The Downfall of Ortiz's Keepers

By Thomas Davis: Pussy Palace Co-Commissioner 

Coming out of last year’s draft, Ortiz had his typical “sexy team” with early picks of Cam Newton and Colin Kaepernick along with mid round picks of Jeremy Maclin and Darren Sproles.  A quarter of the way through the NFL season Ortiz was saying that it was going to be difficult to decide who to keep because he had so many great options.  10 months later, that is not the case and here is why-

Blake Bortles would be a tenth round pick for Ortiz this year, if he didn’t trade him.  This is not taking into account that the franchise he plays for is pathetic and embarrassing, he struggles to make reads, and his offensive line is still offensive.  #FuckDuval

Jeremy Maclin can be a great keeper in the middle rounds.  He had a truly breakout season under Chip Kelly despite terrible quarterback play from the team.  Maclin was a WR 1 for most of the season and was a threat in every facet of the passing game.  The problem now is he moves onto Kansas City with Captain Check down as his quarterback and the fat walrus as his head coach.  The Kansas City Chiefs went through the entire 2014 season without a WR catching a touchdown pass.  This severely limits Maclin’s fantasy value for this season because like Ortiz lacks a tit, Alex Smith lacks balls.

Josh Gordon in the ninth round is an interesting keeper option and could potentially have been a great value pick for the team. There is one minor problem for him.  He can’t get out of his own way and will spend another season selling cars rather than catching touchdown passes.  The pick as a whole was a bust since he got two double digit point games out of him before he was suspended again for abuse of recreational substances. This is especially painful since the next picks taken after Gordon was DeAndre Hopkins, who had 10 double digit games and nearly 55 points in round 1 of the Pussy Palace playoffs and Lamar Miller who finished as a number 1 running back last season. Ortiz is to blame for this because Josh Gordon was his number one customer in a past life.

Before we get to the high draft pick players Ortiz can keep, I want to quickly touch upon Ortiz’s 4^th round wide receiver binge. With three picks in the fourth round, Ortiz unsurprisingly went with sexy high upside guys such as Cordarrelle Patterson and Percy Harvin. The last wide receiver was Roddy White who was injured most of the season and is clearly on the downside of his career.  Ortiz banked on these three players along with Kendall Wright being the foundation of a strong wide receiver group that mixed presumably safe ppr guys like Wright and White with the sexy big play threats of Harvin and Patterson.  This blew up in his face more than Casey Tyler ever has with all four guys finishing outside the top 20 and Patterson coming in at number 83 amongst wide receivers last season.

With all these flame-outs, who does Ortiz have as keeper options?  In what appears to be a throw-in in a mid-season trade, Ortiz got Chris Ivory as a 15^th round value.  Although not an elite player, he did finish the year as a low end number two running back averaging 9.5 points per game, just ahead of Jonathan Stewart. He can also keep Cam or Lacy in the first round.  Cam might be a slight reach, but Lacy will absolutely be a first round pick if the commissioner decides to throw him back.  Knowing Ortiz, he will want to keep Cam out of Eric’s hands and will use his first pick on him for the third consecutive season. The second one will be either a risky pick in Maclin, in hopes that Alex Smith doesn’t drain him before Ortiz can, or Chris Ivory, who will not start on his team and will be a waste of a keeper.  Either way, just like Cam Newton, Ortiz is scrambling and will probably make the wrong decision.