.

He came back after the bye week last year but did not practice for the rest of the year. He was still experiencing some pain, but was productive.

In the offseason, he had his knee scoped to remove particles. A doctor friend of mine said he is not concerned with that because that is common with MCL/PCL sprain--he thinks that will lead to a better outcome. I've been told by someone else that AJ has never had his knees scoped before.

He looked good after the procedure in camp.

He tweaked his groin during the last public practice on a real hot day--not a serious injury. He didn't ice it, wasn't limping afterwards, signed a bunch of autographs. They aren't playing him to make sure everything is all good--but even last preseason, they didn't really target him with too many balls.

I don't consider Johnson an injury prone player. He missed 3 games in 2005, and 7 games last season in a 5 year career. He hasn't had catastrophic injuries like Green, nor the nagging small injuries that are always listed next to Green and Brown's names.

He has been a disappointing fantasy player because he had the misfortune of having David Carr throw him the ball for 4 of his 5 years. And then after losing Carr, he ended up getting a huge hit on his knee last year--it was the sort of hit that would have taken anyone out.

I do know that Kubiak wants to give him huge numbers of catches. It was their first conversation together.

FWIW.

thats gotta be some sort of a sick joke.

Its possible...prolly wont happen, but he did look pretty good tonight. They moved him around quite a bit, he hit the slot a couple times, and made some nice runs with the ball.

Not really.

I'm not sure that is my projection but it could happen.

He had 768 yards last year and 4 TDs playing with a busted nose for part of the season, and the Texans offense I don't believe was at its best yet because they were still learning. Schaub was a first year starter who was playing injured for part of the time.

He had 5 TDs his rookie year with only 352 yards.

He's going to be on the field a ton.

I wouldn't bank on the TD totals, but I don't think they are totally ridiculous given what he did as a rookie.

If the secondary doesn't get much better, they may be passing a lot to try to outscore the other teams.

sigh.

And as you see TC, thats why its so hard to determine what he might do. We have yet to see this system with all its components firing on all cylinders for a good part of the season.

I've seen enough of what Kubiak has done with the offense to have a pretty good sense that it is a system offense where at least the passing game will be pretty good, and with maybe some high upside.

Running game is a question mark. But Alex Gibbs gives me some hope. (LOL. on how much he was grabbing and jawing with Kubiak--usually people leave Kubiak alone during games).

I don't like defensive coordinator Richard Smith at all. So preseason or no, I won't believe in this defense until I see them do more. And they are too young at too many key positions.

The running game is terrible. In the 2009 draft they have to go after a couple of good RB prospects.

Did you see the article over at ESPN blogs re: the running game:

ESPN - Winston reviews the premier game for Gibbs' run scheme - AFC South

Interesting read. I'm in wait and see mode.

Neg factor: I hate the running back group.
Plus factor: Gibbs has made worse look better.

Oh, and here is my unit by unit rating I wrote up on the Texans on Friday--we are working on rankings for each team:

FanHouse NFL Season Preview: Houston Texans - Too Bad They Are in the AFC South - NFL FanHouse

Of course my special team ranking probably jinxed Jacoby Jones in front of his kin folks.

Kin Folks! LOL!

Slaton looked okay against back ups. Chris Brown couldnt make my grandmother miss. Ahman should change his first name to OWWMAN. as;dlkjfa;fkdja;skf

Id like to see the RB corps built around a couple of GOOD prospects and Slaton as that change of pace guy.

every year houston continues to just do nothing with their RBs. im all for building a team from the inside out, but at some point you have to get a real back. i hope kubiak isnt becoming shanny jr.

I dont think he will be. Shanny at least has a couple guys every year that can carry the load. Right now Houston doesnt. Ahman was a nice attempt at a stop gap, but the dream is dead.

They haven't had much choice.

The 2005 Texans were bare. They had to rebuild that team, especially the defense from scratch.

The Texans have been able to put together a pretty functional offense without getting a real #2 WR, heck, Kubiak beat the Colts their Super Bowl year using Ron Dayne and David Carr for pete's sake.

So the way I see it, they are trying to system up their running back position the best they can while they fill their other needs.

They got the LT they wanted, and turned the trade down into two more picks. Thankfully they drafted left tackle because their old guy Ephraim Salaam is out with his knee scoped. (Duane Brown has looked pretty good in limited preseason time).

I think they will draft a stud running back eventually. They are going to keep trying to dump players on defense until the defense stops embarrassing. Kubiak figures he can make do on offense, but the defense is really really bad.