It's Only Preseason, but ... Devin Hester May Be Overvalued

Preseason performance can often be misleading or misconstrued. We can, however, learn things from certain important players by simply paying attention. "It's only preseason, but ... " spins what we're seeing from an individual and how it impacts his fantasy value.

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It's no secret I love Devin Hester. I'm a blatant Bears homer and Hester is probably my favorite athlete of all-time, due to the returning abilities he displayed his first two seasons. I've gone great lengths in our fantasy draft kit and preseason posts to hype up 2009 as Hester's big breakout season. There's no reason to rehash all the reasons. What we're here to do today is actually talk him down a bit.

In our last installment of fantasy football wide receiver rankings, we had Hester 29th. He was ahead of Torry Holt, Laveranues Coles, Donald Driver, Derrick Mason, Kevin Walter and a few others who will likely be more consistent week-to-week performers. The allure of Hester is simple. He's got enough talent to go for 25 points in any given week. He is destined to become one of the best deep threats in the NFL, now that Jay Cutler is in the house.

What we've seen thus far in two preseason games, however, is something that will likely hamper Hester's fantasy value during the regular season. The Bears are going to heavily lean upon Matt Forte and Greg Olsen. We knew that. Other than those two, though, we're seeing how easily the Bears can spread the ball around. Hester has just as much value for the real Bears stretching the field without the ball as he has when he's making catches. As David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune wrote, the Bears don't need Hester to be a No. 1 receiver. They simply need him to be a deep threat.

His growing pains concerning rapport with Jay Cutler don't concern me, by the way. In case you haven't seen the highlight, Hester glided past the Giants secondary last Saturday and would have easily scored a 91-yard touchdown, but Cutler's pass was just out of his reach. It was actually Hester's fault, as he broke stride temporarily to find the ball. Maybe he's used to being under-thrown -- not sure who we can blame for that. Regardless of the reason, that will get fixed by the time the regular season arrives.

The fantasy football problems arise when watching how easily Cutler can connect with Earl Bennett or Devin Aromashodu. What we saw against the Giants was the illustration of how a great quarterback can make any receiver look good. Cutler won't need to lean on Hester, which means we'll see as many less-than-five-fantasy-points games as we will those aforementioned 25-pointers.

With all this in mind, I'd feel more comfortable with Devin Hester as a WR4 (spot-starter) in normal-sized leagues, not WR3 as we had previously thought.